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Abstract In this article, we identify eight common error patterns of nascent writers when they attempt to navigate the pathway to scholarly writing. We illustrate each error pattern via examples [...]

To teach students how to write for the workplace and other professional contexts, technical writing teachers often assign writing tasks that reflect real-life communication contexts, a teaching approach that is grounded in the field's contextualized understanding of genre. This article argues to fully embrace contextualized literacy and better teach workplace writing, technical writing teachers also need to contextualize how they assess student writing. To this end, this article examines some of workplaces' best assessment practices and critically integrates them into an introductory technical writing classroom through a method called student-centered assessment instruments. This method engages students, as workplaces engage employees, in the assessment process to identify local requirements for writing tasks. Aligned with theory and practice, this method is not only an effective classroom assessment method, but becomes an integrated part of students' genre-learning process within and beyond the classroom.

Teachers often test course materials by using them in class. Usability testing provides an alternative: teachers receive student feedback and revise materials before teaching a class. Case studies based on interviews and observations with two teaching assistants who usability tested materials before teaching introductory technical writing demonstrate how usability testing can make novice teachers more confident about and help them predict student experiences with their assignments. By helping to train teachers, usability testing can also help better serve students.

This study analyzes the performance and attitudes of technical writing students in PowerPoint-enhanced and in non-PowerPoint lectures. Four classes of upper-level undergraduates (n = 84) at a mid-sized, Southern university taking a one-semester technical writing course were surveyed at the beginning and end of the course about their perceptions of PowerPoint. Of the four sections, two classes were instructed using traditional lecture materials (teacher at podium, chalkboard, handouts); the other two sections were instructed with PowerPoint presentations. All four classes were given the same pre- and post-test to measure performance over the course of the semester. Traditional lecture or PowerPoint presentations consisted of at least 50% of the course, with the remaining time spent on exercises and small group work. Results reveal that while most students say they preferred PowerPoint, performance scores were higher in the sections with the traditional lecture format.

The author has taught a distance education version of the undergraduate technical communication service course at Boise State University since 1997 and shares the strategies he has found to decrease the time instructors spend teaching online, thereby enabling them to use the time they do have to enhance their students' online experience. These strategies are distributed among four areas: management of collaboration, presentation of course material, grading, and interaction with students. For each one, the author presents the problems that may occur and approaches to resolving them. The article addresses a number of concerns expressed in the scholarly literature on distance education and is informed by surveys given to five sections of the author's course taught between 2001 and 2003. Interspersed through the article is an overview of some of the current research and commentary on distance education of particular interest to those teaching the technical communication service course via the Internet.

Proficiency in technical writing is required of the student or professional engineer throughout his or her career. Technical writing that communicates well depends upon good organization at every level, from the details of grammar to the broad outline of structural headings and a title. Some aspects of organization in technical writing are readily prescribed by rules. Others, involving organization at a higher level, are not. This Technical Note first considers some hindrances to clearly written communication that are often overlooked in the literature. Concerned with the logical flow of ideas and with presentational form, the problems are illustrated by two examples of poor practice and suggestions for remedial action. The subject of the structural outline is then discussed and illustrated by the same examples. The emphasis of the note is that organization in technical writing is vital if the writer is to communicate his or her intended meaning and achieve the required outcome. CE Database subject headings: Writing; Engineers; Engineering profession; Communication.

Abstract This paper describes two models for integrating technical writing with discipline-specific courses through service-learning: a linked course model and a linked project model. Both models allowed students to practice [...]

Abstract A case study detailing one student's involvement with supervisors, coworkers, and patients in a hospital physical therapy unit yields significant information about factors involved in the creation of documents [...]

If you wish to start an undergraduate professional and technical writing program at a small liberal arts college, you will find good arguments for your project in the educational writings of Sir Francis Bacon. Unlike other Renaissance. Humanists, Bacon located the New Learning (what we now call the humanities) within the related contexts of scientific discovery and invention and professional training and development. His treatise, The Advancement of Learning, proposes to draw knowledge from and apply knowledge to the natural and social world. Bacon's curricular ideas can benefit emerging PTW programs in the humanities in three ways: They make a convincing apologia for most English departments and writing programs, wed humanistic education to public service, and provide a rich but practical theoretical framework for program development and administration.

This article begins with an overview of cognitive psychology research on the effects of aging on literacy and suggests the additional complications facing older adults who consume and produce text within the frame of technology, particularly on-line usage. From an overview, the text moves to patterns corporations are using to target older adults, namely as consumers and as producers. The text then explores the use of philanthropy in the corporate literacy initiatives and suggests that there are complicated issues at hand in attempting to integrate the knowledge of aging and corporate strategies into our technical writing classrooms because we enter this discussion concerned about non-traditional students, older adults who are challenged to participate in contemporary literacy initiatives, and ourselves as aging participants as well. The article ends with suggestions of possible ways of addressing concerns regarding aging.

A substantial writing assignment has been used in an organic chemistry course at Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College. It involves library research, peer review, and assessment and could be adapted to any field of chemistry. Very often student scientific writing is learned only in courses taught by teachers of English language. Developing scientific ideas by writing about a topic is often neglected in beginning science courses. Topics include the purpose of the assignment, student comments and comparison courses, and the grading criteria. Sample paper titles are listed.

Use of writing as an effective learning tool for students learning chemistry is discussed. Students will also develop an essential professional skill. Some strategies used at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, even in high-enrollment general chemistry courses, where microthemes are assigned, are discussed.

The redefinition of logos as an appeal to logic is a mistaken association found all too often in the technical communication classroom. Logic inheres in all three proofs of persuasion; moreover, Aristotle used logos within the context of classical rhetoric to refer to the argument or speech itself. In this light, the proofs of persuasion represent the set of all logical means whereby the speaker can lead a 'right-thinking' audience to infer something. If that something is an emotion, the appeal is to pathos; if it is about the character of the speaker, the appeal is to ethos; and if it is about the argument or speech itself, the appeal is to logos. This interpretation reinstates all three proofs of persuasion as legitimate, logical means to different proximate ends and provides a coherent definition of logos, consonant with Aristotle's Rhetoric, to the next generation of technical communicators.

Classical rhetorical theory has been used for relatively discrete, practice-oriented purposes in its application to teaching Scientific and Technical Communication. However effective these appropriations are, they isolate these resources from a comprehensive framework and from that framework's role in shaping disciplinary practice. Because these theoretical assets are integral to each student's preparation to be an effective, responsible practitioner, I have developed and taught an upper level rhetorical theory course for STC majors that is grounded in Aristotle's On Rhetoric and in his understanding that effective communication is a systematic tekhne/art.

A quarter-long neurophysiology project was developed for the introduction of a biology course to general education students. The multistep neurophysiology project was developed to introduce general education students to the scientific method, on-line scientific bibliographic databases and scientific literature. Furthermore, the multistep writing project also represents a significant commitment of time to both the students and instructors.

Designing an electronic technical writing classroom is a complex, time-consuming procedure that requires well-formulated plan and classroom policy. The major decisions that classroom designers need to consider in the design process center on four stages. The stages include formulating a target plan, determining a room design, working within budget constraints, and ensuring efficient and smooth running of computerized classes. Suggestions related to the four stages, in association with the goals of teaching technical communication, are included.

Introductory technical communication courses can design effective assignments using the Internet. The Internet assignments teaches students to collect data and to evaluate the data appropriately. The students also learn the technique of finding information for the Internet. The introductory technical communication course assignments, that can use the Internet, include literature review, analytical report and instructions assignment. The use of Internet in these assignments, to meet the writing goals, is discussed.

The use of World Wide Web (WWW) sites allow collaboration in technical writing classroom community. The WWW enables teachers to help students in forming diverse relationships outside the classroom community, and in developing skills required for working in wider discourse communities. Student participation in developing the WWW is encouraged, enabling them to be better prepared to deal with unknown writing situations. Some WWW project scenarios, and a technical writing assignment that involves collaboration, are discussed.

The growing movement toward the integration of communications in science-based courses has been taken to the heart of the curriculum at Berea College. New college-wide general education requirements initiated a review of student abilities, departmental expectations, and the use of writing and speaking skills in all courses. Agriculture graduates require highly developed reading and speaking skills as well as a fundamental control of language to succeed in industry today. Depending only on the English department to teach students writing and speaking skills can lead to graduates ill-prepared for communication in their chosen profession. The inclusion of communication skills in an animal science course not only improves such skills, but it also increases the ability of students to apply and use animal science concepts. The benefits of broadening the teaching curriculum to include reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills can provide improved academic achievement, attitude, confidence levels, and self-images. Students can become active participants rather than note-takers. Curriculum changes of such magnitude require faculty development opportunities and administrative support. Key Words: Teaching, Communication, Curriculum, Writing

For more than a century, teachers in all content areas have expressed concern about the writing skills of their students. Historically, the burden for teaching writing has fallen to English teachers, many of whom feel inadequately trained in rhetoric. Recently, faculty in many content areas, encouraged by the theories of composition specialists such as Stephen Tchudi, James Britton, Donald Murray, Ken McCrorie, and others, have begun to incorporate more writing into their disciplines, and today on many college campuses administrators strongly encourage and support training in writing across the curriculum. However, faculty in content areas other than English often feel they do not have the time or the knowledge to stress writing in their classroom. Current research in teaching writing effectively addresses both these issues. First, faculty in the college of agriculture can eliminate their students' resistance to writing by modeling and by consistently integrating writing into the course. Research suggests that content-area teachers may be more qualified than anyone to evaluate the effectiveness of their students' writing. The content-area teacher understands the material and can best determine how clearly the student has communicated an idea. Evaluating students' writing need not be overwhelming. Content-area teachers who are committed to incorporating more writing into their classes can use a variety of approaches in assessing their students' writing, many of which require limited grading. Furthermore, content-area teachers should remember that writing is as much a process as it is a product and daily writing exercises, which are generally short and often ungraded, can be integrated routinely into the curriculum without placing an unreasonable strain on the professor's time. A benefit to using daily writing is that it can help students master content as well as communicate effectively. After the content-area professor has developed a practice of using daily writing, he/she can then generate assignments that focus on the discipline. Assignments should be content-specific and authentic. This means the writing topics come from the discipline and the documents written mirror those students will read and write in their professions. Ultimately, the task of teaching students to communicate effectively must be shared by teachers across the curriculum. Key Words: Writing, Curriculum, Assessment

Using new media in supporting students learning to write is a challenge for technical writing teachers. In this article we describe our effort to convert the paper course material to an on-line advisory system, called Ganesh Helper. Through the logging of students' actions and observations it was possible to assess some aspects of the use of Ganesh Helper (searching, browsing, and switching between writing and reading) while the students were writing part of a report. A questionnaire taught us that a majority of the students found the helpviewer easy to use and useful. But in the case of Ganesh Helper most of the students still preferred the textbook to the helpviewer.

A great deal can be done to improve student writing without asking engineering professors to teach writing as a separate subject. This paper explains how to hone writing skills by convincing engineering students to be concerned simultaneously with technical content and the quality of writing. Many engineering courses offer opportunities for students to improve their writing, but the most effective motivation arises from design problems. Experience in several courses over a 10 year period indicates that some simple advice coupled with frequent opportunities to practice can improve writing skills rather easily and quickly. This can be done without trying to teach English or doing extensive editing on reports. Encouraging good writing in engineering courses has been well received by students. They see that it will be valuable after graduation and they appreciate the value of practicing writing skills in a realistic engineering problem-solving environment.

Consulting engineering firms that produce reports for clients benefit from having engineers who can write clear, well-organized, grammatically correct descriptions of the work they perform. Despite the obvious value gained through engineers who can write well, universities and the firms themselves do not as a role train engineers in business technical writing. A typical program a firm can institute to promote writing skills would include developing a house style guide as well as concise examples of writing engineers should emulate and screening and practice exercises. The ability to fast organize material in an outline is critical to efficient composition. Engineers with limited English skills can be instructed in building clear, logical lists that can be efficiently converted into narrative form by an editor.

Engineering students, faculty, and administration all agree that instruction in writing is an important component of engineering education. And since engineering students will take up technical matters in their careers, it seems only natural that a writing class will require them to write papers about technology, that is, to practice technical writing. While this approach may indeed be of value, the following article presents an alternative to the teaching of technical writing per se. The author suggests that if students learn how to approach an issue they care about, form an arguable idea from this issue, then logically prove it in subsequent paragraphs, that this deep level of writing and thinking comprehension can then be used to enhance any piece of writing, especially the technical document.

In learning how to write, one has to cope with many demands on language proficiency, organization skills, and intellectual ability. A checklist of what is required can help to clarify all these demands and to turn them into manageable items or units for practice, implementation, and evaluation. The skills involved in designing and applying checklists resemble those required for dealing with the writing tasks on campus and/or at work. The focus of this article is on using checklists to improve the skills of one kind of writing - the report, among students from two faculties in a tertiary institute. The reports are for different purposes, situations, and readers. The article will discuss the different approaches in adopting a checklist to facilitate the report-writing process. It will highlight using students' work or authentic materials as an input to their own learning and helping them to integrate the skills learned with their work on the campus and in the workplace.

Can technical writing still be taught credibly by teachers with only academic experience? This article draws a distinction between courses designed for students expecting to be full-time technical communicators and general-purpose service courses designed for students in a variety of fields. The article then argues that teachers of service courses can teach credibly without having worked as writers in nonacademic workplaces if they fulfill these conditions: they should have a critical command of research into non-academic writing, rhetorical theory, and reading theory; they should define technical writing broadly enough to see themselves as technical writers; they should seek and take advantage of everyday opportunities to practice technical writing and reading; and they should carefully consider the sense in which their courses reflect reality.

Several recent journal articles, especially the one by Charles Sides [1], have questioned the form and function of technical communication. Based on actual experience with three organizations in Oregon, this writer proposes a need to rethink what we teach our technical writing students and how we go about designing assignments that '... simulate the reality of a work environment' [2]. This article will explore the types of technical writing skills which are increasingly in demand and then will offer several strategies for teaching these skills at the college level.

There is much debate and confusion about the use of the passive voice in texts in general, and in computer manuals in particular. For example, it is often stated that the passive should be avoided, but on the other hand, it may also have a clear function in a text. The aim of this article is to provide clarity by presenting a straightforward principle for the use of the passive voice in computer manuals. This 'alternation principle,' in which active voice is used for user actions and the passive voice for automatic computer, is backed by results from recent functional and cognitive linguistic research. It is illustrated by means of fragments from several computer manuals, including some (apparent) counter-examples.

This article reports the results of survey research designed to determine how students feel about peer assistance and group writing. In general, the results are quite favorable, although more problems surface regarding fully collaborative projects than peer criticism. Statistical analysis of both objective and open-ended items yields suggestions for design and management of collaborative projects in technical communication classes.

An integrated approach to teaching technical writing requires a unified faculty commitment to improving student writing, student motivation, appropriate writin assignments, strong evaluation standards, and productive instruction techniques Effective technical writing has certain distinguishing qualities: a clearly defined audience and purpose, careful organization and development of ideas, an a concise and accurate style. Students can best develop these qualities when writing assignments and instruction are presented in the realistic context of engineering problem solving. The writers advocate the collaborative development of student writing by both English and engineering faculties. In an effective collaborative program, all engineering instructors stress the importance of writing in engineering practice and in their evaluation of student writing assignments, while using effective teaching strategies like peer and self revie of writing drafts, one-to-one conferencing, and portfolio evaluation.

Industries are increasingly recruiting employees capable of skillfully functioning in inter-organizational skills, thereby revealing the need for Technical Writing teachers to better train their students in problem-solving, communication skills, organization and group work. Students can be transformed into efficient employees through exposure to projects in person- to-person interaction and training in technical writing.

A teacher's manner of conducting a technical writing class to improve written communication skills, is described along with assumptions made. The classroom ecology model describes aspects such as metaphors, communication structures and nonverbal communication, and its effects on technical writing courses are evaluated.

An example of the use of a case study in teaching business communication and technical writing is presented. The case study is based on a crisis that occurred in the Arthur D. Little company in 1983. The case study occupies a two-week course. Students are asked to consider the role of the company president and to prepare a number of written assignments arising from different aspects of the case. Students are found to be enthusiastic about the assignments and to show improvements in the quality of their writing as the topic progresses.

Computers are a valuable tool for teaching technical writing. Computers allow students to write more easily than using pen and paper. Students become enthusiastic about writing and are prepared to revise to obtain a perfect result. Networked computers allow collaborative working and reproduce some of the characteristics of team projects encountered in a real work situations. Students can learn to use electronic mail. There are problems of computer use, including the physical layout of the classroom and technical difficulties, but the benefits outweigh the problems.

Taught in a state-of-the-art PC computer lab, technical writing at Eastern Technical High School in Baltimore County Public Schools, Maryland, has drawn wide student interest because of its practical applications. [...]

Graduate level technical writing courses should include writing assignments that encourage students to publish, increase familiarity with references, develop students' technical backgrounds and teach peer editing skills. Three suggested assignments to encourage these skills are on a scientist, a technical communication topic and a scientific topic. Students should choose topics of interest to them and their audience to refine their writing and peer editing skills.

Professional writing students can gain access to the production phase of publishing through desktop publishing technology. Through hands-on practice in text preparation and printing provided by desktop publishing technology, students can better understand the implications of the publication design on visual meaning. The advantages and disadvantages of teaching desktop publishing techniques in a classroom setting are also discussed.