Teaching Thinking on Paper.

The article discusses the functional writing method by Van Nostrand, professor of English at Brown University in Rhode Island. It focuses on drilling students in the art of getting a coherent argument down on paper. It is intended to help scientists, engineers and business managers learn to use the written word. Nostrand says that in functional writing, students are taught to view it as a dialogue with readers, thus, it is easier to organize one's information for someone else than for oneself. Central to this method is a workbook outlining a series of drills that break the writing process into simple steps.