The article discusses how assignments using the Internet can be integrated in an introductory technical communication course without compromising two fundamental pedagogical goals of the course: teaching students how to gather data and how to evaluate it. Three traditional introductory technical communication course assignments (instructions, literature review, and analytical report) that utilize Internet resources to achieve these two goals are described.

People who write in English as a second or foreign language often find it difficult to write clear, coherent, idiomatic English. Contrastive rhetoric studies the structure of language beyond the sentence (discourse), as well as the influence of culture on writing. Findings from contrastive research should be incorporated into writing instruction and teacher training to give nonnative speakers of English more help in writing for the world of work.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

When technical students begin their professional careers, they are not always adequately prepared for the complex communication demands that will be made of them/spl minus/especially during the process of developing a technical proposal. A real-world investigation of technical proposal development is an excellent way for the technical writing course, often constrained by time and standard writing assignments, to prepare students to meet these demands. The investigations include practice in collaborating, planning and scheduling, and oral reporting.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The socio-technical system, which views production systems as being composed of both technological and social parts, is discussed. Socio-technical systems theory became the foundation of self-directed work teams-a way of working also known as 'autonomous,', 'composite,' and 'self-regulating.' Most literature on the subject suggests using a process approach to implementing any change to a self-regulating work style and phasing in the process over a period of from two to five years. However, it is shown how one factory prepared its workers for such a change in a much shorter period of time.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Professional educational philosophers C.A. Bowers and D.J. Flinders (1990) describe the classroom as an ecology comprising interrelated linguistic and cultural patterns that determine how information is communicated in the classroom. their classroom ecology model centers on the observation of three interconnected areas: the metaphors that the teacher and the textbook use to introduce students to the formal and informal curriculum, the manner in which the teacher frames student expertise and classroom relationships, and the nonverbal communication between teacher and students. Using Bowers and Flinders' model, a technical writing class taught by a teacher who emphasizes relationships, understanding and acceptance, and collaboration was studied. The teacher's metaphorical language, framing of instruction and student relationships, and nonverbal language are shown to reflect a rhetorical approach to technical writing, a caring approach to teaching, and a supportive, community environment for learning. This ethnographic study provides a snapshot of how one teacher defines technical writing and how he answers the question of how is should be taught.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

It is argued that foreign students, who spend four or more years studying at US universities, often do not realize how much their years in America have changed them. Nor do they realize that these changes will have a profound effect on them when they return to their native cultures. The difficulty they will have upon returning to their home countries has been called cultural reentry shock. The professional writing classroom seems a good place for educators to make foreign students aware of cultural reentry shock. Teachers can define the various problems associate with this phenomenon, lead students in discussion of the problems, and propose ways to ease the severity of the problems. Writing assignments may be structured in such a way as to allow students to do self analysis of the changes they may have undergone during their years in the US. The students can be encouraged to design their technical documents using their native environments as the source of data, examples, and issues to write about. These documents can also be written for an audience in the native culture, rather than to an American audience.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

A bibliography and its introduction provide a convenient way to narrow the scope of selecting pedagogical material by discussing recent, easily accessible books in the field of technical communication. The bibliography consists of two parts: one is devoted to more traditional textbooks appropriate for classroom use, whether in academia or in industry and business; the other discusses such other resource materials for collateral use and supplementary reading as scholarly studies, anthologies, and handbooks. The bibliography is reasonably comprehensive for books published from the beginning of 1988 through June 30, 1990. 42 books are annotated, and an additional ten are listed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Many organizations hire new technical writers regularly as their business expands, or hire temporary technical writers to cope with a heavy workload period. Although it is assumed that such people are hired for their writing skills, they still must be trained quickly in four areas: how business is done in the organization, the process used to produce information, the style of writing preferred, and the technical tools available and how they are to be used. The author shows one way of structuring such a training program. It is based on an actual course developed over a period of three years. It is concluded that a good training program requires considerable forethought and subsequent modification to keep up with change, an organized coordinator, a dedicated set of teachers and a process that can be readily learned and modified again by others as turnover occurs.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

A rationale and description are presented for an approach to teaching ethics, as a process rather than a product, in a technical writing course. The students carry out a series of related assignments based on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The intent is that by writing and speaking about SDI technologies, students will develop the ability to form responsible value judgments in addition to doing factual reporting. To develop their sense of ethical reasoning, they are encouraged to use generalizations that evaluate the subject rather than just describe it. It is suggested that this method of raising ethical awareness could easily be adapted for use in professional seminars.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The author's grading strategy in an upper-division technical writing course is documented. Students taking the course plan technical communication careers. They complete 50 pages of editing exercises and generate more than 75 pages of double-spaced copy for eight assignments. The author responds to students' work in several ways: (1) personalized memos and extended handwritten comments, (2) marginal handwritten comments and questions, (3) internal copyediting of student manuscripts, (4) individual conferences, and (5) assignment of a grade. When editing student assignments, criticism is provided of content, communication effectiveness, and appearance. For content, the accuracy, consistency, logic, and evidence are evaluated. For communication effectiveness, the appropriateness of the narrative and visuals for the audiences, organization, clarity, and conciseness are evaluated, and for appearance, checks are made for spelling, mechanics, stylebook, and format errors.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Copyedit-style grading is described and contrasted to the less thorough end-comment-only grading often provided in writing courses. A student perspective is provided, using examples from courses using both styles of grading to illustrate the purpose of copyedit grading, which is to help the student learn to write clearly and concisely.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The author describes the senior design project he developed as a partial fulfillment of the mechanical engineering technology degree and his experience with the senior design communication curriculum provided to assist students in writing the technical reports for their projects. He discusses the particular writing problems he encountered and how the writing course helped him overcome them. He illustrates his points with quotes from his report.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Measurements of the effectiveness of a writing course is considered especially important to those who hire consultants to teach their employees. The author presents a method of evaluating participants' skill improvement by means of measuring their attitudes toward writing tasks before and after taking a consultant-taught course. Sample results of such pre-test and post-test analyses are given.

Producing computer documentation today involves more than just writing. Today's computer documentation specialists must draw on a wide range of multidisciplinary skills to produce an effective documentation package. Beyond knowledge of the underlying computer technology and the necessary writing skills, they must also draw upon pertinent concepts from marketing, user psychology, graphic design, screen design, usability testing, and the product development cycle.

This book is aimed at persons in the work force who want to acquire good writing skills in order to “increase their chances for success.” The first section, entitled “Writing and the Successful Manager,” emphasizes that all managers should be concerned with creating an image of success and looks at how writing can either enhance or detract from that image. This section also offers helpful guidelines for determining when to write and when not to write, and suggests other options for communicating. The final chapter of this section is a brief overview of the four stages in the process of a major writing project. This section seemed rather premature at this point in the book, before a more thorough analysis of writing projects. The four stages — exploring, planning, drafting, and revising — are crucial to any writing project, but for the discussion of them to have maximum effectiveness in this book, it needs to be more carefully focused on business writing situations.

The author discusses whether text on computer screens (videotext) should be given a human `voice'. He focuses on computer-assisted writing instruction and suggests a framework for designing computer personalities to match user preferences.

The authors of Technical Writing believe that students best acquire technical writing skills through imitation. They state in their preface that the purpose of their text is “to give students access to models that truly represent papers in technical disciplines.” The concept of learning by imitating is certainly not new, but Brinegar and Skates have selected, organized, and presented their material with creativity and imagination, and the result is a technical writing text that is innovative and interesting, as well as accessible and adaptable for instructors and students alike.

An approach to teaching writing ability is described that involves having students examining their present writing behaviors, experience very diverse writing processes, and research writing processes. An appendix provides an extensive listing of selected resources on writing.

Clarkson University is developing software tools to help students write with more skill and thought. The new programs include a powerful word processor, a spelling checker, an authoring system, numerous pre-writing programs, and computerized prose analyzers. The components of the Clarkson writing system function as an integrated whole, setting a standard for writing packages. Early use of these programs indicates that the computer is making itself indispensable to the writing teacher.

It is argued that a course in letter writing can serve to sharpen communication skills that have become dulled over years of carelessness and thoughtlessness. It teaches the student to understand and respect the reader's needs in every writing situation and to use the necessary tact and diplomacy in all responses. Furthermore, when the 37 daily writing assignments in such a course have rigorous penalties imposed automatically for errors in spelling, grammar, and syntax, students learn quickly that correct writing is essential.

In the Fall 1982 semester, engineering report writing was integrated into the structure of a junior-level electrical engineering course at Howard University. The required homework consisted of engineering reports instead of the traditional textbook problem sets. A follow-up analysis of grades on examinations, on reports, and in later courses showed that (1) student understanding of engineering subject matter was not compromised by the course structure; (2) writing skills improved over the course of the semester; and (3) the correlation of student writing skills to problem-solving skills was approximately 0.5.

Although computers are important tools to help learners improve their writing skills, the instructor must still establish the instructional goals of a course. This study presents an instrument, the `technical writing attitude measurement', that measures students' attitudes towards their technical writing skills and provides data and objectives which help the instructor develop instructional materials and assignments to improve student skills. The `technical writing attitude measurement', a Likert-type, self-report questionnaire, is based on instructional goals that may be divided into three categories: rhetorical principles, planning strategies, and drafting skills. The instrument was used to measure changes in student attitude toward technical writing skills. These changes were influenced by two main methods of instruction, the case method and the rhetorical approach to teaching technical writing.

THE ergonomics of word processings suggestions for teaching writing in the classroom and workplace, systems for improving technical reporting, and mathematics editing are discussed in this issue.

Hatch directs Business Writing to “business-communication instructors who wish to emphasize principles of writing as they apply to letters, memos, and reports” and Business communication: theory and practice to “business-communication instructors who wish to base their writing instruction on the psychological principles of communication.” The only difference in the content of the two texts is that Business Communication has an additional 46 page section on communication theory. These texts, identical in every other way except the binding, are strong texts that merit serious consideration for upper-division business writing courses, especially courses that emphasize correspondence rather than reports.

This book tells you virtually everything you care to know about letter writing; resumes; interviews; sales and customer relations letters; libraries and their resources; note-taking; the differences between a summary and an abstract; preparing and using questionnaires; designing visuals; writing instructions; sales, progress, trip, and incident reports; and various types of oral reports, from telephone conversations to formal speeches. It is written for undergraduate students preparing for such careers as (I quote from the first chapter) “executive secretary, computer operator, forestry, law enforcement, dental hygienist, and nurse.” This comprehensiveness is either a strength or a drawback, depending on the use you wish to make of the book. A teacher's guide is available.

Writing skill is an important element in engineering success. To supplement engineering curricula that provide little help in developing writing ability, this article describes ten steps in report writing that apply to research reports, operation manuals, proposals, and feasibility studies. The steps are (1) analyze your audience; (2) classify the report; (3) design the report; (4) do the research; (5) write a rough draft of the body of the report; (6) write a conclusions section; (7) write an introduction; (8) write an executive summary or abstract; (9) revise the report; and (10) add missing elements.

An in-house writing course needs a knowledgeable and skilled manager for sponsorship and leadership, technical expertise from inside or outside the company, a well-written text, and a curriculum that addresses the common and recurring in-house communication problems. Having the employee students suggest topics and provide troublesome documents for diagnosis adds interest and generates commitment to the program.

The Automated Systems Approach to Proposal Production (ASAPP) quickly produces high quality, competitive proposals while reducing proposal-team stress. ASAPP has three components: electronic boilerplate, a dedicated proposal team, and a five-phase process for proposal development. The electronic boilerplate is reusable text on management structure, related experience, general capabilities, personnel abilities, and company policy. The team members fill six roles: proposal manger, text coordinator, writer(s), contract officer, text processing leader, and graphics leader. Their authority and responsibilities provide efficiency and coordination for the proposal effort. In phase I the team constructs an outline, makes writing assignments, establishes deadlines, and pulls together boilerplate information. In phase II the team drafts the technical approach so an official bid/no-bid decision can be made. If the company decides to bid, the boilerplate and the technical draft are coordinated and developed in phase Ill. Phase IV focuses on editing the successive drafts as they are produced, and phase V involves reviewing the last draft and producing the proposal in final form.

Teachers who consider adopting Technically-Write! must make a crucial decision: Can a technical writing course thrive on a single, elaborate fiction? If the answer is “Yes,” this textbook is well worth considering.

This paper describes the problem of teaching technical writing to engineering students who are convinced they will never need or use the skills. A possible solution to the problem is to use the case method. The case method changes the nature of the traditional classroom environment by reflecting life on the “outside.” This paper describes how the case method is used in one technical writing course and how it changed some students' minds about the importance of a technical writing course in helping them prepare for their professional careers. The ten-week syllabus is described and samples of “before” and “after” are offered.

Research about writing and teaching writing indicates that it involves the simultaneous coordination of hand, eye, and brain. Because of the inseparable nature of thinking and writing, writing need not be preconceived and planned but can be a means for discovering a purpose and inventing a plan. Good writers can be self-made, and taught, as well as born. One learns to write by writing, over a period of time. Trainers should be successful writers (for credibility) and adapt their methods to individual needs and differences.

Students in engineering courses can learn technical writing skills without having to spend large amounts of valuable class time. Given design-project handouts that contain a problem statement and a list of design specifications, students are asked to solve the problem and they are expected to write a report that includes a title page, abstract, table of contents, introduction, body, conclusion, and reference list. Handouts, which are provided at the beginning of the project, are models of the technical reports the students are expected to prepare.

MAKING INFORMATION USABLE is an art rather than a science. Although this art depends heavily on traditional writing skills, successful technical writers know that technology and the marketplace are rapidly changing their profession. Not only are devices, machines, and systems getting more complex and sophisticated, and offering the user more function, but they are also being made available to more people. Manufacturers, therefore, to prevent the rising cost of labor-intensive customer education from wiping out all gains in hardware cost reduction, are relying more and more on do-it-yourself instructional materials packaged and delivered with their products. In fact, the delivery of useful and usable information is now critical to the success of many product offerings.

Writing that observes time-honored conventions of grammar is easy to read and understand. A high school text is usually an adequate reminder of these. Confidence in writing comes also from familiarity with a good, large dictionary and a style handbook; then study and practice make perfect Forty questions test your memory or your “ear” for grammar and punctuation.

A survey of college and university members of the American Society for Engineering Education indicated that about 25 percent are offering technical writing instruction in some type of continuing education program. Formats vary widely and include videotape presentations, classroom instruction, and correspondence. Half of the courses are taught at the undergraduate level; about half of the instructors are in-house or visiting faculty. Major programs are at Clemson Univ., Colorado State Univ., George Washington Univ., Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Univ. of California (Los Angeles), Univ. of Michigan, and Univ. of Wisconsin (Madison). An industrial communication certification program is being planned at California State Univ. (Fullerton).

The “Miss Thistlebottom” of the title is a composite of elementary school English teachers through the ages, the unfailing nemesis of the young individualist; the hobgoblins are the rules she laid down for English composition — some worthy, some archaic, but all to be strictly observed, whether or not they made for real communication. Using this ploy, Mr. Bernstein has produced a breezy exposé, liberally spiced with examples, of the taboos of writing whose relevance often has been lost in antiquity.