This article describes the design and evaluation of a formal writing assessment program within a technical writing course. Our purpose in this base-line study was to evaluate student writing at the conclusion of the course. In implementing this evaluation, we addressed fundamental issues of sound assessment: reliability and validity. Our program may encourage others seeking to assess educational outcomes in technical writing courses.

Twenty years ago I had no idea what a computer was. Ten years ago I knew what computers were, but I had never sat at a terminal. I just assumed that computers were machines used in those “other” disciplines, certainly not in English courses. Today, I teach my technical writing classes in a collaborative computer classroom. The classroom consists of twelve networked computers which my twenty-four students per class use in tandem. Despite my original ignorance of computers, I'm now happily ensconced in a computer classroom. In fact, computers are so important, I've concluded, that teaching writing without the aid of computers does our students a disservice. How did I make such a complete turn-around in attitude? I realized that far from being anathema, computers helped to create a perfect marriage for teaching and writing. First, computers let students write more effectively because computers are compatible with the writing process (writing and rewriting). Next, teaching students to write in a collaborative computer environment prepares our students for business and industry where they will be asked to work on group projects and to communicate electronically. Despite the values of computerizing our instruction, however, computers in the classroom present problems. Do the benefits outweigh the deficits? My answer is yes.

In recent years, a new pedagogical model has arisen in the teaching of technical writing, one of “technical writing as enculturation.” A close examination of this model reveals not only its relation to the workaday world of modern technology but also its roots in classical, especially Ciceronian, rhetoric. Our awareness that the model is both modern and classical may, in fact, enable us to carry its amplification and refinement even further.

Writing assignments for a graduate course in technical writing should develop students' technical backgrounds, their familiarity with reference materials, and their peer editing skills, as well as their writing skills. Also, the assignments should encourage students to write for publication. The three assignments described here—on a scientist, a topic in science, and a topic in technical communication—can help students achieve these objectives. Students write the first two articles for publication in general-audience newspapers or magazines, and the third for the same general audience or for a technical communication conference or journal.

Technical writing will become increasingly important to the nation's engineering interests in the 21st century. To meet a national agenda of competitiveness, writing program administrators must build courses and programs that are sensitive to unique institutional perceptions about writing. By means of a quantitative and qualitative methodology, the present study describes the perceptions of technical writing held by department heads at a technological university. Using a combined survey method and structured interview process, we investigate how department chairs felt about the contents, instruction, and assessment of a technical writing course. We also investigate perceptions about writing products and processes. Based on our experiences with the survey, we call for writing program administrators to study the institutional context for courses and programs in technical writing.

Although research in composition and in instructional design suggests that film and video can be useful pedagogic tools in writing instruction, little research has been directed toward discovering how film and video can be used to teach the kinds of documents produced in professional-writing courses. Because of important similarities in written instructional materials and training videos—the expository and “how-to” tapes being produced for business and industry—training videos can help developing professional writers learn how to write effective instructions. These videos provide writers with a visual model of certain information-processing strategies, cultural themes, and learning objectives important to written instructions. Professional-writing instructors interested in using these training videos will find many sources for appropriate videos, both on and off the university campus.

Harris argues that linguistic theory is useful for solving certain problems encountered in technical writing theory and pedagogy [1]. However, he undermines his purpose by introducing irrelevant distinctions between competing syntactic theories (Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar and Transformational Grammar) and by failing to exploit the full potential of the few applications he mentions. The passive rule is a case in point. It not only constitutes an operational test for identifying passive sentences, it also contributes to the flow of discourse by rearranging both thematic roles (e.g. agent and patient) and given/new information. The passive rule is only one of a class of noun phrase-moving operations that technical writing specialists may find useful.

The visual dimension of meaning is widely accepted in technical communication. But theories (and pedagogies) that direct the making of visual meaning are still under development. A guidelines approach, a design decisions approach, and an information/reader model approach are applied as lenses for viewing the marking of meaning on an instructional page. A case study invokes these approaches to describe the visual markers students employ as they write descriptive and instructional text. Although neither group described marked their texts thoroughly, beginning technical writing majors enrolled in a writing class used fewer illustrations and visual markers than technical majors used. The difference in beginning students' performance may be due to prior reading patterns, since the difference is more pronounced in the descriptions than in the instructions. Thus, the paper proposes a longitudinal approach to sensitizing writing majors to visual cues.

The results of a 1987 survey of seventy Canadian four-year colleges and universities indicate that approximately half of the thirty-five responding institutions offer some form of technical writing. While courses are well-received by students and have stable or growing enrollments, faculty attitudes toward professional writing courses are mixed, varying from enthusiastic to disapproving. The other half of the responding institutions do not offer professional writing courses and have no plans to do so. Faculties at these institutions are generally against establishing such courses because they do not see technical writing as a legitimate subject.

This article first reviews the role of oral and written discourse within social constructionist theory. The author discusses both the differences and the similarities between oral and written discourse and suggests that writers emphasize the similarities rather than the differences since the implicit rules of conversation have much to offer to the technical writer. In order to apply these conversational principles, however, technical writers need to alter their attitudes toward their audiences. The article concludes with an example of how the principles of conversation can be applied to the process of writing instructions.

This bibliography classifies the entire life (1971–1989) of The Journal of Technical Writing and Communication in terms of the following categories: The Profession, Education and Pedagogy, Preparation and Presentation of Technical Information, Research and Theory in Technical Communication, and Application of Technology to Technical Communication. The early bibliographies on which this material draws are the annotated bibliographies compiled by Karen A. Edlefsen (1971–1977), Richard Navarro (1978–1980), and Paul Reese (1981–1984), which were included in the 9:1, 12:1, and 15:4 issues of this journal, respectively. In addition to the materials cited above, this bibliography also includes articles from 1985 to 1989.

Recent studies indicate that scientific research is part of prewriting in the scientific writing process. This article argues that since invention in scientific research is discovery of the unknown of the scientific community and invention in writing is discovery of ideas within existing knowledge, scientific research cannot be part of prewriting in the scientific writing process. Researchers should be aware that inventional heuristics introduced in freshman composition courses, which serve to discover ideas within existing knowledge, are not always applicable in real-life situations where scientific writing occurs, because the content of discourse is sometimes given in these situations.

In taking “existing practice” in the workplace as their standard, technical and professional writing courses risk leaving students with the impression that whatever is done and is rhetorically effective is right. One way of countering the sophistry of this tendency is to raise questions about the ethics of common but suspect rhetorical practices. This article examines the ethics of one such practice: fostering false inference. Out of H. Paul Grice's analysis of how participants in a conversation correctly interpret what is only implied, it evolves a framework for judging the fostering of false inference. The article presents and discusses a hypothetical case in which a firm's proposal seems intended to mislead, while actually stating nothing that is not literally true.

Computers in technical writing classes are growing in popularity because professionals increasingly use computers for writing reports and because the computer can aid in producing more visually sophisticated documents. Yet, we do not know what computer experience students bring with them to the computer classroom, a lack of knowledge that makes the task of integrating the computers into the classroom more cumbersome. This article presents the results of a survey of Purdue University students' knowledge of, use of, and attitudes toward computers as they enter the technical writing class. It contrasts the technical students with upper division humanities students and draws conclusions about the documentation requirements and the appropriate computer use goals for the Purdue students surveyed. Finally, suggestions are made about how to use a survey of this type.

Technical writing students often misuse models given them for their writing assignments because they fail to distinguish between model and example and between different kinds of models. The results of this misuse are texts that contain inappropriate material and are unfit for their intended audiences. The approach to writing taken by these students is too narrow and rigid. This article details the problem and defines the models used in writing as partially abstract, analogous representations of social codifications of linguistic experience. Since models are social artifacts shared by both writers and readers, a clearer understanding of them should help writers produce texts appropriate for their audiences while giving the writers greater rhetorical flexibility.

Theoretical studies in scientific and technical communication have begun to explore what they call discourse communities in the sciences and engineering on grounds that these communities provide the norms and practices for communication in these fields. The theoretical literature on which these studies are based develops two views of what a discourse community might be, an institutional and a social view. The first of these views has been the more influential, but both views may and should be brought to the study and the pedagogy of scientific and technical communication.

Linguistics has been largely misunderstood in writing pedagogy. After Chomsky's revolution, it was widely touted as a panacea; now it is widely flogged as a pariah. Both attitudes are extreme. It has a number of applications in the writing classroom, and it is particularly ripe for technical writing students, who have more sophistication with formalism than their humanities counterparts. Moreover, although few scholars outside of linguistics are aware of it, Transformational Grammar is virtually obsolete; most grammatical models are organized around principled aversions to the transformation, and even Chomsky has little use for his most famous innovation these days. Among the more recent developments is Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, a model with distinct formal and pedagogical advantages over Chomsky's early transformational work.

Findings from a comparison of undergraduate and on-the-job writers recommend some changes in traditional methods of teaching technical writing in college. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and “competent” writers in business and industry were given the same composing task. The writing of the employees showed telling and sometimes unexpected differences in a wide variety of areas, in length, vocabulary, organization, specificity, coherence, sentence formation, and surface error. Implied is increased attention to several general writing skills: compression of meaning, fluency of expression, efficiency in techniques of coherence, expandability of organization and syntax, and rhetorical maneuverability and adaptability.

A review of the current literature suggests that the concept of purpose has not received sufficient theoretical or pedagogical attention. In this article, theoretical depth is provided by a discussion of four components of purpose: purpose as associated with discourse types, purpose from the writer's viewpoint, purpose as it relates to situation, and purpose from the reader's viewpoint. Research is cited, and examples from computer documentation are used to illustrate each component. Cooperation and conflict among components are examined in a sample document, and classroom applications are discussed.

A review of recent research in the field of technical writing and communication indicated that although the methodologies employed were sound, they were not fully articulated. An attempt to use a double-blind research design in the writing classroom by dividing the students into competing teams that reviewed each other's work led to some interesting reactions by the students as well as to some the need to introduce more open-ended assignments in our classrooms. Asking our students to come up with competing solutions to the same problem and requiring them to design means of testing their effectiveness can develop their abilities in critical thinking and group dynamics. At the same time this approach will allow teachers to pursue their own research on various problems in technical communication. The result is a unit which has pedagogical effectiveness and suggests new directions for writing research.

The technological marvel of word processing should greatly improve teaching effectiveness in the writing class, but this beneficial technology also brings its potential dark side: unethical activity, from plagiarism to the manipulation of a writer's words and, potentially, thoughts. Naive computer users may view the machine as a passive provider of electronic games, not realizing its potential for questionable activities. Teachers and business professionals must become aware of how this technological marvel could be misused.

As communication teachers attempting to bridge the gap between school and industry, we need to give students a true understanding of what it means to be a professional. We may be spending too much time trying to get them to write and speak like professionals without also imbuing them with sufficient understanding of their responsibilities to behave as professionals. Students need to be practiced in the communication and decision-making situations they will encounter in their workplaces. These decisions involve ethical reasoning as well as technical problem solving. Teaching students to appreciate the consequences of their recommendations, through the use of fault-trees and cost/benefit analyses in realistic simulations, effectively bridges the gap between the classroom and boardroom. A sample situation is explained and analyzed for its use in any technical communications class.

Although engineering departments were dissatisfied with early twentieth-century technical writing teaching methods, those methods were not simply a result of “anti-science” attitudes. In fact, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century composition teachers tried to accommodate the influx of applied science students by teaching correctness and clarity of style and stressing the expository modes of writing. Emphasis on “clarity” was a legacy of rhetoricians like Hugh Blair of the eighteenth century. Emphasis on expository modes was a legacy of the nineteenth-century rhetoricians' interest in the inductive methodology of “pure” science, a method which implied invention by “observation” and made conclusions “self-evident”: argument was unnecessary since observations and methods only need to be explained to “convince.” Applied science departments were, in reality, dissatisfied with teaching methods based on “pure” rather than “applied” science methodology.

The current job market favors young technical writers who are skilled in the way of the computer both as a subject of writing and as a production tool. In the technical writing classroom students can be exposed to this important technology through assignments that include computerized instruction, word processing, text analysis, artificial intelligence, and communications.

The author draws upon experience in software publishing and in the composition classroom to indicate what challenges confront new technical writers in software writing positions. The paper covers four topics: 1) Descriptions of software writing projects which indicate that writers must know how to use options such as motion, color, reader interaction, and individualization; 2) Writing challenges facing students—orienting readers, interaction technique, succinctness, and pace; 3) Print/software publishing differences which include: the need for programming or authoring systems, the planning and implementation of computer options and mechanical detail, the influence of graphics on the writing, the use of a top/down approach, the use of necessary field tests, and the early involvement of publishers; and 4) A software writing exercise requiring students to use the top/down approach and to write text to accompany the graphics.

Some theoreticians and practitioners view editing as a superficial task, often no more than the mindless following of a set of prescriptive rules for grammar, syntax, and style. In addition, the editor-author relationship is typically perceived as an interaction between an editor and words. However, drawing upon rhetoric and cognitive psychology, I argue in this article for the complexity and importance of the editing process and the writer-editor relationship. This perspective is tentatively supported by a study of the revising and editing patterns of professional and experienced writers. The study suggests that revising and editing may be equally complex tasks. Further, the complexity increases if editors and authors discuss their changes as opposed to legislating them. Several methods for imparting this perspective and related knowledge to students are discussed.

Despite the fact that technical writers try to maintain an objective outlook, they cannot ignore the psychological states of consciousness that influence their writing. Arthur J. Deikman's theory of bimodal consciousness outlines two psychological states: active and emotive (or receptive). Writers must maintain a balance between the receptive state and the active, striving state to prevent writer's block and to enhance creativity, just as scientists balance mathematical (i.e., lexical or verbal) thinking with physics-related thinking. This article describes Deikman's model and shows its application in the technical writing classroom.

Proponents of computerized text-analysis (CTA) systems like Bell Laboratories' Writer's Workbench contend that the computer's analysis of a text's surface features can help students become better writers and editors. Several colleges and universities have already integrated the new technology into their writing programs, and others will consider doing so in the future. Teachers of technical writing, however, ought to investigate carefully the capabilities and limitations of CTA before applying it to the technical writing classroom. Not even the most sophisticated of today's computers can detect the basic grammar and punctuation errors that bedevil student writers. Moreover, the computer's evaluation of a text's readability and style is untrustworthy and lacks a sound theoretical and pedagogical foundation; indeed, the machine's quantitative-based analysis of writing style might do some students more harm than good. Finally, there is no empirical evidence that CTA helps students become better writers.

This bibliography contains seventy-five articles published in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication from 1981 through 1984 in the categories of The Profession, Education and Pedagogy, Preparation and Presentation of Technical Information, Applied Theory in Technical Communication, and Application of Technology to Technical Communication.

This article offers a pedagogical sequence for teaching the development of a thesis for the research report. The unit presented introduces students to a heuristic of research and shows students how to apply research techniques. The sequence elucidates the steps and loops through which a researcher passes in moving from initial topic to completed thesis. The article argues that neither research nor written report can work without a (hypo)thesis. Arguing against the currently taught inductionist models of research, it adopts Karl Popper's model of research by conjecture and refutation. The process of conjecture and refutation is just as valid for library-based research as it is for original scientific research. The pedagogical sequence, then, shows students how to develop conjectures and how to use literature to refute or modify them in the development of a final thesis for the research report.

The new technical editor, especially a journal editor, is faced with an immense task. He can consult a vast collection of reference books to help him master the mechanics of editing, learn the system of publication, and improve his writing skills. However, no reference book tells him the thing he needs most: how to master the art of successful communication and interaction with authors, many of whom he will meet only through letters or telephone calls. The technical editor almost always depends on authors for his livelihood, since they submit the original manuscripts and research reports which he turns into the final product. The interaction between writers and editors often leaves both with bad feelings. To help the new technical editor prevent this, eleven guidelines for developing a good style of communication are presented. The goal of these guidelines is to make the editorial process satisfying and pleasant for all concerned.

This article presents results of a survey of 150 engineering colleges in the United States regarding writing courses in their curricula. The results indicate that a great majority of responding colleges include writing courses in their curricula. These courses are at both the freshman and upperclass level, may be either required or recommended, and are usually taught by faculty from English or Communication departments outside the college. The results also show that writing courses are considered successful and extremely important by respondents.

Medical and scientific writing have traditionally occasioned debate. The earliest critics of scientific language were harsh because they were promoting a plain style of writing free from rhetorical embellishment, not because they questioned the writing ability of those they censured. Writing and language were central parts of scientific inquiry. Modern critics are likewise frequently harsh and derisive, but they have lost sight of the integrated approach to language and science that their predecessors had. This article examines three texts published within the last ten years that seem to reverse some trends in medical writing. Tapping non-scientific fields from philology to aesthetics to composition theory, these texts suggest ways in which the humanities can be reintegrated with the study of medical and scientific writing.

Employers must frequently choose between hiring a professional writer or a technician to communicate high technology to the lay public. The professional writer may well be the better choice. Writers can develop their technical writing skills to meet this challenge by practicing Technical Communication Competency, by standardizing technical objectives, by learning to write readable and interesting technical documents, and by requesting diagrams that clearly show functions and relationships. At the same time, writers must keep up with the rapid changes in technology if they want to continue providing a valuable link between the lay public and this technology.

Conceptual and empirical research were combined to develop information concerning the kinds of papers appropriate for lower-division technical writing in various kinds of institutions: the community college, the technical institute, the four-year college or small university, and the multi-purpose university. Relationships were studied between types of papers rated highly appropriate by teachers of technical writing and types of institutions as well as instructional aims. Also studied were those teachers' suggestions for specialized kinds of papers. The author discusses the implications of this research for determining instructional aims of lower-division technical writing courses in four-year institutions.

Both the instructor and student of technical writing benefit from an individual conference held in the instructor's office. Scheduled at the beginning of the academic semester, these structured conferences allow for the exchange of information which may not surface in the traditional classroom setting.

We have developed a method of using simple, commercially available computer simulations to create productive writing cases. Students working with the simulations easily understand their data, audience, and objectives, and they revise intelligently and successfully. We have used The Farm Game, simulating frontier farming in Nebraska, Fur Trader, simulating the life of a Canadian courier du bois, Hamurabi, simulating government problems in a Sumerian city state, King, simulating economic decisions on a Caribbean island, and Stock Market, simulating trading of amplified stocks. We are expanding our library of programs, and we will be happy to serve as a clearinghouse for exchanges of simulations useful to writing teachers.

The use of quirk topics can help solve one of the technical writing instructor's hardest problems: selection of a challenging topic. A quirk topic derives from some paradox of science or technology which, upon reflection, calls for thought. The quirk topic challenges the technical writing student to focus on the reader, gather data, and interpret and report data convincingly. This article explains the use of quirk topics, suggests twenty such topics, and explains how to solve problems of their use.

It has long been recognized that one man's problems are another man's opportunities. But, whether one thinks of solving problems or exploiting opportunities, one must still apply skills and competencies in a systematic and clear manner. How to develop student skills and competencies as these relate to thinking systematically as a prerequisite to clarity of self-expression is the topic of this paper. To succeed in this task, departments of business and English must work together to enhance business students' thinking and writing skills. The student studying courses in his major area needs the English professor to guide him through a systematic problem-solving approach to report writing. Here the College of Business and the College of Arts and Science can benefit by requiring business majors to complete a technical professional writing course through the English Department which uses experiential learning as the focal point in report writing. The result is that the student writes in and studies an area of interest, but learns to apply the problem-solving approach to writing as he concentrates on a typical problem in the field of business. Students place a high value on this type of learning, and the two disciplines work well together in accomplishing their goals.

Rhetoric teachers often defer responsibility for technical-problem treatment to either the technical student or the technical instructor. But these technical persons are trained largely in academic problems and treatments, which are shown to differ profoundly from their professional counterparts. For engineering students are traditionally trained in a discipline dissociated from a professional base at its very origins, enrolled in a science-oriented curriculum, and taught by technical instructors lacking professional experience. Rhetoric instructors should not, therefore, consider engineering students experts in the articulation and treatment of typical problems addressed by professionals. This paper describes representative student difficulties in the selection and treatment of technical problems in simulated professional reports. Based on results obtained with questionnaires and in-depth interviews, these difficulties are traced to the use of academic materials as sources. Representative case histories are used to illustrate typical student pitfalls in adapting academic source materials. Pedagogical suggestions are offered.

The problem of this study was to identify the report writing practices of supervisory banking personnel and to determine the topical areas which should be emphasized in a business report writing course. A questionnaire was administered to 136 supervisory personnel attending the Louisiana Banking School for Supervisory Training at Louisiana State University. The results of this study indicated that writing effective reports is a common requirement for banking supervisors.

The three technical writing workshops a colleague and I gave to Idaho eligibility examiners were especially challenging because of the discrepancy in education and writing ability within each group — as well as our own initial ignorance of what eligibility examiners do and write. The workshops gradually improved as we modified our material based on our increased knowledge of the examiners and their work, became increasingly problem oriented in our approach, and effectively implemented our inductive pedagogy.

Teaching technical writing to non-native speakers of English is complicated by their special needs. Central to the discussion is the idea that expository writing ought to be a key element of any program purporting to teach English. The nature of proper preparatory training is discussed with specific reference to the language groups American trainers are likely to encounter working in the U.S. or abroad. The justification for specific practices is discussed and should enable instructors to develop further strategies for training. Once the preparatory work is completed, effective technical writing instruction for non-native trainees requires modification of a good program for native speakers. Training is most effective if material is presented in culturally familiar and intellectually compatible ways.

This article traces the history of technical writing instruction in American colleges, concentrating on the major figures in technical writing instruction, the most important textbooks, the forces that shaped courses in technical writing during the period 1900–1980, and the refinements and improvements in teaching and materials that led to the current growth and success of technical writing courses.

The laboratory notebook, traditionally a primary document in patent applications, has recently developed additional importance in the wake of federal regulations designed to insure more stringent record-keeping in the testing of drugs. Compression of procedural detail in published reports to save journal space has also changed the function of the laboratory notebook, which now serves as a receptacle for detailed information omitted from published accounts. These recent developments in laboratory notebooks are discussed with application to possible technical writing assignments.

Government writing has often been called gobbledygook—vague, windy, and pretentious prose thrust on unwilling readers [1]. Nowhere, it seems would a writing course hold such rich promise as in a state or a federal agency. While many of these programs have been conducted [2], there is little in print on designing them or on dealing with the management or course development problems unique to them.1 This case study will document the effort to design and conduct such an in-house writing program. It will provide resource materials and strategies for those who, in the future, will be faced with developing and delivering such courses.

A brief overview of methods relating language education to psychological theories and models is provided. Strengths and weaknesses of behaviorist and mentalist approaches are surveyed, followed by an outline of a recently developing cognitive-process approach. The approach is then illustrated with an individual case study from the University of Florida writing program, with special consideration of the concerns of technical writing on the topic of automobile repair instructions. It is argued that specific tendencies carry over from speech habits that are partly supportive and partly contrary to success in learning the skills of technical writing. Consequently, appropriate training should be able to alleviate the contrary tendencies, provided we take into account the operations of writing.

This annotated bibliography includes all articles published in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 1978–1980. The articles are divided into the following categories: 1) The Profession, 2) Education and Pedagogy, 3) Preparation and Presentation of Technical Information, and 4) Applied Theory in Technical Communication.