In response to a mail survey of the career opportunities they offer teachers of technical writing, twenty-four programs that prepare students for careers as technical writers and editors indicated that their technical writing faculty enjoy about the same teaching loads, salaries, and chances for promotion and tenure as do equally qualified and experienced teachers of literature at their schools. The programs also indicated that they have a growing number of openings on their faculties for teachers of technical writing. Finally, the programs ranked and rated seventeen qualifications that might be offered by applicants for those positions; the most significant conclusion drawn from the rankings and ratings is that the programs look more favorably upon experience — both in teaching and in working as a technical writer or editor — than they do upon formal study of technical writing or the teaching of it.

A number of points for improving writing and speaking necessary for the world's work are discussed. One of these is the expansion of technical writing courses for managers, administrators, and company officials. Another point is concerned with the fact that most technical writing texts focus too much upon engineers and too little upon scientists. A third point deals with the necessity for paying more attention to graduate and professional programs. Other suggestions range through traditional English graduate programs, ways to reward effective technical writing teaching, emphasis on professionalism, and allocation of funding for the improvement of technical writing teaching. The author closes with a call for definite action.

There is essentially no teacher training for technical writing overseas. Western Europe follows United Kingdom practices because English is the primary scientific and technical language and the U.K.'s ISTC has assumed leadership on the continent. In the U.K., teachers are primarily concerned with preparing students for the external examinations given by the City and Guilds for certification of technical writers; elaborate teacher-training programs are unnecessary for this. Canada has not yet expanded course offerings sufficiently to create a demand for teachers of technical writing. Australia has this year decided to implement the U.K. procedure. While all nations train their scientists, en passant, to communicate in their own disciplines, none trains teachers of technical writing specifically.

There are two opposing views towards technical writing courses and towards teachers of technical writing: one favorable, the other disdainful. Those who disdain technical writing seem to believe that it: 1) imposes restrictive and arbitrary forms upon creative individuals, 2) involves only the accumulation of factual evidence, 3) deals with things, rather than with people, and 4) is, like other practical arts, a second-class activity. The first three beliefs are mistaken, and it can be argued that the dissemination of technical and scientific information is just as humanistic as artistic writing.

The special nature of technical writing is seen in the emphasis on efficient information transmission. Rather than relying on the classic concept of information as the probability of items in a series, the article discusses information value with respect to reader background and to the distribution of “new” information (not known to the reader, or not focused) and “old” (known, presupposed, mentioned) information. It is argued that this perspective is best suited for the presentation of grammar in the teaching of technical writing, with special regard for the focusing techniques of written as opposed to spoken English; examples are provided.

A student's honest complaint challenges the relevance of teaching technical writing. He assumes that academic and business criteria have little to do with each other. However, an examination of academic statistics and the expectations of business undercuts his assumption.

Because today's emphasis on equal opportunity employment has created a multiethnic business community, every advanced business communications course should include a unit on transracial communication. Arthur L. Smith's Transracial Communication is a useful text for such a three-week unit [1]. Supplemented with several additional articles, it provides material for individual projects and for class discussions on Black dialect, slang, and body language; symbolic imperialism in America; and interracial credibility blunders. While participating students will not immediately become skilled transracial communicators, they will become more aware of the assumptions underlying their words and less likely to reveal ethnocentrism in their business communications.

Traditional courses and course-books for teaching English as a foreign language are often too general and grammar-orientated for students of technology from overseas. The students are well motivated for learning how to communicate effectively within their technical contexts. To harness their enthusiasm, courses on communication skills need to emphasize functions as well as forms of language.

Addressing the professional communicator, the technical writing teacher and the interested student, this article discusses Benjamin Franklin's major contributions to the development of technical communication. While the article centers on Franklin's technical writing style as a model for today's technical communicator, it also outlines Franklin's philosophy of technical communication and his incisive views of the scientist's role in society.

The author of this article has observed the needs of the manual writer from two viewpoints, that of the technical writing teacher and that of the consultant to industry. He offers several suggestions for helping the manual writer through attention to resource materials, planning of courses, organization, and style and mechanics.

Learning to write, like learning to juggle, requires practice. Writing places the highest priority on thinking. The writer must decide not only the form his writing will take, but also the viewpoint from which he sees his material. The text Worlds in the Making provides examples of ways authors “grok,” or assimilate all aspects of a problem. Other aids to students are the handbook and the teacher, not Big Nurse nor a wolf, but rather a human being, whose response is the chief thing offered. Students are not rabbits; they are creative human beings, who can learn to write. In this article, the author addresses her students and lays down some fundamentals of writing and teaching.

For the purpose of continually improving an English teacher training program, an attempt was made to research the expected competencies of reading instructors in relation to technical report writers. Interviews were conducted with those involved in the teaching of technical report writing. The interviews reflected very little familiarity with reading instruction at the college level. The results were coupled with current research findings on training and duties of college reading instructors. This suggested a possible strategy for improving services to technical report writing students.

The business or technical writing teacher can mitigate against his pragmatic students' recalcitrance toward language studies by pointing out the utility of knowing how to write well. However, rather than turning to hackneyed arguments or to literary evidence, he can motivate students more effectively by turning to compelling testimonials from leaders in business and industry, to appropriate personal experiences, and to stimulating classroom strategies that emphasize the importance of language ability in career, social, and civic aspirations. The lively use of such readily available resources can improve student attitude toward the course and should thus improve student performance.

The traditional instruction of technical report writing leans heavily on the conventions of English grammar and on principles advocated by grammarians, journalists, and literature scholars. The effect has been so strong—particularly in North America—that the word “technical” in technical writer, technical writing, and technical reports has literally become almost meaningless. This article discusses a few important differences between technical and nontechnical writing. It also explains some shortcomings of the traditional instruction and suggests methods of improvement.

In the fall of 1972, the Department of Humanities of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan adopted a lecture-recitation format for its required course in scientific and technical communication. The recitations were conducted by graduate student teaching assistants of which I was one. Though I found my educational background, which was in electrical engineering, to be an advantage rather than a disadvantage in many ways, there were certain aspects of the department, the course, and the teaching techniques of my colleagues that I did not originally anticipate. This article presents some of these.

There are estimated to be 600–800 Ph.D. psychologists teaching in today's Colleges of Business Administration (CBA). These behavioralists' influences may account for the rapid emergence of “communication theory” in both CBA curricula and business communication texts. This article suggests an approach that can be useful to those faculty teaching “communication theory” as a new experience and those experienced faculty who may consider it “food for thought.” A case method relating “communication theory” to the students' real world and a multiple-choice testing procedure that forms a theoretical base on which students can build are presented and analyzed.

This paper discusses some of the main reasons for the weakness of much technical writing. It suggests that in teaching college-level students in science and engineering curricula the writing teacher should focus mainly on those weak areas, many of which are neglected in high school English courses or in traditional freshman English. If scientific and technical writers can be taught to make a rigorous intellectual analysis of their writing and can be steered away from simplistic and simple-minded formulas they will come to have enough respect for writing as an intellectual discipline that they can be motivated to bring about actual improvement in their written work.

The schism between theory and practice is reflected in English studies. British technological universities have attempted to meet the needs of industry in technical fields. Economic and academic pressures often make this difficult. A degree in modern English studies is planned which attempts to combine traditional academic values and functional needs. A new approach to rhetoric combining linguistic and critical disciplines with practical skills in communication can combine liberal and vocational needs. The course content of the degree and the teaching approach is related to the ethos of a technological university.

This paper describes an industrial training program designed to bring continuing engineering educational programs to several thousand engineers distributed in plants over a wide geographical area on a flexible time schedule, using a practicing engineer's time effectively and efficiently while utilizing good teaching and learning techniques. Using video tape as the teaching media and supplementing this with textbooks, especially developed studying guide materials, visual aids designed for TV presentations, and an associate instructor at the plant location to act in a resource capacity, a successful engineering personnel educational program has been developed economically that can be used at any plant location. Other industries could utilize the techniques described to bring quality engineering-updating programs to the majority of their engineers, as could universities, to take graduate-level programs to locations distant from the campus at a time convenient to the engineers involved.

A technique is presented for the analysis of technical publications by comparison—with special regard to factors influenced by intended audience and professional category of author (i.e., scientist-engineer or writer). Writing style and use of graphics are important considerations; “readability” may be assessed. The technique is illustrated with an analysis of two articles on the same subject from different publications. Although the technique is intended chiefly as a teaching tool, some of the principles involved may be useful to others interested in judging the character of publications in a field, perhaps to help select the most suitable outlet for an article or to aid in designing a paper for a specific publication.

Students are selected by a diagnostic essay. They begin simply, by completing job application forms, personal resumes, and letters of application, tasks which require concise expression of facts, which reveal much about the students' backgrounds, and which they must use to get a job. Then they move to the daily writing problems an engineer faces. In every class they also practice exercises that correct the many errors caused by the change from their native language into English.

This author states that early man's fears and distrust of fellow man are basic phenomena, which he postulates were caused by lack of communication—a complex process requiring intelligence and understanding. Methods of classroom communication determine the amount of learning by students. Audiovisual materials used in conjunction with proven teaching methods interact with perceptor sensory mechanisms through which learning is accomplished. Various kinds of audiovisual aids are compared and assessed: chalkboards, the overhead projector and programmed learning are discussed at length but author states much research is still needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

In his paper, “Motivating Engineering Students to Publish,” Dr. Herman A. Estrin describes the experiences that he has had in teaching engineering students to write, and particularly to write publishable material. This professional approach to writing has paid off, as Mr. Millard's article demonstrates.

His knowledge of rhetorical principles enables the English teacher to criticize the content as well as the form of a technical report because the report is a verbal model of an object, process, or product. This relationship between content and rhetoric means that the English teacher can base his evaluation of the written work of science and engineering students on these three axioms: Axiom I. Poor rhetoric signals poor technical knowledge. Axiom II. Poor rhetoric manifests unscientific thinking. Axiom III. Poor rhetoric demonstrates a lack of concern for engineering values.

Technical writing is a discipline with clear limitations in both language and ideology. These limits pose a special problem for the teacher, since he must keep his audience interested in a subject which does not permit a normal range of self-expression on either scientific or humanistic topics. A consequence of this classroom dilemma is that technical writing instructors tend to dwell at length upon the value of simple generalizations and also capitalize heavily upon the comic effects of bad writing. The vices of “easy generalities” and “easy comedy” must first be understood in order to be avoided.

Of the two kinds of editors, production and technical, it is the technical editor who has the responsibility to educate writers as well as readers. By teaching his clients better ways to express themselves, he facilitates communication across disciplinary lines. This article argues for elevating the editorial function and presents means to that end. It suggests ways to eliminate the worrisome details of writing so that an author can concentrate on substance.

A good many teachers of technical writing are guilty of blindly following tradition and convention in teaching students to rely on the outline as an organizing device, in categorically condemning the passive voice, in magnifying the importance of form and format, and in insisting on a set of inflexible rules for grammar and style that ignore widespread usage. Implicit in the attack on shibboleths is a plea for honest pragmatism in determining effectiveness in technical writing.