Sophistic ethics in the technical writing classroom: Teaching nomos,deliberation, and action

Drawing on arguments by Carolyn Miller, Steven Katz, and others, this essay claims that teaching ethics is particularly important to technical writing. Next, the essay outlines a classical, sophistic approach to ethics based on the theories and pedagogies of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Isocrates. This sophistic approach emphasizes the Greek concept of nomos, internal and external deliberation, and responsible action or articulation. The final section of the essay discusses possible problems and pedagogical applications of sophistic ethics in the contemporary technical writing classroom.     

Children writing: Multimodality and assessment in the writing classroom

Multimedia has had a widely recognised impact on society, but it is still under‐represented in the literacy pedagogies of many schools. This may relate to the way we view assessment for literacy, which is still almost wholly monomodal. Students assessed at a low level as producers of verbal text may respond positively when working multimodally, but the only assessment instruments we have do not reveal this. In a class of 26 ten‐year‐olds in Victoria, Australia, with rich access to computers, five children performed at a very low level when working with verbal expression only, but responded remarkably when invited to work multimodally. A programme of text production was monitored and the results analysed, progressing from handwritten monomodal work, through stages of multimodality to full multimodal expression. The results suggest strongly that some children need multimodal scaffolding in order to communicate complex ideas effectively. This, however, requires an acceptance of multimodal texts as part of the primary literacy curriculum. It is therefore suggested that assessment of multimodal composition, both narrative and other texts, should be developed to help teachers accept the value of introducing multimodal literacies into the classroom.     

应用文写作高效课堂之我见

应用文写作课,主要是培养学生借助应有写作解决实际问题的能力。以高效课堂评价为切入点,着重探讨了应用文写作高效课堂应注意的几个问题,并在此基础上提出了自己的一些见解,以期对应用文写作教学质量的提高提供参考。     

Responding to technical writing in an introductory engineering class: The role of genre and discipline

A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first‐year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy.     

Assessment for Learning in the writing classroom: an incomplete realisation

An Observation Guide, designed to help New Zealand teachers identify areas of teaching strength and aspects for development, was developed as part of a wider project. In the second phase of this project, 18 middle school teachers used the Guide to gather and record evidence as they participated in seven rounds of reciprocal peer observation and feedback during writing lessons with Grades 6–8 students. We report here on data from round 6 observations about the assessment for learning (AfL) strategies reported as evident in teachers’ practices, how these strategies were implemented and potential gaps in practice. AfL has at its heart a core of interdependent strategies that collectively contribute to the development of autonomous, self-regulating learners and quality learning. While the middle school teachers shared goals for learning and communicated what counted as successful achievement to students, they appeared to struggle when articulating goals in terms of literacy learning and conveying the substantive aspects and quality expected in students’ writing. In addition, despite AfL's promotion of learner autonomy, few teachers openly afforded students focused opportunities to take a meaningful role in their learning through the appraisal of their own and peers’ writing and the joint construction of feedback. As such, teachers’ AfL practice in the writing classroom failed to realise its full potential. It is argued that the promise of AfL can only be reached when strategies are enacted in ways that reflect its unitary nature, promote quality outcomes and give students a central role in their learning.     

Structured document processors: Implications for technical writing

Structured Document Processors (SDPs) guide and control composing processes for specialized writing, such as procedures and regulations. SDPs integrate word processors and various writing aids in a controlled writing environment that prompts writers for particular kinds of information, automatically formats document design features, and provides context‐sensitive help on how to write within the required document structures. This article describes a range of SDPs now used in industry, and explores their implications for the practice and teaching of technical writing.     

英语专业学生的翻转课堂行动研究——以写作课为例

翻转课堂也即颠倒课堂,通过把老师全程讲课转化为课前学生看视频自学再来课堂上讨论学习的方式,实现了对传统教学模式的革新。整个教学设计仍有不足之处,希望在后面的教学教研中不断改进,以期为高校英语教学改革提供借鉴。     

Classical rhetoric and the teaching of technical writing

Classical rhetoric's ability to inform and empower the teaching of technical writing has been for the most part ignored in technical writing textbooks. This absence is curious, given the enormous body of scholarly material affirming classical rhetoric's usefulness for that purpose. While teachers wait for textbooks with explicitly classical roots, three key concepts can provide the basic framework for incorporating classical rhetorical theory into contemporary technical writing studies.     

Challenger and the social contingency of meaning: Two lessons for the technical communication classroom

In my technical writing class, I examine two “meanings” from the Challenger disaster to illustrate the social contingency of meaning even in science and technology. These instances are the “anomalous” charring of the O‐rings and the reconceptualized assumption of flightworthiness the night before the launch. The social contingency of these meanings shows that the “object” of technical communication is not the material object as a pre‐existent isolate but in its social interpretation, significance, and meaning. Ultimately, technical communication is about people communicating about and to the interests of other people.     

应用文“大写作”教育思想下的课堂组织艺术

作者在应用文写作教育中实施大写作教育思想,实施主体性教学,使课堂学习过程艺术化,培养学生拥有优质的自我形象认识,成为积极地社会人。对大写作教育思想下课堂教学中如何来落实素质教育,并使它成为一种可操作性的教学活动,进行较为深入地探讨,并做研究总结,是十分必要的。     

Writing like writers in the classroom: free writing and formal constraint

This paper considers how ‘free writing’, derived from the automatic writing of the surrealists, can be used with students in writing poetry in order to emulate the successful practice of established writers. The paper considers how form can be taught, specifically line breaks and stanza breaks, both in relation to free writing and in relation to drafting, and argues that drafting should be considered an extension of the creative act of writing rather than as something which is done afterwards ‘to’ preexisting work.     

The technical adequacy of curriculum-based writing measures with English learners

The purpose of this study was to examine the validity and reliability of Curriculum-Based Measures in writing for English learners. Participants were 36 high school English learners with moderate to high levels of English language proficiency. Predictor variables were type of writing prompt (picture, narrative, and expository), time (3, 5, and 7 min), and scoring procedure (words written, words spelled correctly, correct word sequences, correct minus incorrect word sequences). Criterion variables were teacher ratings of writing performance and student performance on the Test of Written Language-III, the writing subtest of the Test of Emerging Academic English, and the Minnesota state writing test. Results supported the validity and reliability of a 5 to 7-min writing sample written in response to a narrative or picture prompt and scored for percent of correct word sequences, correct minus incorrect word sequences, or words written plus correct minus incorrect word sequences.     

课堂生态环境中师生互动对英语写作的积极作用

教育生态学是利用生态学的方法和原则来研究教育的一门边缘学科。从生态学的观点来讲,课堂也是一个生态环境,在课堂这个生态环境中,它能否平衡发展,关系着教学效果的好坏。用生态学原理来分析和研究教育学的问题是一种新的思维方式。     

Capturing classroom context: The observation system as lens for assessment

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, 1988, New Orleans.     

The Modes of Visual Rhetoric: Circulating Memes as Expressions

The speed, scale, and shape of digital circulation pose numerous challenges for rhetorical analysis that seeks to analyze image-texts in context. This paper develops a framework for the rhetorical analysis of Internet memes through the concept of modes. Analyzing memes requires a shift in focus from the actual (texts and contexts) to the virtual (the capacities for affect and affection structuring an encounter). What makes such memes recognizable and, hence, circulable is a shared, virtual mode structuring all subsequent actualizations. The examination of Fail/Win demonstrates that the analysis of modes can be assisted by a number of rhetorical concepts as long as modes are understood as collective, emergent expressions. It also shows that the Fail/Win mode is better understood not as the representation of specific rhetors but, instead, as an expression of control society that advances both a dystopian view of humans reduced to performing rote operations and a utopian, ideological gesture promising that success remains possible nevertheless.