Undistributing Work Through Writing: How Technical Writers Manage Texts in Complex Information Environments

This article presents findings from a recent study of mediated writing in a technical writing firm to examine distributed work conditions and how they affect the practices of individual technical writers. Distribution of labor, texts, and technologies for producing documentation creates complex information environments that writers must negotiate. In doing so, they practice two kinds of expertise central to technical writing as a profession—technological and rhetorical skill. This article examines how those skills are affected by distributed work.     

Technical Communication and the Role of the Public Intellectual: A Community HIV-Prevention Case Study

This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.     

Technical Communication and the Role of the Public Intellectual: A Community HIV-Prevention Case Study

This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.     

Research leadership in writing for publication: A theoretical framework

Academics experience difficulty in managing competing tasks, particularly in relation to writing for publication. In a study conducted on a writing retreat, analysis of data obtained from academic writers revealed that facilitative leadership provided at a writing retreat was central to managing task complexity and writing‐related anxiety. The question remains, however, about how this leadership can be modelled in campus settings in order to continue to support academics in managing the complexity of their multiple roles as teachers, researchers and writers, beyond purely technical‐rational approaches. This article outlines one approach to answering this question: it explains how containment theory was used to shed light on the leadership role at the writing retreat, and it proposes a model—strategic engagement—for the leadership role in writing for publication in campus settings.     

Writing is more than ‘exciting’: equipping primary children to become reflective writers

This article describes work undertaken as part of a partnership programme initiated to encourage collaborative research between teachers and university tutors. In the Teaching Reading and Writing Links project (TRAWL) primary school teachers, working as research partners, explored ways of developing children as reflective writers. The research group wanted to know whether, through examining how texts are crafted by expert writers during literacy sessions, children might be encouraged to pay more attention to compositional rather than secretarial aspects of narrative writing during writing workshops. The overall writing achievement of 338 children was monitored over one school year and narrative writing from 60 case study children was evaluated at the beginning and end of the research period. In this article the impact on achievement is illustrated, some examples of writing are analysed and evidence of development in children's metacognition and confidence as writers is discussed.     

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.     

Power, Language, and Professional Choices: A Hermeneutic Approach to Teaching Technical Communication

This article argues that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer provides a useful theoretical framework from which to discuss ethical issues in the technical communication classroom. The article analyzes a previously published case study to demonstrate how hermeneutics can shed light on the ways that writers can be unconscious of ethical problems in their own writing. Finally, some suggestions for pedagogical applications are presented.     

Truthful Fictions: How Dreams Can Help You Write

This article makes a case for recording and using dreams in the teaching of writing. Calling on some well-known statements of Freud and on some recent research, I attempt to show how dreams can provide writers with a route to their unconscious. I also illustrate the role of dreams in furnishing writers with inspiration and source material. I provide examples of writing, both my own poems and extracts from the work of Coleridge, Byatt, Kafka, Blanchot and Murakami amongst others, to show how dreams, the experience of dreaming and dream-like imagery have been used successfully in literature.     

Brownjohn,Hughes, Pirrie,and Rosen: What Rhymes with Oral Writing?

This article looks at the work of four writers who have had considerable influence on the teaching of poetry writing to primary school children. Each writer is considered in terms of their merits as a contributor to wider questions about writing, and in comparative terms with each other. Links are made between these writers' explicit and implicit philosophies and approaches. Finally, the article considers how far discussions about voice and form within children's writing are necessarily exclusive of each other.     

Collaborative writing practices and writing support technologies

This article explores some relationships between collaborative writing practices and writing support technologies. It attempts to illustrate the range of ways in which technologies are used. It examines the relationships of particular technologies and practices with how the writers view the process in which they are engaged. The implications of the findings for thinking about the role of computers in supporting writing, and facilitating collaborative writing in particular, are discussed.     

How Much is Enough? The Assessment of Student Work in Technical Communication Courses

This article reports the findings of a national survey of members of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). The survey focuses on practices of assessing student classroom work and specifically asked technical writing instructors what they assess, how they assess, and what they would like to do to assess their students optimally. In addition to reporting responses to these questions, the article concludes with recommendations for improving student assessment practices at the departmental, programmatic, and course levels.     

略论ESL写作教学中的"产品法"与"过程法"

对英语作为第二语言(ESL)的写作教学来说,"以过程为中心"的方法较诸"以产品为中心"的方法可能更为有效.作为一种写作教学方法,"过程法"注重写作的过程,因而在实施中特别重视写作过程中的不同阶段,并就各阶段设置了多种多样的练习活动,以使学生写出更有意义的作品.然而,我们不能将"过程法"降为一种具有规定技巧和惯例的"办法",而应创设有效的写作学习环境,在这种环境中,学生不仅对写作感到轻松愉快,而且能自主探索并培育个性化的写作方法.     

How Much is Enough? The Assessment of Student Work in Technical Communication Courses

This article reports the findings of a national survey of members of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). The survey focuses on practices of assessing student classroom work and specifically asked technical writing instructors what they assess, how they assess, and what they would like to do to assess their students optimally. In addition to reporting responses to these questions, the article concludes with recommendations for improving student assessment practices at the departmental, programmatic, and course levels.     

Freelance Technical Writers and Their Place Outside Corporate Culture: High and Low Corporate Culture Styles

Freelance technical writers perform their work outside their clients' corporate culture, and this occurrence is becoming more and more common. It is important to understand the significance of the separation between technical writers and corporate culture, especially given that some freelance technical writers never meet their clients in person. Does corporate culture play a significant role for the freelance technical writing professional?     

The Design of Writing: Unfolding systems of meaning

This article explores the findings of a small research study that asked writers to describe a meaningful, personal incident using first narrative and then poetic forms. The poetry raised many anxieties about writing, including the revelations of subjectivity and the risks in sharing such work with a group. To understand some of the complexities of these responses, the researchers thought of writing as an ecology with interdependent systems influencing the writing. Rereading the research texts, they traced some of those systems that affect students' writing and understanding of poetry.     

Science in a school of social priority

The National Literacy Strategy Framework (DfEE, 1998) requires primary children to, ‘become increasingly conscious of the writer's intentions’ (p.7) and The National Curriculum for English (1999) states that children should, ‘use and adapt the features of a form of writing, drawing on their reading’ (p.28). Developing a process approach to writing, where children are supported as they draft and redraft texts, was the aim of a university funded school-partnership project between Sycamore Junior School, in the City of Nottingham, and Nottingham Trent University. The article describes how Years 3 and 4 children developed an understanding of narrative structure and became reflective writers, as they responded to each other's work, during writing workshops.     

论科技英语写作课中的思辨思维能力的培养

设计良好的科技英语文章需拥有极强洞察力的思维策略，有经验的作者往往利用思辨思维从冲突性的目标中分辨出问题的性质，并且问题的解决是从寻找问题开始的，而思辨思维在取得最终目标，方面起到举足轻重的作用，在科技英语写作课文中引入思辨思维的功用以及它的实践应用来探讨一种扎实的思辨知识将有助于提高学生解决问题的能力并做出恰当的判断。