Using environmental impact statements as an introduction to technical writing

Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) provide college students with hands‐on experience working with genuine technical documents from the working world, an overview of the writing process, and the strategies and tasks encountered in technical writing. Using EISs can help students understand decision‐making processes, heighten their environmental awareness, and generate class camaraderie. This essay details one method of introducing students to EISs and reports the benefits and problems encountered in doing so.     

Expanding and redirecting historical research in technical writing: In search of our past

This study suggests an approach for expanding and integrating research to produce a history of technical writing. The study defines problems that reside in writing such a history, suggests research premises and questions, and then applies these questions to technical writing as it existed in the English Renaissance, 1475–1640.     

Conservation Writing: An Emerging Field in Technical Communication

This article discusses the rise of conservation writing as a new field of technical communication, and it offers pedagogical strategies for teaching conservation writing and building curricula. Conservation writing is an umbrella term for a range of writing about ecology, biology, the outdoors, and environmental policies and ethics. It places the natural world at the center of readers' attention, often viewing sustainability as a core value. A course or curriculum in this kind of writing would likely need to help students master a variety of genres, while providing a working knowledge in environmental law, ethics, and politics.     

“Falling back” on natural law and prudence: A reply to souryal and potts

The following essay seeks to provide some of the details to which Souryal and Potts refer in their article in the spring 1993 issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice Education. In their desire to combat what they perceive to be a state of cultural illiteracy in the field of criminal justice ethics, Souryal and Potts recommend a revision of criminal justice curricula to include courses on the history of Western political philosophy. In the past masters of political philosophy, they hope to find an effective “fallback” position on questions of moral judgment and discretion. In the following essay I locate that position in the traditional Western theories of natural law and prudence.     

“I was my war; my war was I”: Vera Brittain,autobiography and university fiction during the Great War

Abstract

Applying the critical lenses of feminism, autographical theory and literary analysis, this essay performs a triple reading of Vera Brittain’s multi-genre writings about gender, war,and university education. Focusing specifically on The Dark Tide (1923), Testament of Youth (1933) and The Women of Oxford (1960), the essay argues that Brittain (de)constructs competing views of academic work and war work in order to reveal and critique competing definitions of women’s duty in wartime. Over the course of her life and writings, Brittain’s attitudes toward academe changed from euphoric feminist possibility to anti-spinsterish paranoia. Ultimately, Brittain was unable to reconcile these conflicting perspectives and instead chose a new, modern path in pacifism. Looking at a diverse body of her work reveals how much gender, education and the war impacted on Brittain’s perceptions of her self, her work and her writing.     

批判自省审美

九十年代以来的杂文创作是中国新时期文学中一种重要的文学形态 ,它在内容上的发展态势和艺术形式上的新动向 ,对中国未来的杂文创作走向无疑具有着十分重要的指示意义。但在中国新时期文学中 ,小说、诗歌、散文这些传统的文学样式始终占据着绝对的主导 ,作为文学批评与文学研究的对象也往往重在于此 ,而对杂文的研究与评价则常常被人们有意无意地视为是支流 ,这不能不说是文学研究与文学批评的一种缺失。本文的目的就在于通过对九十年代以来的杂文创作在共时与历时中的蕴示的研究 ,对它在文化批判意识、自我反省意识、当代审美意识上存在的缺失的分析 ,揭示它的现代性写作意义。     

The perceptions of first-year undergraduate Malawian students of the essay writing process

Abstract

A good command of written English is essential for tertiary students in Malawi. Notably, their academic success is largely dependent on their mastery of the written language but, in addition, recent years have seen more employers in Malawi emphasising the need for excellent communication skills in both the national language (Chichewa) and English. This article analyses Malawian first-year undergraduate perceptions of the essay writing process. A study in which 200 students from the faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences were surveyed was carried out at the University of Malawi's Chancellor College in 2006. The results indicate that students find it very challenging to obtain sufficient and relevant source text information, paraphrase or summarise information, and use an appropriate academic writing style. It appears that essay writing is challenging for first-year undergraduates — partly due to lack of thorough and timely training in essay writing.     

The impact of training students how to write introductions for academic essays: an exploratory,longitudinal study

Successful academic writing requires strong command of the rhetorical moves that orient the reader to the theme and substantive material of an academic essay. Effective control of the introduction leads to better overall writing. The goal of this study was to devise and evaluate a pedagogy for teaching the writing of academic essay introductions. The study employed a pre-, post-, and delayed post-test design in a single university student learning site. Student writing was scored on eight aspects related to (1) structure and content and (2) style. Confirmatory factor analysis reduced the eight scores aggregated into the two scales. A single two-hour workshop increased the participants’ (n = 87) performance in the rhetorical structure and content of their introductions, but not the style. A longitudinal model (n = 20) using three sets of parcelled scores showed that the structure and content of the introduction positively predicted the grade awarded by the student’s faculty. Direct instruction in writing introductions, through a relatively short, low-cost, genre-based training programme, appears to achieve significant student learning.     

A Randomized Experiment of a Cognitive Strategies Approach to Text-Based Analytical Writing for Mainstreamed Latino English Language Learners in Grades 6 to 12

Abstract

This study reports Year 1 findings from a multisite cluster randomized controlled trial of a cognitive strategies approach to teaching text-based analytical writing for mainstreamed Latino English language learners (ELLs) in 9 middle schools and 6 high schools. There were 103 English teachers stratified by school and grade and then randomly assigned to the Pathway Project professional development intervention or control group. The Pathway Project trains teachers to use a pretest on-demand writing assessment to improve text-based analytical writing instruction for mainstreamed Latino ELLs who are able to participate in regular English classes. The intervention draws on well-documented instructional frameworks for teaching mainstreamed ELLs. Such frameworks emphasize the merits of a cognitive strategies approach that supports these learners’ English language development. Pathway teachers participated in 46 hrs of training and learned how to apply cognitive strategies by using an on-demand writing assessment to help students understand, interpret, and write analytical essays about literature. Multilevel models revealed significant effects on an on-demand writing assessment (d = .35) and the California Standards Test in English language arts (d = .07).     

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.     

The Schooling of Ethics

Abstract

Growing concern about a shrinking cultural consensus on values, coupled with religious pluralisation and the realisation that schooling is not, and cannot be, value-neutral,have led to proposals to teach ethics in schools, interpreted as a contribution of the discipline of philosophy to the common curriculum. To the extent that this approach is seen to hinge on the alleged autonomy of ethics, it has the potential to indoctrinate the contestable view that rationality is the prime motivator of moral commitment. A case is made for regarding philosophical ethics and religious (or world-view) studies not as alternative avenues to values education but each as a core curriculum priority, different but complementary to the other in its content.     

The Naked Truth about the Naked This: Investigating Grammatical Prescriptivism in Technical Communication

The decision to follow the demonstrative this with a noun phrase is important to students’ writing development. Previous research has emphasized when students should not attend this rather than studying why students make the choice. Using a corpus-linguistic approach, we investigated 1,999 instances of (un)attended this in student technical and academic writing. High shares of unattended this were found in both text types as well as in original and revised drafts.     

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.     

Process-model feminism in the Corporate University

ABSTRACT

In a period characterised by worries over the rise of the corporate university, it is important to ask what role feminism plays in the academy, and whether that role is commensurate with feminist values and ethics. Commercial and political pressures brought to bear on the encounter between instructor and student can rob teaching of its efficacy, and the effects of institutional limitations on research may be equally troublesome. This essay argues that through a process-model approach, feminists can understand and intervene in ongoing shifts in institutional governance and mitigate their effects on teaching and research, and that process-model pedagogy is a form of microactivism existing independent of pedagogical content, making process-model feminism fundamentally materialist, radically strategic, and highly portable. Through a discussion of pedagogical and administrative practices in which process-model feminism can intervene, this essay suggests a way of understanding and inhabiting feminism’s current place in the ‘corporate’ academy.     

Teaching,learning, and evaluating: handwriting in Uruguayan public elementary schools in the 1830s

Abstract

This article examines the Uruguayan state approach to the teaching of writing in public elementary education during the 1830s, and is an attempt to explain why state officials advanced new pedagogical methods aimed at increasing rationalisation and standardisation. While many different handwriting styles existed in the past, the school system simplified and standardised public education under a single cursive style, the English round-hand. Notwithstanding the state’s standardising directives, Uruguayan teachers combined the pedagogical innovations of Lancaster’s monitorial system with the calligraphic traditions of the old writing masters. According to personal preference and necessity, teachers devised a hybrid system, which implemented new dictation exercises and the use of the writing slate, but preserved the writing masters’ imitation of muestras, and the use of quill, ink, and paper. The government arranged an inventive procedure to accurately measure students’ handwriting performance. The planas, or samples of students’ handwriting, were useful tools in the standardisation and evaluation of public education. Elementary schools from all over the country forwarded handwriting samples to the central state, or exhibited them in public examination ceremonies, as teachers publicised pedagogical success, and state officials confirmed the general advancement of public education. This study is also an attempt to show that the teaching of writing was part of a greater pedagogical mission and nation-building project: the intentional departure from colonial corporate identities, and the construction of a national community conceived as the sum of its individual citizens.     

The uses of metaphor in citation classics from the scientific literature

To gain a better sense of the metaphorical nature of the scientific research paper, the author reviewed 89 journal articles taken from the top 400 most‐cited documents in the Science Citation Index database for the period 1945–1988. Metaphorical constructions were found in a variety of forms: conceptual models, experimental designs, technical analogies, standard technical names, conventional figurative expressions, and even original figurative language normally associated with more‐literary writing. Examples are given for each mode of metaphor.     

Durable,Portable Research through Partnerships with Interdisciplinary Advocacy Groups,Specific Research Topics,and Larger Data Sets

ABSTRACT

Relying on the case of a mixed-methods study centered on patients’ strategies for establishing their credibility in clinical conversations, this essay argues that the more intentional and effective the participant recruitment and the more specific the inquiry, the more likely technical communication and rhetoric of science researchers are to encounter potentially powerful partners through which they might get and analyze compelling data and, thus, gain engaged audiences outside of their disciplines.     

Social and cognitive effects of professional communication on software usability

We designed and piloted a technical communication course for software engineering majors to take concurrently with their capstone project course in software design. In the pilot, one third of the capstone design course students jointly enrolled in the writing class. One goal of the collaborative courses was to use writing to improve the usability of students’ software. We studied the effects of writing on students’ user‐centered beliefs and design practices and on the usability of their product, using surveys, document analyses, expert reviews, and user test results. When possible, we compared the usability processes and products of teams who did and did not take the writing class. Our findings suggest that the synergy of this interdisciplinary approach effectively sensitized students to user‐centered design, instilled in them a commitment to it, and helped them develop usable products.