Reading and Writing for Engineering Students  

Since numerous engineering colleges are currently creating or expanding programs in technical communication, many universities are debating whether the program should be placed in the English department or in the college of engineering itself. In arguing for the latter option, a number of technical writing teachers have published the opinion that our courses are markedly different from general courses on expository prose which are taught in English departments. This is true; there are essential points of departure. However, one difference that is frequently cited is the requiring of a good deal of reading during a writing course. This approach is generally associated with English departments, having no relevance to the way technical writing is properly taught. In this paper, I shall present two reasons for including numerous reading assignments when teaching technical writing to engineering students, and I shall suggest methods by which to do so.

Spretnak, Charlene M. JAC (1983). Articles>Education>TC

The Rhetoric of the Paragraph: A Reconsideration  

Efforts to define the fundamental structures that enable meaning in discourse have a long history, beginning with ancient speculation. Classical logic, rhetoric, and grammar imposed restrictions on the processes of composing, as well as the shapes of finished texts, in order to safeguard the truth by attending to prerequisites for its effective communication. From earliest times, a concern for vindicating some larger moral order, and for teaching others to appreciate it, has often motivated pronouncements on the nature of verbal form. From Quintilian to the present, for example, teacher-scholars have striven to insure that logical and aesthetic values celebrated in the classical doctrine of decorum are made suitably manifest in student performance, as though to enforce publicly accepted styles of thought and action by reference to acceptable forms of language.

Knoblauch, C.H. JAC (1981). Articles>Writing>Style Guides

A Scheme for Representing Written Argument  

A scheme for representing argument is a formalism used to describe the structure or pattern within argumentative discourse. The value of any such scheme lies in its ability to focus attention on certain aspects of perceptually complex argument and direct interpretation and use of these aspects in detail. Formal logic, beginning with the syllogism, represents a large class of argument schemes. So too do the schemes of classical rhetoric.

Kaufer, David S. and Cheryl Geisler. JAC (1991). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing

The Structure of Advanced Composition  

Every advanced composition course I taught had five elements: audience, purpose, voice, organization, and polish. 'If we teachers,' I thought, 'can visualize advanced composition as a structure with five components we should be able to teach any upper level writing course, no matter what the specific content, with confidence.' The purpose of this article is to explain the five components essential to advanced composition and to illustrate their general applicability with examples from technical writing, business writing, journalism, and academic writing.

Halpern, Jeanne W. JAC (1980). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing

Tactics and the Quotidian: Resistance and Professional Discourse  

The research I discuss in this essay addresses what I take to be an unfortunate imbalance in current research on professional writing. Research reports in journals and in edited collections describe different professional discourses, how they are formed, how they operate, how organizational structure and discourse are related, and how writers learn to participate productively in institutional discourse. With some notable exceptions, very little of the research being reported concerns the ideologically coercive effects of institutional and professional discourse—what my students and I have come to call 'the dark side of the force.' If Foucault had to argue that cultural theorists should think of power as productive rather than merely repressive, I argue that rhetoric needs to recognize that the opposite is also true of discourse. That is, research in professional and nonacademic writing should begin to investigate not only the ways in which discourse produces knowledge, but also the ways in which it extends the grid of discipline and the ways in which writers resist the mute processes to which de Certeau refers in the epigraph above.

Herndl, Carl G. JAC (1996). Articles>Writing>TC

Review: The Teacher-Researcher: How to Study Writing in the Classroom

The latest NCTE book list indicates that The Teacher-Researcher should interest English instructors at all levels. In fact, Myers’s “global purpose is to promote the development of teacher research among K-12 teachers by providing examples of different ways teachers can study writing in their classrooms,” mainly for assessment purposes (1). Although JAC readers may profit by applying some of Myers’s work in their research, The Teacher-Researcher as a whole is too eclectic and superficial. Because Myers sometimes treats details in his exposition rather cavalierly, he may confuse his primary audience as well.

Hagge, John. JAC (1987). Articles>Reviews>Education

Teaching Critical Thinking in The Technical Writing Class  

It is probable that the Technical Writing course provides for upperclassmen the most intensive and extensive experience with written English that they will have during their undergraduate education. Traditionally, the course has bridged the world of work and the world of school. We instructors try to prepare our students for on-the-job professional writing, and it would seem that this objective is met through the special goals of the course: writing to particular audiences, using precise language, mastering formats, and using graphics. Such observable skills are valuable: indeed, Green and Nolan indicate, in their piece in the recent 'Education' issue of Technical Communication, that the fundamental requirements of an entering technical communicator's job are writing, editing, and researching. Yet, what are we to make of the prediction that Paul V. Anderson cites in that very same issue, that the advent of more highly sophisticated computer software will eliminate up to 75 percent of the present jobs in technical communication, rendering entire categories of jobs obsolete? We must teach, then, in addition to these surface writing abilities the deep structure reasoning skills that nourish them, those skills that are highly esteemed by business, industry, and academia.

Meyers, G. Douglas. JAC (1985). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing

Teaching Punctuation to Advanced Writers  

Most discussions of punctuation are confined to the mechanics sections of handbooks and rhetorics and thus tend to be of value only to basic and freshman writers. Occasionally, some texts allude to uses of punctuation that would be of interest to advanced writers, such as using punctuation to create acceptable sentence fragments or comma splices, but rarely do these texts explain these usages in much detail or provide many good examples of them. I wish to focus in this paper on the uses of punctuation that advanced writers need to be taught. Specifically, I will discuss how we can teach advanced writers to use punctuation to create rhetorical effects.

Meyer, Charles F. JAC (1985). Articles>Education>Writing

The Technical Talk: More Effective Use Of Visual Aids  

While most technical writing teachers assign the oral report and insist on visuals, very few offer their students good classroom examples of technical report visual aids. However, a set of 35 mm slides on one teaching topic could be easily produced with neither expensive equipment nor much ability in graphic design.

Jobst, Jack W. JAC (1981). Presentations>Advice>Visual>Visual Rhetoric

Toward an Ethics of Teaching Writing in a Hazardous Context—: The American University  

The following essay is a collaborative effort by a writing teacher and a writing student to make sense out of a situation we experienced together when Sandy Moore, the writer, responded to an assignment given by Michael Kleine, the teacher. In an advanced persuasive writing course, Michael asked students to experiment with the major Aristotelian categories of persuasion: ceremonial, forensic, and deliberative discourse. For the ceremonial assignment, Sandy chose to write an essay of blame about patrons of her workplace, a restaurant/bar. Though ceremonial discourse aims to praise or blame its subject before a public audience, Sandy did not intend to publish the essay outside the context of the classroom. Aware of the charged nature of her essay, Sandy wanted to use the university classroom not as a place from which to launch a public attack on a private workplace; instead, she hoped that the classroom would provide a safe place in which to practice persuasive discourse and to develop her rhetorical skills.

Moore, Sandy and Michael Kleine. JAC (1992). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Rhetoric

Training Technical Communication Teachers in English Graduate Courses  

In the mid 1970's, the bleak employment outlook for English Ph.D.'s and the increasing demand for writing teachers, particularly technical writing teachers, lead our department to develop a rhetoric and composition component within our traditional English graduate program. One of the courses developed for the graduate rhetoric program was Analysis of Technical Writing. When it was designed, the course had three goals: (1) to provide study in the rapidly growing area of applied rhetoric; 2) to provide training necessary for English doctoral students to begin teaching a basic course in business and technical writing on the junior or senior college level; and (3) to enhance the employability of these graduate students by preparing them to teach sections of our basic technical writing course while they were completing their graduate work. The department believed that providing interested students an opportunity to gain experience in teaching technical writing would give our graduate students a definite advantage in applying for college teaching positions.

Tebeaux, Elizabeth. JAC (1988). Articles>Education>Graduate

Transferable and Local Writing Skills  

One indication of the state of our profession is the discriminations that we are just getting around to making: useful, even essential, 'sortings out' that, when then, are made, seem embarrassingly obvious. One such 'sorting out' or discrimination is essential for an understanding of what any composition class can do, whether advanced composition, technical writing, feature writing, or whatever. In the writer’s repertoire, there are local and transferable skills. Local skills have to do with a given genre and involve such matters as special forms (e. g., the scientific report), footnoting, vocabularies, special styles, and even the 'tones' that particular fields demand. Transferable skills are the 'basics' of writing: syntactic fluency, control of diction, sense of audience, organizational ability, 'mechanics' such as punctuation and spelling.

Winterowd, W. Ross. JAC (1980). Articles>TC>Writing>Rhetoric

Treating Professional Writing as Social Praxis  

To explore how professional communications are shaped by the worlds of work, scholars have drawn on several different ways of thinking about the relationship between texts and contexts--literary theories, sociolinguistics, organizational theory, ethnography, and theories of composition. I would like to draw on classical rhetoric to develop a philosophical justification for stressing the social and ethical dimensions of business and technical writing. I am not specifically interested here in how we can apply the techniques of classical rhetoric to professional writing, but in how we can revitalize classical rhetoric's general emphasis on ethical and political values. While classical rhetoric assumed ethical and political values that need to be questioned, it does provide a context in which to ask questions about values, questions that are too often ignored in professional writing classes. Classical rhetoric is particularly useful in talking about technical and business writing because Aristotle's three-part conceptualization of theoria, proxis, and techne undercuts the dichotomy of theory and practice that often limits instruction in 'practical' writing to the mere techniques of the craft. Classical rhetoric can also help us develop a broader social perspective on practical writing, a perspective that includes not just the social context of the company or profession but the larger public context as well.

Miller, Thomas P. JAC (1991). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Rhetoric

Untangling the Law: Verbal Design in Legal Argument  

“The law is a seamless web,” law professors are fond of reminding their students. The lightest touch on any strand will send vibrations through the entire intricate structure. Every legal issue, rule, and theory is integrally connected; thus attention to any part affects the whole. Ironically, the metaphor’s appropriateness extends beyond this initial image since the slightest vibrations running through even the most beautiful web will alert the waiting spider—the beauty disguises a deadly trap.

Woolever, Kristin R. JAC (1986). Articles>Rhetoric>Legal

Using High-Affect Goals in Teaching Proposal Writing  

Obviously, the purpose of any proposal writer is to persuade a reader. But our students are poorly served when they are told only that their documents aren’t persuasive enough.  General injunctions (or “top-level goals”) such as “persuade your reader” or “sell your reader” don’t help writers become more persuasive any more than the injunction “play with feeling” helps a musician become more evocative. Without a suitable repertoire of practical subgoals, Smith and our students know only in general what to do without knowing how to do it. In this article, we identify and examine six such subgoals. Once students understand these subgoals, they will be in the position to revise their proposals with their readers in mind.

Freed, Richard C. and Glenn J.Broadhead. JAC (1987). Articles>Grants>Proposals>Writing

Using the Enthymeme as a Heuristic in Professional Writing Courses  

In the following pages, I will offer a methodology for letter and memoranda writing which exchanges an emphasis on forms for one on rhetorical analysis. Ultimately, training in rhetorical analysis helps students exercise and refine the analytical and analogical thinking needed for any discipline; that is, a professional writing course can serve, as Carolyn Miller says, to 'present mechanical rules and skills against a broad understanding of why and how to adjust or violate the rules, of the social implications of the roles a writer casts for himself or herself, and for the reader, and of the ethical repercussions of one’s words—effects which emphasize the fundamental nature of the humanities' (617). But before addressing how a professional writing course advances a liberal education, or even why to adopt a new methodology, it would be instructive to look at the causes for a letter such as the one which opens this article. Certainly, cost is a consideration, it being cheaper to mail form letters than have secretaries research and write personalized letters; for a mail order business, though, especially one whose clientele pay substantial prices, this strategy may be penny-wise and pound-foolish. However, the two causes I want to discuss pertain more to the concerns of a writing class: the writer’s reliance on forms, and the lack of analysis of context and audience.

Jacobi, Martin. JAC (1987). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing>Business Communication

What Counts as Writing? An Argument From Engineers' Practice  

My argument attempts to add to the kinds of documents seen as worth studying in the discipline loosely known as English. Over the last twenty years, we have moved from thinking that only literature is worth studying to including student writing, business writing, technical writing, and so on as part of our field of study. I think we have to extend our attention to documents which are even less literature-like. Calling these documents 'writing' has consequences for our understanding of both writing and the various fields in which it occurs. As Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford point out, 'We name in order to know, but that naming inevitably limits our knowing. . . . Definitions of writing, of course, reflect a set of ideological assumptions that we ignore only at our peril' (15). The ideological assumptions we ignore here have to do with how knowledge is created and how much control individuals have over their own knowing. Ideology leads both us and engineers to deny that writing has occurred in much engineering practice.

Winsor, Dorothy A. JAC (1992). Articles>Rhetoric>Engineering

Writing for the Pre-Professional Within a Liberal Arts Curriculum  

Believing that writing instruction beyond the basics of composition is an integral part of a liberal education but realizing that students are increasingly turning to career-oriented electives which will help them secure employment upon graduation, I developed an advanced writing class that would link liberal arts education and professional training. The course is entitled “Writing for the Pre-professional.”

Palumbo, Roberta M. JAC (1980). Articles>Education>Writing

Review: Writing in the Business Professions

Writing in the Business Professions should interest teachers of advanced composition. I encourage them to peruse the volume for themselves since I can’t analyze its contents at length here. I do, however, feel that I need to warn potential readers about several things that perplexed me when I read the book especially since this book may help determine the future of business communication instruction in the 1990s.

Hagge, John. JAC (1990). Articles>Reviews>Business Communication

Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing  

Like Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Lyotard, and others, Haraway calls for a conception of writing (“cyborg writing,” in her terms) that resists authoritative, phallogocentric writing practices, that foregrounds the writer’s own situatedness in history and in his or her writing practice, and that makes visible the very “apparatus of the production of authority” that all writers tend to submerge in their discourse. This is not to say that writers must “eschew” authority, but that in a truly ethical and postmodern stance they must reveal how authority is implicated in discourse. And because writing is inseparable both from its own embodied situatedness and from systems of liberation and domination, “literacy” should be a central concern of us all.

Olson, Gary A. JAC (1996). Articles>Rhetoric>Technology