Courses Components and Exercises in Technical Communication

8/12/2019 Courses Components and Exercises in Technical Communication

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REVIEW:COURSES, COMPONENTS, AND EXERCISES INTECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

Jack Selzer

This anthology of resources for teachers of technicalwriting has already been very favorably reviewed by some verycapable authorities. The NCTE's Committee on Technical andScientific Communication has named it the best collection ofessays on technical writing published in 1981; and the samegroup has commended one of those essays-Paul Anderson'sOrganizing Is Not Enough "-as the best article on teachingmethods that appeared in that same year.And the technical writing teachers who read the book willsurely agree that the praise is justified. Dwight Stevenson haspacked a remarkable range of useful ideas into an accessiblyshort format: among the twenty-one essays are suggestions forusing readings, teaching graphics, orienting students to libraryresearch, assigning group projects, meeting the needs of foreignstudents-and much more. Yet somehow Stevenson arrangesthe contributions into a coherent whole. Partly that coherencearises from common assumptions; the selections typicallyground their advice on rhetorical principles, not on prescriptiveformulas or simple recipes. Moreover, the contents struck meas remarkably flexible. They offer as much to experiencedteachers as to rank beginners; they serve a variety of teachingstyles; and they recognize and adapt to a range of institutionalvariables that determine who enrolls in the course, when, andwith what background. Finally, several of the essays are so goodthat teachers will return to them again and again. For example,Linda Flower's essay, Communication Strategy in ProfessionalWriting: Teaching a Rhetorical Case, reminded me to be surethat my students are including strategic planning activities intheir writing processes. Gordon Cogshall's Cut and Paste: Preparing for On-the-Job Writing suggests some exercise thatsimulate the conditions under which engineers compose atwork. Paul Anderson's essay on teaching students how to re-JOURNAL OF ADVANCED COMPOSITION, Volume N 1983). Copyright1987.


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veal organization deserves its award on at least two counts. Notonly does Anderson furnish a series of superbly conceived classroom activities that teachers will incorporate into their ownundergraduate classrooms and industry presentations, but healso demonstrates how teachers can prepare their own classroom materials to teach a variety of particular rhetorical lessons.The rest of the contents, divided somewhat arbitrarilyinto three overlapping sections, are nearly as good. According tothe Preface, section one ( Courses ) outlines some alternativeapproaches to the teaching of technical writing i however, theseven essays do not really propose a series of differentapproaches, at least not in the sense of Donovan andMcClelland's Eight Approaches to Teaching Composition. -stead, the first four essays introduce coherent variations of oneapproach, the case method, which their authors feel is especiallyuseful for giving undergraduate students experience in postgraduate writing situations: Flower's essay on communicationstrategy, Lawrence Johnson's A Professional Scenario for theTechnical Writing Oassroom, Ben and Marthalee Barton'sThe ase Method: Bridging the Gap between Engineering Student and Professional, and Colleen Aycock's Simulation andIn-Class Writing: A Student-Centered Approach. AnitaBrostoff's The Functional Writing Model in TechnicalWriting, a second approach to the course, it thoughtfullyadapted from the work of A. D. Van Nostrand, C. H. Knoblauch,and their colleagues. David Carson's A New Approach toTeaching a Course in Writing for Publication offers not somuch a different approach (though he does incorporate peer reviewing and outside advisors into his classes) as a differentcourse on writing for scholarly, professional, and popularjournals. Gerard Gross's Group Projects in the TechnicalWriting Course describes no approach to the course at all, buthis possibilities for including group writing projects nevertheless will be exploited by many teachers.In fact, Gross's essay perhaps more logically belongs in thesecond section of the book ( Components ), where ideas aresuggested for various segments of a technical writing course.Two essays, for instance, explore ways of incorporating readingsinto the course. Stephen Gresham's From Aristotle to Einstein:Scientific Literature and the Teaching of Technical Writing includes an especially enterprising list of historical readings fromFaraday, Boyle, Curie, Darwin, Muir, and othersi Wayne Losanoin Scientific American in the Technical Writing Course rec-


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ackSelzer 223

ommends detailed rhetorical analyses of more contemporaryessays. It might also have been useful to include an essayexplaining how teachers might obtain and employ samples ofindustry or government writing). The other contributions tothis section confine themselves to particular aspects of technicalwriting courses: Gordon Cogshall's "cut and paste" exercises;Maurita Holland and Leslie Olsen's method for teaching wouldbe engineers and scientists how to find technical information inthe library; a disappointingly arhetorical set of gUidelines forvisual aids; some advice for teaching students to write instructions; a prescriptive and strangely product-oriented account oforal reports; and Herman Estrin's recommendation for teachingprospective engineers how to adapt to audiences by havingthem write books on their specialties for elementary-school children. The final section of the book, "Exercises," suggests a seriesof particular exercises (like Anderson's "Organizing Is NotEnough ") that are calculated to reinforce specific points intechnical communication. Dean Hall, for instance, shares theentertaining way that he introduces his course and its goals in"Technical Writing Class: Day One." Gretchen Schoffrecommends an assignment that forces future environmentalengineers to learn how to adapt to audiences outside theirorganizations. Thomas Huckin contributes a well informed,flexible, and resourceful way to overcome a particular butcommon and especially knotty problem: "Teaching the Use ofEnglish Articles to Nonnative Speakers in Technical WritingClasses." And Susan Dunkle and David Pahnos have developeda powerful strategy for teaching students how to consider socialconcerns as they investigate technical problems, how tointegrate qualitative "value hierarchies" into quantitativedecision-making processes. My only disappointment in this section was Peter R Klaver's description of an instructional simulation game calculated to dramatize the difficulties of communicating in complex organizations; the game itself seemed interesting, but the account of its rules and conduct was so incompletethat teachers will be unable to try it themselves. Perhaps this isalso the place to list another disappOintment-the bibliographyof Supplementary Readings appended to the book. It includesfar too many redundant textbooks (and yet omits many of themost informative texts); it enters few items on basic topics likeaudience, revision, and graphics; and it fails to list some of themost crucial theoretical orientations to technical writing, by


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more advanced than others?This list of questions nd omissions, however, is meant toimply the contents of a future book rather than to be n objec-tion to this one. For the growth of technical writing courses ndthe professional growth of those who teach them suggest thatthere will soon be other books like this one. For now, though,we can be satisfied: teachers who keep this book on their shelfwill find themselves nd their courses constantly renewed; ndwhoever does that next book will have a good model to imitate.Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, Pennsylvania

NOTFS

1Courses Components and Exercises in Techniazl Communiaztionedited by Dwight W. Stevenson Umana, lL: National Council of Teachers ofEnglish, 1981 , x 230 pages.

Courses Components and Exercises in Technical Communication

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