Editor:
Tim D. P. Lally

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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.

The course has been an unqualified success. Every graduate student who has gained experience by teaching our basic undergraduate technical writing course has secured a teaching position. Many have had multiple job offers. Other students, who have become more interested in industry than in academe, have been able to secure jobs as writers in business and industrial organizations. But as teachers within our technical writing program, these graduate students have been conscientious and innovative. Two have won teaching awards given by the university for their excellence in teaching technical writing. Others have won publication awards given by the Society for Technical Communication and the NCTE. However, the success of these novice teachers is also attributable to the methods the department uses to select the teaching assistants who will be allowed to begin teaching technical writing. Students who have demonstrated excellent performance in Analysis of Technical Writing are further evaluated by the director of freshman composition, the graduate studies director, and the department head: Is the student really interested in teaching technical writing? Does the student have a successful teaching record in freshman composition? How much teaching experience does the student have? How mature and responsible is the student? How well has the student performed in other graduate rhetoric and literature courses? Students who receive positive evaluations in each area are scheduled to begin teaching technical writing.

Course Content

Analysis of Technical Writing is divided into three main topics of study: the nature (definition) of technical writing, the practice of technical writing, and the teaching of technical writing.

Part I: The Nature of Technical Writing. This opening component of the course revolves about a required reading list beginning with Kinneavy's Theory of Discourse. While most students have studied Kinneavy in another graduate rhetoric course, Modern Rhetorical Theory, the discussion now centers on the definition of "technical" writing and its relationship to scientific, informative, and literary discourse. While other articles dealing with the definition of technical writing are also required reading,l the emphasis is on the use and analysis of basic rhetorical components—the rhetorical appeals, audience, purpose, tone, voice, organization, style, point of view—in technical writing, how these differ from their roles in literary discourse. Based on their knowledge of modern and classical rhetorical theories, students are asked to examine a short story, an essay, and an organizational report and persuasive letter to determine the rhetorical similarities and differences that exist among these kinds of writing. To develop this aspect of the course more fully, the rhetoric faculty is attempting to integrate the content of this portion of the course with the content of other rhetoric courses. As a result, students are currently developing thesis and dissertation topics in rhetorical aspects of technical writing.

A substantial group of required readings focuses on the question, "What should be taught in a basic technical writing course?" Articles dealing with communication needs of employees in a variety of disciplines survey a decade of studies published in journals such as The Journal of Business Communication, ABCA Bulletin, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Research in English, Technical Communication, CCC, College English, Engineering Education, The Technical Writing Teacher, and most recently, the Journal of Advanced Composition.2 From these articles, students should infer what topics a basic course in technical writing should include and why these topics are important. Students are also familiarized with important journals that deal with topics in technical communication.

At the end of Part I of the course, associations relevant to technical and business communication are also discussed—The Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, the American Business Communication Association, the Society of Technical Communication, the American Society for Engineering Education, the Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition, NCTE, and CCC—and any special publications these organizations issue that are useful to both teachers and practitioners of technical writing.

Part II: The Practice of Technical Writing. The second component, which occupies well over half the semester, requires students to develop many kinds of writing discussed in the surveys. Seven texts are required: Houp and Pearsall, Reporting Technical Information (Macmillan); Lannon, Technical Writing (Little Brown); Mathes and Stevenson, Designing Technical Reports (Bobbs Merril); Bowman and Branchaw, Effective Business Correspondence (Harper & Row); Lawrence and Tebeaux, Writing Communications in Business and Industry (Prentice-Hall); David Gootnick, How to Get a Better Job (McGraw Hill); Joseph Williams, Style (Scott Foresman). These are selected to provide students resource material for developing various reports and later for teaching. In addition, approximately four dozen books on various aspects of technical writing are placed on permanent reserve for the use of students and teachers. This collection includes a number of style sheets for various disciplines, ITCC Proceedinqs, books on proposal writing, editing, style, major texts on business and technical communication research and practice, publications of the Document Design Center, and major works by Rudolph Flesch and Robert Gunning.

Eleven main assignments are required. These cover assignments and topics included in our basic undergraduate technical writing course:

1. Audience Analysis. This exercise requires the student to select a passage (several paragraphs) written for a specialized audience and rewrite it twice for two different audiences. Before each revision, the intended audience must be carefully described and the rhetorical strategy explained and justified.3

2. Extended Definition. Students write a deductive extended definition. After stipulating audience and purpose, the student must develop the definition by using as many expansion devices as possible.4

3. Library Resource Instruction. Because English graduate students usually have little background in non-humanities research resources, the class spends a week in the library to become familiar with resources in various technical disciplines, particularly those whose students take our basic technical writing course. Instruction includes a heavy emphasis on government documents, technical reference material, micromaterials, and a lecture on "How to Evaluate a Technical Bibliography," which provides useful information in determining when technical research reports have been plagiarized. Each student is assigned a different field to research. A bibliography must be prepared, by title and call number, of major research tools in each field assigned. The bibliography should include periodicals, indexes, guides, abstracts, handbooks, encyclopedias, and other pertinent resources. Two items under each heading must be annotated. Each student then makes copies for other class members so that each student has a collection of guides to resources in a number of different fields.

4. Proposals. This assignment uses a case approach which requires a solicited proposal. The student must attempt to win a contract to edit training manuals and conduct a writing short course for a local industry.

5. Correspondence. Each student is assigned two case problems from Bowman and Branchaw's Effective Business Correspondence. After preparing a letter responding to each case, students provide copies of each response to other class members and then give a short presentation about each case to explain the design strategy used in planning and writing the letter.

6. Editing. Throughout the semester, the class works through as many lessons in Joseph Williams' Style as possible. In addition, students have two or three poorly written informal reports to reformat, reorganize, and rewrite.

7. Recommendation-Evaluation Report. Students develop this report from a case problem which requires them to assume they must recommend a hotel for the annual convention for a professional society. Four hotels must be evaluated, according to given criteria, and the most suitable one recommended.

8. Description of a Mechanism. Students develop a descriptive sales brochure which requires a general description of some object. In addition to describing the object, both the sales strategy and the layout of the material must be designed to fit the intended audience.

Instead, however, students may be asked to write a mini-proposal, in informal report form, to the department head urging him to buy a particular desk lamp for all offices. The assignment requires a general description of the lamp and a persuasive cost-benefit analysis.

9. Graphics. Each student develops a graphics report based on analysis of computer printouts in Writing Communcations in Business and Industry. The analysis requires tables and various types of graphs integrated with verbal analysis.5 Students are also asked to collect examples of particularly effective or ineffective graphics, make copies of selected ones for other class members, and be prepared to explain why the graphic is good or bad.

10. Procedures. Because of the growing importance of documentation and procedures to employees and to technical writers, each student is asked to write a set of procedures explaining how to teach several related units in one of our freshman composition courses which they have taught. In the development of these procedures, the goal is to enable a new teacher, one who has never taught this particular course before, to come into the class and be able to teach these units effectively. Students also write one or two procedural memos based on case problems.

11. Formal Reports. Most of the students enrolled in Analysis of Technical Writing are taking other graduate courses. Therefore, students select a research paper they are writing for another course and rewrite it as a formal report by following Mathes and Stevenson's Designing Technical Reports. Students must rewrite the paper to a non-specialized reader in the particular topic area. Audience level, particularly background and knowledge, must be carefully explained in the letter of transmittal. Since the course began with the central questions—What is technical writing? How does it differ from literary writing?—it seems appropriate that this final assignment be heuristically designed to allow students to discover further how literary writing and technical writing differ.

Part III: The Teaching of Technical Writing. This component of the course is covered throughout the semester as each topic and report type are discussed. Teaching methods, assigned articles on pedagogy, and course management techniques are discussed. As time permits, regular technical writing faculty are invited to discuss final examination practices, evaluation and grading, and problems in course management. A member of the speech faculty discusses the technical presentation and the common concerns that oral technical presentations share with written documents. Other topics discussed include sales letters, resumes and application letters, development of technical manuals, and word processing. Faculty members who have particular expertise in one of these topics are invited to share their knowledge and suggest additional reading. The class usually tours one of the larger word processing centers on campus.

By the end of the semester, students are also required to develop two syllabi: one to give students enrolled in one of our basic undergraduate technical writing classes and a second one, a detailed, day-to-day syllabus describing how each topic would be presented. Students who are seeking non-academic technical writing positions may choose to develop syllabi for an in-house short course in effective writing. These syllabi, whatever their purpose, must be coordinated with teaching files containing material necessary for teaching each topic.

To help them gain teaching expertise, students must also attend classes of two different technical writing teachers and observe the teaching of two complete units (e.g., correspondence, definition, procedures and instructions, proposals). Students must then write an information memo describing the classes visited and the teaching method used by each teacher.

Course Follow-Up Requirements

Analysis of Technical Writing is offered only during the spring semester each year. Students who are interested in being considered for assignment in undergraduate technical writing classes the following spring are expected to continue to prepare themselves during the summer and the following fall semester. Many students secure summer jobs as editors on campus, take a course in computer science, or find jobs as library researchers and editors for faculty who have research grants in science or agriculture. Having completed Analysis of Technical Writing helps students in their job search. In addition, all potential technical writing teachers are encouraged to continue visiting classes taught by regular faculty, to solicit syllabi from a number of technical writing teachers, and to broaden their background by reading such periodicals as Forbes, Engineering Education, Datamation, The Office, Fortune, and Harvard Business Review. During the first semester these students teach technical writing, each is assigned an advisor who works with the new teacher. After teaching technical writing one semester, new teachers are then asked to evaluate their preparation for the course and suggest additions and deletions to Analysis of Technical Writing.

Analyzing and Reshaping Course Content

Since 1976, the content of the course has changed extensively, and evaluations from students who have taken the course as well as suggestions from faculty have been largely responsible for these changes. For example, students believed that since the purpose of the course is to teach them to write and then to teach as many kinds of technical documents as possible, an assigned research paper on some aspect of technical writing was less useful than their studying and writing several more reports. Generating massive bibliographies on technical writing, once a requirement, was also viewed by students as time-consuming and ineffective in preparing them to teach. However, both assignments might be excellent for English departments which have more emphasis on training students to do research in technical writing than on training teachers to teach technical writing. Another excellent assignment requires students to do research on some aspect in the history of scientific or technical writing. More resource material is now available in this growing area of research, and students have an excellent opportunity to develop papers that will be publishable in journals like The Journal of Business Communication or the Journal of Technical Writing, which have both published articles in the history of technical and business writing. Publication as well as teaching experience in technical writing clearly helps the employability of graduate students.

Ultimately, an English department that wants to include a course like Analysis of Technical Writing should first consider its overall program before deciding on the content and structure of the course. During one short semester, there is never enough time to cover either theoretical or practical topics as thoroughly as necessary. If graduate students will have little opportunity to teach technical writing while they are teaching assistants or graduate students, then the design of the course can easily be more research oriented, and discussion of pedagogy and course management can be deemphasized. An option we are now considering would divide the current courses into two complete courses—one devoted to theory and research in scientific and technical writing and one devoted almost exclusively to development and writing of technical and business reports, brochures, manuals, and correspondence and to the teaching of these kinds of documents. Such an arrangement would allow time for both theoretical and practical topics to be pursued. Without a separate course devoted to theory, very little time can be devoted to linguistic applications in technical writing, research strategies and methods, and the role of cognitive psychology in determining readability of technical documents—just to name a few major research areas that are available for our students to explore. Dividing the course into two courses—one theoretical and one practical--would also give students a choice of emphasis, depending on whether they are interested in becoming professional writers or in pursuing academic careers with possible interests in both teaching and research in technical communication.

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