Organizational patterns can serve as a teaching strategy for instructors and as a learning tool for students to develop their expository writing skills, which are commonly required for assignments (for example, laboratory reports and research papers) in Food Science courses and in their future careers. The article discusses the importance of…

Students need regular opportunities to write expository text. However, focusing on report writing often leaves students without strong examples to study or analyze to guide and grow their own writing. Writing and studying feature articles, meant to inform and explain, can become an alternative to report writing, as they can easily be located in…

Suggests emphasizing, reviewing, and applying the basic skills taught in freshman composition--thesis statement, basic expository patterns, organization, transitions--in the technical writing course to ease the transition from freshman essay to technical report. Presents a chart illustrating the parallel structures of the technical report and the…

Recommends a practical analogy for understanding and teaching the communication dimensions of a business report. (AEA)

Describes three graduate and undergraduate pilot courses in technical writing directed toward students in environmental design, engineering, and business. (HOD)

Shows how English composition teachers with little or no science background can actually use that lack of background as an asset in teaching science writing. (DD)

For students who have difficulty finding material for writing formal business and technical reports, suggests keeping a file folder of clippings about new products and services taken from a leading newspaper.(NH)

A game based on Parker Brothers'"Monopoly" provides a teaching device which helps technical writing students learn to arrange their scientific knowledge logically so that their report conclusions seem inevitable. Each of eight previously written reports is divided into four segments which are then substituted for the properties on the game board.…

Selecting criteria for usage is done in basically the same way for both technical writing and other forms of composition. Similarly, the same rhetorical theory applies to the teaching of both, and proves especially helpful in the teaching of formal report-writing skills in required freshman composition courses. Focusing on the appropriate voice,…

Presents several assumptions about scientific writing and from these derives teaching methods for a year-long sequence of writing courses for science freshmen. (DD)

Though technical writing as a profession began only recently (shortly after World War II), its tradition goes back to ancient times. This paper describes how technical writing teachers at New Mexico State University use the works of twenty scientific writers included in the "Great Books of the Western World" series to demonstrate to their students…

In technical writing classes writing can come alive to students, because in such classes students are knowledgeable about their subjects and can simulate writing to real audiences in business and industry rather than only to teachers. Students practice writing within determined and specified formats and to a standard style in response to…

The goal of this booklet is to help the new technical-writing teacher make the transition from teaching standard composition courses to teaching specialized technical writing. An introduction defines technical writing and discusses objectivity in writing, formats and report design, graphics, and audience awareness. Other sections of the booklet…

Arranged in chronological order, this collection of papers explores the process involved in teaching expository writing in order to stimulate discussion, provoke comment and criticism, and provide the insights and information needed to develop a writing skills program. Much of the collection was written by persons with no direct experience in…

Argues that literature can be valuable in the technical writing class, focusing students' attention by: (1) providing useful models for students; and (2) allowing students to see how language operates in representations of particular organizations or cultures. (MG)