This paper examines technical writing at the high school level and suggests methods of teaching technical writing to students. Such topics are discussed as demonstration, mechanism description, causal analysis, detail, spatial order, and chronological order. It is argued that writing about objects can sharpen a writer's powers of observation and…

Describes a game-like writing exercise that uses the principle of "divide and conquer" to teach technical description. (PD)

An examination of the written products and writing situations of a university reveals that virtually all of these writing tasks call for exposition, which further breaks down into the five components of seriation, classification, synthesis, compare/contrast, and analysis. These five components of expositional discourse form a set of…

Presents a descriptive exercise, also useful for technical writing, that provides a real reader and a strong sense of the nature of descriptive writing. Students are given sketches of an art piece that they must describe for a museum for identification. (HTH)

Describes five writing activities for college writing courses: (1) a documented opinion paper exercise; (2) breaking writing rules; (3) trip reports from absentees; (4) case studies to promote writing for particular audiences for pragmatic purposes; and (5) an organizing strategy for studying, using a chart format. (SR)

Clarity in communication is important for workers in the General Accounting Office since much of the auditing work must be committed to paper if Congress, government officials and employees, or the public are to benefit. As a result an extensive writing improvement program was launched and this booklet written. Part 1 covers basic communication…

A number of the axioms of tagmemics are explored in order to develop exercises based on these axioms about language structure but specifically designed to develop writing competence. Exercises for unit definition through contrast with other units; range of variability; and distribution in class, sequence, and system receive particular attention.…