Describes a special on-site writing course for advanced learners of English working in a research and development division that addresses students' needs (acculturation and lessening of writing anxiety) through in-class contrastive analysis of semitechnical documents produced by novice nonnative speaker writers and by experienced native and…

Discusses the need for composition courses for non-native English speaking students who are majoring in science and technology to prepare them to write on scientific/technical topics. Unique differences between conventional and technical writing tasks are discussed, and teaching implications are assessed. (GLR)

Presents reasons and methods for including numerous reading assignments when teaching technical writing to engineering students. (RAE)

A study classified 61 writing assignments from 10 undergraduate science and technology courses on the basis of audience and task specifications. Most assignments emphasized reporting on specific participatory experiences, and 25 percent of assignments specified an audience other than the course instructor. Pedagogical implications for…

Offers five axioms that express a philosophy of technical English and describe a perception of language use that is considerably different from that of literary English. Concludes that the study of English should include much more than just the study of literature. (SRT)

Careful audience analysis should be a major focus of the rhetorical side of technical writing courses for university undergraduates. Student writers need to be taught to appreciate their readers' problems, interests, and motives. Most often, audience analysis is accomplished imaginatively--authors create mental images of their readers. Students…

This guide suggests techniques for teaching skills in summary writing to students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in scientific and technical fields. Activities include: pre-summarization (identification of thesis sentences, conclusions and other essential components, multiple readings, notetaking and text-marking); summarization activities…

A study investigated the types of writing assignments commonly found in undergraduate natural sciences and engineering courses. The study was used as a basis for the development of composition courses for limited-English-speaking students in these fields, the most popular fields of study among foreign students. Eighty take-home assignments given…

Outlines and illustrates an approach to the teaching of research English on a group basis which derives from four bodies of literature: (1) the sociology of science, (2) citation analysis, (3) technical writing, and (4) English for academic purposes. This approach gives the ESL instructor insight into the students' research writing processes and…

The field of scientific and technical communication (STC) has experienced extraordinary growth in recent years. To meet the needs of a new generation of technical communication leaders, a Master's program must include the study of writing, editing, publication, math, computer science, science and engineering literature, rhetorical principles, and…