Undergraduate science degrees in South Africa seldom offer explicit courses focussing on improving the disciplinary writing skills required for effectively communicating scientific research. Similarly, most students entering the 'Honours' degree in Molecular Medicine at a South African university have not commonly been afforded opportunities to…

Collaborative writing assignments are an essential element of teaching technical and professional writing, and they should be included in online writing instruction (OWI). The COVID-19 pandemic was a drastic interruption of regular teaching practices that had the potential of derailing the practice of assigning online collaborative writing…

This article describes a course design that offers an innovative approach to using client-based projects (CBPs) in technical and professional writing. It shows how teachers can incorporate CBPs in hybrid or fully virtual instruction, adapt it for a quarter or semester, and tailor it to meet students' needs. While there are standard writing…

Writing and Rhetoric 3326: Legal Writing is an introduction to legal analysis and writing. It is offered at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, a Holy Cross liberal arts university of approximately 4,300 students, mostly undergraduates. This course focuses on applied rhetoric, and is designed to give undergraduate students experience in…

Syntactic complexity is a crucial aspect of linguistic proficiency and thus understanding and supporting such development in learners is a keen concern for language teachers. Research conducted has shown growing sophistication of noun phrase structures by writers of different abilities in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010; Liu & Li,…

An approach is described that gradually transitions second-year organic chemistry students to writing full "The Journal of Organic Chemistry" ("JOC") style lab reports. The primary goal was to introduce students to and build rhetorical skills in scientific and technical writing. This was accomplished by focusing on four main…

There is no comprehensive guide for teaching psychological writing, and little is known about how often instructors teach the topic. We present a best practices guide for teaching psychological writing beyond just American Psychological Association style, discuss psychology-specific writing assignments, and examine psychological writing…

Writing activities are a sure way to assess and enhance students' science literacy. Sometimes the author's students use technical writing to communicate their lab experiences, just as practicing scientists do. Other times, they use creative writing to make connections to the topics they're learning. This article describes both types of writing…

This article reviews the deeply conflicted literature on learning transfer, especially as it applies to rhetorical knowledge and skill. It then describes a study in which six students are followed through their first co-op work term to learn about which resources they draw on as they enter a new environment of professional writing. It suggests…

In this article, the author focuses on her experiences with genre analysis. This is not a new idea or assignment. But gearing the analysis specifically toward thinking about purpose significantly narrows the focus of a typical "here's what this genre is and who uses it" essay. Genre analysis asks students to think in-depth about one particular…

In this article, the authors focus on the decision-making process that goes into professional writing and ways to emphasize ethical decision-making in writing classrooms. Professional writing has at its core an emphasis on action and audience. Certainly teachers want their students to write effectively--to serve their clients, organizations, and…

As public relations professions advance toward new media platforms, one traditional tool--the backgrounder/position paper (more technically termed white paper) remains a compelling vehicle to impart enduring professional competencies. Moreover, the skills requisite to produce a white paper can be deployed in a variety of new and traditional media…

Scientific writing is composed of a unique skill set and corresponding instructional strategies are critical to foster learning. In an age of technology, the blended instructional model provides the instrumental format for student mastery of the scientific writing competencies. In addition, the course management program affords opportunities for…

Many undergraduate chemistry curricula are devoting increasing amounts of time to teaching technical writing skills. Significantly less attention, however, is given toward training students in nontechnical writing strategies. The ability of chemistry students to communicate effectively in writing to a wide variety of audiences is an essential (and…

Carter (2007) identifies four meta-genres associated with writing activities that can help students learn discipline-specific writing skills relative to standards within a given field: these include problem solving, empirical approaches to analysis, selection of sources to use within research, and production of materials that meet accepted…