A BRIEF HISTORY OF CRITICAL ABSTRACTS OPENS THIS PAPER, FOLLOWED BY AN ANALYSIS OF THE MEANING OF THE WORDS "CRITICAL,""EVALUATIVE,""ABSTRACT," AND "REVIEW." AFTER DISCUSSING ONE OF THE PRIMARY PURPOSES OF CRITICAL ABSTRACTS, HELP TO SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL PERSONNEL IN MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT PUBLICATIONS TO OBTAIN, THE MEDIA OF THESE ABSTRACTS…

This handbook outlines procedures for planning and conducting follow-up studies of clients involved in chemical dependency programs. It is organized into eight chapters. Chapter I discusses purposes and applications of client follow-up studies. Studies may be used in program evaluation, program design, and staff development. Also, the study itself…

Draft specifications for an undergraduate course in professional writing, designed to teach practical writing skills, are presented in this paper. The paper notes the need for such a course to prepare professional personnel for the writing they do in their jobs, and it suggests that the course be aimed at juniors and seniors in liberal arts,…

This study considers the effects of ability, attitude, and pressure on army writing. A survey questionnaire was designed on the basis of a review of the literature on causes of organizational writing problems; this was administered to 168 army officers attending the Army Command and General Staff College. An entire class at the Command and General…

In a study of the readability of Air Force regulations, the writer-estimated reading grade level (RGL) for each regulation was rechecked by using the FORCAST readability formula. In four of the seven cases, the regulation writers underestimated the RGL of their regulation by more than one grade level. None of the writers produced a document with…

This paper discusses attitudes toward technical-writing courses, presenting four reasons that some people view those courses with disdain and demonstrating why those reasons are inappropriate. These attitudes reflect disdain for what many people take to be the dull, unimaginative, nonhumanistic nature of the subject. In refutation, the paper…

The communication skills center at Carnegie Mellon University helps individual students master the technical writing skills necessary for specific disciplines and professions. Through collaboration with the instructors in the various disciplines, the program operates both as a consulting service outside the center (devising and evaluating the…

An English course tailored to the needs of non-English majors has been developed and implemented at West Texas State University. Students from the business world as well as from a wide variety of disciplines participate in the course, which empahsizes the principles of communication. In addition to a text specifically written for the course,…

This paper describes an instructional unit that prepares students as job seekers. The five-session instructional unit employs a team-teaching approach in which a technical writing instructor stresses format, content, and mechanics, and a counselor emphasizes decision making, intrapersonal communications, and interview techniques. The following…

The potential of foundation support for educational grants is addressed in terms of expectancy based on past performance, types of foundations, and the foundation field (e.g., "general welfare"). Details are given briefly about community foundations, family foundations, business foundations, and foundation research. Procedures are outlined for…

The development and content of a freshman engineering program that stresses writing, speaking, and listening skills are described. In conjunction with writing expository essays and research reports, the students make demonstrations, deliver informative and persuasive speeches, and participate in panel discussions and debates. Videotaping,…

This special issue of "The Leaflet" focuses on various aspects of composition. Included are articles on such topics as writing instruction as a process, not a product; technical writing in high school; using "junk" material to stimulate creative writing; discovering one's own voice in writing; teaching writing to high school students by instilling…

This workshop guide is designed to help civil service students both learn to use good grammar and develop their technical writing skills. Discussed are such topics as nouns, gender, number, person and case, appositives, pronouns, mood, verbs, (transitive and intransitive), adjectives and adverbs, comparisons, articles, conjunctions, infinitives,…

Designed primarily for report writers working for the government, this syllabus provides objectives for helping writers to understand the principles of report writing, to apply the principles, and to edit and review reports in terms of those principles. It also contains graphs and charts, and discusses such topics as search and research, limiting…

The Michigan Vocational Education Service, in September 1972, implemented a Performance Objectives Development Project to generate objectives for all vocational/technical education programs in the State. It was necessary that each school district adopt a set of minimum performance objectives for each program to retain the district's priority for…