Department of English Language and Literature : Instructional Objectives for Technical and Professional Writing Programs

At the completion of a technical writing course, a student will:

• Practice writing methods used in professional settings in preparation for writing tasks that are expected after graduation in students’ professional lives.
• Explore writing and research processes from problem-solving through information gathering, planning, drafting, revising, editing and formatting to produce a variety of workplace-oriented communication.
• Analyze audiences’ needs and expectations, and make effective adaptations in organization of information, detail, tone, diction, and sentence structure for different intended audiences.
•  Employ differences in writing purpose, format, structure and delivery as relevant to or required by the situation that prompts the writing. 
• Use recent technology productively in the preparation and production of projects. 
•  Produce a variety of writing assignments required in different disciplines or intended for vocational tasks. 
• Develop awareness of the issues and applications that affect international and other-cultural audiences.  
•   Discriminate between different types of data and select reliable sources of information  appropriate for the writing situation.
•   Effectively integrate primary and secondary source information into their documents and provide accurate and appropriate citations.  
•    Work collaboratively to prepare or produce writing projects.
•  Assess their own writing with increasing insight and make useful suggestions about the drafts produced by peers.
•  Produce documents according to the standards and in the formats appropriate to or required by the situation
• Demonstrate competent editing and revising skills through progressive drafts of documents.
• Apply instructional information to “real world” writing activities and situations. 
• Move beyond mere “competent” writing to make effective rhetorical choices in keeping with the demands of career-writing