Department of English Language and Literature

Learning Outcomes for Professional and Technical Writing Courses

English 2960: Professional and Business Writing: 
 
The Four Main Focus Areas of Pedagogy
The core of this course can be summarized in the following four skill area:
  • Research Skills (using primary and library research to discover and employ information)
  • Correspondence Skills (learning the generic conventions of each)
  • Promotional Writing Skills (may or may not use primary research; to disseminate information; to inform and persuade public audiences that organizations communicate with)
  • Visual Communication Skills (may appear as separate assignments or as components of other assignments)
 
Learning Outcomes for ENGL 2960
 
The following learning objectives form the basis of successful pedagogy in this course. The goal of each assignment is for the student to demonstrate mastery of the following learning objectives:
  1. Understand professional writing by studying management communication contexts and genres, researching contemporary business topics, analyzing quantifiable data discovered by researching, and constructing finished professional workplace documents.
  2. Recognize, explain, and use the formal elements of specific genres of organizational communication: white papers, recommendation and analytical reports, proposals, memorandums, web pages, wikis, blogs, business letters, and promotional documents.
  3. Understand the ethical, international, social, and professional constraints of audience, style, and content for writing situations a.) among managers or co-workers and colleagues of an organization, and b.) between organizations, or between an organization and the public.
  4. Understand the current resources (such as search engines and databases) for locating secondary information, and also understand the strategies of effective primary data gathering.
  5. Understand how to critically analyze data from research; incorporate it into assigned writing clearly, concisely, and logically; and attribute the source with proper citation. 
  6. Practice the unique qualities of professional rhetoric and writing style, such as sentence conciseness, clarity, accuracy, honesty, avoiding wordiness or ambiguity, using direct order organization, readability, coherence and transitional devices.
  7. Explore different format features in both print, multimedia and html documents, and develop document design skills.
  8. Revise and edit effectively in all assignments, including informal media (such as email messages to the instructor).
  9. Develop professional work habits, including those necessary for effective collaboration and cooperation with other students, instructors and Service Learning contact representatives.
 

English 2950: Scientific & Technical Report Writing: 

 
The Four Main Focus Areas of Pedagogy
The core of this course can be summarized in the following four skill areas:
  • Research Skills (using primary and library research to discover information)
  • Correspondence Skills (learning the generic conventions of each)
  • Explanatory or Demonstrative Writing Skills (to disseminate technical information to either non-technical  or technical readers, such as descriptions, instructions, informational handouts, FAQs, etc. [not persuasive, per se])
  • Visual Communication Skills (may appear as separate assignments or as components of other assignments)
 
Course Learning Outcomes for ENGL 2950
 
Students will develop competency in the following areas:
  1. Participate actively in writing activities (individually and in collaboration) that model effective scientific and technical communication in the workplace.
  2. Understand how to apply technical information and knowledge in practical documents for a variety of a.) professional audiences (including peers and colleagues or management) and b) public audiences.
  3. Practice the unique qualities of professional writing style, including sentence conciseness, readability, clarity, accuracy, honesty, avoiding wordiness or ambiguity, previewing, using direct order organization, objectivity, unbiased analyzing, summarizing, coherence and transitional devices.
  4. Recognize, explain, and use the rhetorical strategies and the formal elements of these specific genres of technical communication: technical abstracts, data based research reports, instructional manuals, technical descriptions, web pages, wikis, and correspondence.
  5. Collect, analyze, document, and report research clearly, concisely, logically, and ethically; understand the standards for legitimate interpretations of research data within scientific and technical communities.
  6. Recognize and develop professional format features in print, html, and multimedia modes, as well as use appropriate nonverbal cues and visual aids.
  7. Revise and edit effectively in all assignments, including informal media (such as email to the instructor).
  8. Develop professional work habits, including those necessary for effective collaboration and cooperation with other students, instructors, and Service
  9. Learning contact representatives.
 
Last Updated: 6/27/22