February 8, 2017
Critical Reading Assignment
Below are two possible assignments.
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April 21, 2016
Resume workshop
This resume peer review is based on Johnson-Sheehan’s revision discussion–the idea is that based on the time you have to revise, you need to approach it like triage: the most vital issues first.
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April 21, 2016
Resume Workshop
Most employers give an initial resume read about 15 seconds.
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April 25, 2016
Menu Activity
1. Pair up students.
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April 26, 2016
Bomb Shelter Negotiation Exercise
This is an old classic, customized for our area, culture and a class of 20 students, but you can always add more judges. I use this exercise when we are talking about persuasive writing, as we are discussing the proposal assignment (chapter 8 of Technical Communication Today). It can be seen as bigger group version of the elevator pitch (p. 223). It takes 35-60 minutes, depending on how many questions are asked.
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April 26, 2016
Proposal Panel of Experts–In-Class Proposal Peer Review
1. Assign each student to become an “expert” on a specific section of the proposal (I divided them into 1. Memo format, Introduction Paragraph, Definition and Research Procedures; 2. Outline and Schedule; 3. Literature Review; 4. Preliminary Bibliography, including style guide) by reading about the requirements of that section and finding good examples. If they are working in teams, have each team member become an expert on a different area of the proposal.
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October 23, 2015
Paragraphing
1. Read paragraph example out loud
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July 15, 2015
Composing Effective Reports
The purpose of this presentation is to overview several common sections found in most types of reports. Because there are many kinds of reports, you may want to customize this presentation to fit your own 314 project. Consider deleting sections you don’t need, reorganizing sections, or adding new sections based on the existing template. (You can right-click any slide in the left pane and duplicate it in order to create your own slides using the same design.) The information contained in this presentation is derived from the textbooks of Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Paul V. Anderson.
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October 15, 2014
Composing Effective Technical Definitions
Technical definitions are common throughout many genres of technical communication. They can range in length from short, simple sentences all the way up to multi-page documents. At some point in 314, you will want to discuss with students how to write definitions, and you can use this brief presentation and activity to teach them.
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September 8, 2014
Composing Effective Instructions
This presentation discusses the genre of instructions, which your students should be working on in ENGL 314. Teaching readers how to complete a process can seem like a straightforward task, but there are many rhetorical and functional considerations involved in developing a successful set of instructions. The information contained in this presentation is derived from the textbooks of Richard Johnson-Sheehan and Paul V. Anderson.
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