EAS 510: Technical Communication for Non-Native Speakers of English

Counts as an elective;  check your specific department for details.

The  focus of this class is to meet the needs of SEAS graduate students who use English as a second language and who need to develop the communication skills that their academic and professional communities expect of them. The primary emphasis is on formal written communication with a secondary emphasis on formal spoken communication.  The former is addressed through completion of assignments such as correspondence, papers, and reports; the latter is addressed through oral presentation of papers and reports.  The content of this course is adjusted according to the specific needs of students, but can be expected to cover the following:

Types of Communication

• Research papers
• Position papers
• Short reports
• Description of a process
• Description of a mechanism
• Types of abstracts
• Memos and e-mail messages
• Formal oral presentations

Research Skills

• Selecting and citing sources
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Paraphrasing and synthesizing information
• Using quotations

Developing an Academic Writing Style

• Technical vocabulary
• Conciseness
• Coherency
• Parallel structure and use of lists
• Writing and editing drafts
• Using tables and figures

Grammar

• Article usage and generic reference in technical writing
• Hypothetical and conditional language in proposals and discussion/conclusion sections of papers
• Expressing degree of certainty when discussing results
• Indirect/reported speech when giving background information
• Passive voice in process descriptions
• Relative clauses and other complex structures used to add logical organization
• Verb time:  past versus non-past focus in process descriptions and background sections of papers