EAS 400/500 Technical Communication in Engineering Practice

EAS 510 Technical Communication for Non-Native Speakers of English

EAS 400/500 Technical Communication in Engineering Practice

Instructor:                   Mary Westervelt  mwester@seas.upenn.edu
Office Hours:               By appointment.
Office/phone:              Towne 306 / 215.573.6486

Days/Time of class:   MW 4:30 - 6:00

This course is open to undergraduate and Master’s degree students who wish to improve their writing skills by practicing specific writing tasks needed in the fields of Engineering.  Oral-presentation skills are also targeted in the class.  This course is required as preparation for those who will work as Communication Fellows.

NOTE:  This course is not intended to meet the needs of students whose first language is not English. Graduate students whose first language is not English should consider taking EAS 510, Technical Communication and Academic Writing for Non-Native Speakers of English. For more information about EAS 510, contact Mary Westervelt, Technical Communication Program Director.

Pre-requisites: SEAS undergraduates must have already fulfilled their SEAS Writing Requirement.

Counts toward the Undergraduate TBS (Technology and Business in Society) requirement

Course Objectives:  At the end of the course, students will be able to do the following:

• Use written English appropriate for the academic or professional setting to clearly express themselves;
• Use appropriate formats for various documents such as memos, short reports, long reports, and proposals;
• Self-edit effectively and give feedback to other writers;
• Develop writing and assessment rubrics and apply them to their own writing and to the writing of others.

Texts:  Mike Markel, Technical Communication, 8th Edition.  Additional material is available at the Blackboard site for the course and at the web site for the textbook.

Topics: 

• Analyzing audience and purpose
• Gathering and sorting data:  citing sources, paraphrasing, evaluation of quality of sources
• Organization at all levels:  document, paragraph, sentence
• Academic style (e.g., published papers); Industry style (e.g., technical reports, promotional copy)
• Use of educated, well-formed English in all writing
• Use of logical argumentation to support a position

Students produce the following documents to develop the accuracy, clarity and conciseness of their technical writing:

• Memos and e-mail messages
• Short reports
• Long, formal reports
• Proposals
• Definitions and descriptions
• Process descriptions
• User’s guides
• Position papers

Students practice and present two oral presentations:  a product description, and a persuasive argument based on their position paper.

EAS 510 Technical Communication for Non-Native Speakers of English

Instructor:       Tom Adams   tomadams@seas.upenn.edu

Office Hours:  By appointment

Day and time of class:  Monday, 4:00 - 7:00

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

This course is for 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
• Description of a Process
• Description of a Mechanism
• Informative and Descriptive Abstracts
• Memos
• Business Letters
• Resumes and Curriculum Vitae
• Short Reports
• Formal Oral Presentations

Research Skills

• Selecting Sources
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Paraphrasing and Synthesizing Information
• Selecting and Citing Sources
• Using Quotations

Developing an Academic Writing Style

• Technical and Sub-technical Terms
• Conciseness
• Obsolescence
• Gender-neutral Vocabulary
• Writing and Editing Drafts
• Using Graphic Materials: Tables and Figures

Patterns of Writing

• Analogies: Usefulness and Limitations
• Cause, Effect, and Correlation
• Comparison: Similarities and Differences
• Definition of Terms
• Organizing Information
• Chronological
• Parts of an object
• Simple to Complex or Familiar to Unfamiliar
• General to Specific
• Examples for Illustration and Support
• Markers Showing Purpose

Grammar

• Articles, Definite and Indefinite
• Hypotheticality and Conditionals
• Indirect/Reported Speech
• Negation and Primary Negators
• Passive Voice and Ergative Verbs
• Relative Clauses, Restrictive and Non-restrictive
• Subjunctive Mood
• Verbs: Phrasal and Lexical
• Verb time:  past versus non-past focus