Re: Teaching a writing class for co-workers

Subject: Re: Teaching a writing class for co-workers
From: Anthony Davey <ant -at- ant-davey -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 22:27:59 +0000


Ashley,

Good luck. I went to a similar class a few years ago; "How to write articles that people want to read". It was populated by people that already wrote for a living and it took two days.

However, to make your editing job as easy as possible (as Keith said, you don't want to, nor will you be able to teach them the fundamentals of writing in one hour) do include the five Ws (four Ws and one H). Not the usual who is this about, what is it about, where and when did it happen, etc. so much as who am I writing this for, why would they want to know it, when would they use it, etc.

That way perhaps you will get the type of information that the potential readers of the newsletter will be interested in. There's no point editing articles that won't get read and it's a waste of your time trying to extract the useful information from a diatribe on "how wonderful this 'feature' of our software is that we've developed", when only two customers may ever use it to its full potential.

Just a thought, hope it helps.

Ant

Ashley Gottfried wrote:

Hello all,

My manager recently asked me to teach a one-hour class on writing. My potential students are product support and consultants who compose articles on our software and its related technology. The Curriculum Developer and I then edit these articles before they are published in a monthly newsletter distributed to our users.
The intent of this class is to improve the quality of the articles. However, I'm not quite sure how to approach this class. I know that I cannot teach the fundamentals of writing in just an hour. I do, however, want to make the best use of the time I do have to help students with writing. So far, I'm thinking of covering the following topics:
* Review the article writing process (since many of the students have never written one of these articles but will in upcoming months).
* Demonstrate how to use the correct template and styles. (I spend a good amount of time each month applying styles to these articles.)
* Give tips on organizing information. * Provide guidelines on writing clear procedures.
I'm wondering if anyone on the list has put together a similar class and had any advice to offer. Do you have any short writing exercises I could use in class that you'd be willing to share? Are there topics that I should include that I've missed?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Ashley Gottfried





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References:
Teaching a writing class for co-workers: From: Ashley Gottfried

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