RE: teaching technical writing to engineers

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

bounce-techwr-l-106467 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com wrote on 03/24/2004 04:31:17 PM:
> I have to disagree with you, Eric. A week or two of being 
> taught how to write decent sentences would help most students,
> not just engineers. 

True. But it isn't the place of a general course to spend anymore than "in 
passing" coverage of grammar. If at the university level, the students 
grammar isn't up to snuff, well they should fail the technical writing 
course and take remedial English composition first. Grammar should be 
covered as to how it applies to various real-life useful scenarios. NEVER 
should any grammar exercise or concentration on grammar rules have class 
time devoted to it.

10 weeks of hell for a writing course?!? What was your degree in? Disagree 
with me all you want, but my studies were in engineering. There are 
already plenty of other courses in the engineering curriculum that are 
pure hell to go through and many are running concurrently. If my tech 
writing course in University had pandered to the bad writers and put me 
through hell for writing I'd immediately make the calculation of what 
failing the course would do to my chances of graduating and what the 
effect on my GPA would be or if it was possible to get the minimum pass 
grade with as little effort and class time as possible.

The experience of engineering classes is one that many outside the field 
mock but they have little comprehension of the stress and required level 
of commitment. I started in classes that were close to a hundred students. 
By the end of the first year, half had failed out. By the end of four 
years it was significantly less than half that graduated, many of the 
classes in my stream were down to less than 25 students. Of a group of 
five friends, I'm the only one that graduated with an engineering degree 
in the same discipline, and one other graduated years later in another 
engineering discipline, the rest went on to other things ...

An engineer that can write well but can't grasp fluid dynamics, 
thermodynamics, linear analysis, FEA, or design principles may get by in 
the future as a moderately-technical technical writer but is WORTHLESS as 
an engineer. Most engineering students are trying for engineering jobs, 
not a fall back position as a writer.

And you know what? One thing engineering students excel at is following 
instructions. The style guide for the final paper took little time to go 
through, we spent far more time on what depth of detail was expected. And 
here's a shocker for you, the papers were graded by grad students and 
weighted VERY heavily to the technical. Any engineering student that can't 
figure out why grammar is being marked as wrong by either talking to the 
teacher directly, the teacher's aide, looking it up in suggested 
references, or taking the required remedial course deserves to fail the 
class. I mean, they don't go over basic mathematics as they throw complex 
calculus and Laplace transforms at you, why should you be taught basic 
grammar as you're taught the more advanced concepts of technical writing 
and communication?

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer

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