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Teaching Engineers to Write?
$hecky asks: "I teach several sections of a first-year writing course at a small, private college where most of the students are, or plan to be, some flavor of engineer. Right now, I'm planning next year's courses and wondering what has (and hasn't) helped Slashdot readers become better writers. Also, I'm wondering which writing skills you, in your roles as workers and teachers, would most like to see emphasized in first year writing courses. Put another way, where do you see people who have completed first-year writing courses screwing up their writing, and which experiences, practices, and pressures you think have made you a better writer?"
"First, let's head a couple wagons off at the pass. Let's avoid the vulgar confusion of good writing and good grammar. Horrifying grammar is a common problem, but its not a problem I can fix in a semester-long class. About a century of research tells us that native English speakers aren't rule-based parsers, so teaching grammatical rules (like when to use the subjunctive or where to put commas) doesn't improve compliance. The best strategy on those fronts is a habitual reading of clearly-formatted texts and scrupulous multi-stage review of everything you write, both of which are somewhat outside the scope of a semester-long class.
Second, let's say that the chief virtue of good writing is clarity. While some kinds of writing prize being strategically elliptical, and others prize brisk and clever metaphor, most of my students aren't writing grant applications, patents, or poems. So metaphor, however brisk or clever, is out of place if it obscures its subject.
Third, this course is a cultural studies type, rather than a workshop. This means that the course has a topic of inquiry about which all of the students read and write for a semester and that, while being reasonably complex, the topic should accommodate students who are going to become accountants, math teachers, and advertisers. It's common for engineering students to wash out into the business school, and there's a significant contingent of humanities students as well. Anything other than a general interest topic (like the 1960s, ideas about the American West, or fairy tales) isn't an option.
So think back to your writing. What has made you more comfortable with your writing, or eager to improve what you've written? What inspires you to read outside of a classroom or mandated context? Was has impressed on you the importance of revision, or at least of reviewing your writing at intervals? Which parts of which college (or high school) curricula have helped you write better? Finally, which aspects of your students' or co-workers' writing do you find most troublesome?"
Second, let's say that the chief virtue of good writing is clarity. While some kinds of writing prize being strategically elliptical, and others prize brisk and clever metaphor, most of my students aren't writing grant applications, patents, or poems. So metaphor, however brisk or clever, is out of place if it obscures its subject.
Third, this course is a cultural studies type, rather than a workshop. This means that the course has a topic of inquiry about which all of the students read and write for a semester and that, while being reasonably complex, the topic should accommodate students who are going to become accountants, math teachers, and advertisers. It's common for engineering students to wash out into the business school, and there's a significant contingent of humanities students as well. Anything other than a general interest topic (like the 1960s, ideas about the American West, or fairy tales) isn't an option.
So think back to your writing. What has made you more comfortable with your writing, or eager to improve what you've written? What inspires you to read outside of a classroom or mandated context? Was has impressed on you the importance of revision, or at least of reviewing your writing at intervals? Which parts of which college (or high school) curricula have helped you write better? Finally, which aspects of your students' or co-workers' writing do you find most troublesome?"
I think my biggest problem as a writer has been just learning to get over myself. Adding chiasmus and clever literary trope seems clever to me at the time, but doesn't really do anything for whoever is reading my stuff.
Another weird habit I have is writing everything as if it were going to be read out loud. This makes many of my sentences unreasonably short. Which is good, when read it my voice. But most people on the web don't read in my voice.
(you can see what I'm talking about if you check out the newer writing on my website)
The type of writing that garners the most interest from young minds is creative writing rather than the more mundane technical or analytical types. These are engineers. They need to be able to abstract and yet be "technically" correct.
Writing assignments that start with a foundation, akin to how Sean Connery's character in Finding Forrester helped his apprentice stir his creative juices, can be really effective. I remember quite clearly an English teacher I had in eighth grade that would give us assignments like that. He would start us off with a paragraph setting a scene or introducing a character and we would have to take the story forward from there. Obviously, there are some additional parameters that you as the instructor can wrap around the assignment, but the concept is something that works well for a mixed audience of students.
Just a suggestion.
As a person with a degree in Electrical Engineering, who then went to grad school for secondary ed physics and math, I found that the classes that helped my writing the most were those classes that a lot of people dread, the gen-ed classes. I found that my Pscychology, the grad level Education classes, and anthropology type classes really improved my writing. The reason is that I was made to work outside of my comfort level of math and physics, and actually do reasearch, put coherent thoughts together, and think about what I was writing. I never had much of a problem with clarity in my writings, and personally I prefer to write things for clarity. However, in the business world, presenting ideas with "elegance and grace" and a good pitch will often get your proposal more consideration than just pure clarity. Final reccomendation, make them learn to use more colorful word choices, and write on things that they may be interested in, but do not have any great knowledge of.
First, get every student a copy of "The Elements of Style". It's a very small book originally written around WWI. It points out the most frequent mistakes in writing. It's an excellent book, following the tips within will make anyone a better writer.
Second, teach people to write to their audience. Far too often I see engineers write a recomendation to a customer that points out technical merits or problems, but doesn't frame those issues with reguard to the customer's business. A COO probably doesn't care about the problems with an ACL entry in a VPN setup. They do care if their employees can't work while on the road.
Third, while you might not be able to help people with their grammar or spelling, make sure they understand that those things do matter and need to be fixed. One of my co-workers is Jeopardy smart, but his writing is awful. If you were to judge him by his writing you'd think he was a complete idiot. Proofreading is sometimes more important that the initial writing. Students who have severe grammar problems should read their work out loud to themselves. That will help a LOT.
What you are illustrating is present tense vs. present participle.
:)
Here is an illustration of active vs. passive voice:
Active: The boy rides his bike to the shore.
Passive: The bike is ridden to the shore by the boy.
You are correct in saying that active voice is the more direct and succinct of the two voices, and that technical writers should prefer it over passive voice. But it helps if your example illustrates the correct principle.
(Here comes the grammar nazi moddage...)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Active: The boy *rides* his bike to the store.
I agree with your suggestion, but your example is a little off. "The bike is ridden to the store by the boy." would be a passive sentence. Notice the subject of the sentence is the bike rather than the boy. In passive sentences, actions are done to things instead of subjects performing actions.
Present writing as an engineering problem. This is an accurate, if somewhat unconventional, way to look at it. When you write, you have a goal (communicate a certain set of ideas), some constraints (target length, assumed audience, etc.) and some criteria for ranking proposed solutions (shorter is better, linking ideas in multiple ways gives a more robust treatment, etc.)
This fits neatly into the mold of classic engineering problems. Presented this way, they should be able to (with only a little guidance) bring their full skill set to bear on the problem. For example:
One of the biggest problems with teaching people to write is getting them to read what they have written, think about it, and rewrite it until it does what they wanted it to. Here, at least, engineers should have a head start over most students, insofar as they are used to the fact that your first stab at a design is almost never viable.
--MarkusQ
In Soviet Russia, the bike rides you.
Look, there's no need to get fancy - in my experience you will make a massive improvement in most (young) people's writing today just by teaching them how to use apostrophes and the difference between words like 'there' and 'their'. Mixing up 'than' and 'then' also seems to be something Americans, in particular, do a *lot* (something to do with accent, maybe ?). Speaking of which, telling people "words" like 'alot' aren't really words would also be a handy thing to do.
The state of English teaching today is atrocious, with many *teachers* not really knowing fundamental rules like when to use apostrophes, etc. Modern teaching philosophies like "as long as the message is communicated" and "it doesn't matter if you make mistakes, as long as your attempt is reasonable", combined with the steady downturn in reading (of "good" writing) and the increasing number of children (and many young adults) who are (/were) brought up with the TV as a babysitter are the prime culprits IMHO. The increasing pervasiveness of IMing and SMSing are only going to exacerbate an already bad situation. We've reached the point where even remotely correct English is unusual to see outside of carefully proofread professional documents and I, personally, am at the point now where I notice it more if someone spells "you're" _correctly_, rather than it's ubiquitous erroneous substitute, "your" (particularly on the web) .
The best way for people to improve their writing is to read, read, read. Not web pages and blogs (which are likely riddled with errors - particularly if they're written by, or targeted at, younger people - and just create a feedback loop of bad habits) but professionally published books and journals. Steer clear of low-end/populist magazines and tabloid-style newspapers, as well, as they are likely employing youger writers who will be making the same mistakes I'm talking about above - even if they *have* a degree of some sort.
The kind of attitudes you need to instil in your students are "close enough is *not* good enough", "just getting the message across os *not* sufficient" and "written language has rules, just like engineering, that should be followed to remove the possibility of ambiguity".
I have no doubt that I have also made technical mistakes just writing this, however, my point is that the level of basic spelling and grammar is so poor these days, that you don't need to be teaching complicated grammatical constructs to improve people's writing, you just need to be teaching the basics.
1. I second the active voice! Related: favor strong verbs (over preferential expression for nouns)
2. be brief,
3. and direct: assume the reader reads only the summary
4. and intellectually neutral: cast what you hope for as a theory, and acknowledge the opinions of others likewise.
In the end, good writing reflects good thinking. (But avoid cliches like the plague.)
Those charts can be useful cheat sheets for non-native speakers of English. I teach writing (and general ESL) in Sweden, and grammar is a problem.
I used to get A's in all my high school English classes, no problem. So nothing really impressed the importance of revision on me until I took freshman writing at college. What the instructor did was have us write 5 or 6 essays throughout the semester. Then, our last (and biggest) grade was just a rewrite of one of our other papers. It was graded on improvement from the first draft, not overall quality. Then he had a conference with everyone in the class to discuss with them why their paper was better the second time. It worked quite well, too. The importance of revision was definitely the best lesson I took out of that course.
Wouldn't it be more correct to say "As a (former, and, I hope, future) writing instructor"? as "hopefully" is an (almost universally mis-used) adverb?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You're partly right. I think what you're trying to say is that grammar ought to be the smallest concern for a writer, but that's not the same as saying it's not important. You cannot write well if you use bad grammar. E.g. sentence this you no idea means what have (at least, at first, anyway). To put it simply, good grammar is necessary, but not sufficient, for good writing.
I would agree with this completely -- the best use of a semester would be to show students how to approach the organization of written information. This should actually be second nature to engineers, as they frequently are called upon to organize and categorize things, yet their writing tends to lack the clarity of purpose that a good writer brings through proper organization.
One thing I notice is that people unaccustomed to writing formal papers tend to adopt a very stilted and affected style, thinking it sounds more "official", but it is usually just confusing. As students are writing, some of the most helpful things you can show them are the areas where they sound unnatural. While there's entirely too many people writing in an overly-conversational way online (essentially writing the words they would speak), one of the keys to compelling writing is to be natural and give it some personality.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
(Yes! Now the engineers get to play with grammatical analysis tools and run them on their documents, which was a really cool thing back in the just-after-punchcards days
Some engineers are really good at grammar and spelling, and consider computer languages to be fundamentally the same processes of clear and beautiful thought as human languages. Others handle them as entirely different things - can't spell worth beenz and don't grammar thier English, even though they spend all day producing flawless syntax in artificial languages. Those of us in the former group don't really understand the latter, and find their behaviour annoying, but it's such a common pattern that it's obviously a different set of mental structures approaches to information processing or something, on the level of spoken-vs-written-vs-visual focus, as opposed to laziness and stupidity (:-) (Though the folks who don't find grammar and spelling natural should really use spell-checkers...) And I'm not ragging on non-native English speakers here - it's extremely common in native speakers, while the non-native speakers I've worked with often learned formal English grammar in school and don't use many of the more subtle verb forms of colloquial speech, though they do often have problems with spelling.
But as the original article says, grammar and spelling are much different issues than organization of content. There's a real value in teaching engineers how to write.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Before I begin with my opinion on this particular subject matter, I'd like to make it known that I am an Electrical Engineering, and Professional and Technical Writing double major. Take that for whatever it's worth. It doesn't mean this post will be entirely grammatically correct, mostly because I happen to not be an anal engineer.
First of all, since this class is dominated by engineering students, I recomend that there be at least a couple of weeks worth of instruction on how to properly write a lab paper. This is the form of document most engineers will find themselves writing throughout their lives, and most students have no idea how to do it. The first thing that must be instilled upon an engineering student is to unlearn all those pretty grammatical strategies that serve to lengthen documents. Subject redundancies, multiple titles for the same object, and the preperatory phrases. (i.e. "First of all") In addition to the instruction on how to be concise a professor should instruct students on how to properly use passive voice. In a lab report, the use of I, me, we, etc... should be strictly forbidden, thus passive voice becomes the most useful way to convey action while keeping the focus on the subject, not on who is doing it. The main problem with passive voice is that it tends to become convoluted and confusing if misused. Thus instruction is necessary. Placement of graphs, and order of topics should also be covered.
Beyond the instruction of lab writing, students should learn how to write towards an audience. A lot of this topic will run counter to what I said about lab reports, so be sure to let students know that labs are an animal all their own and etiquette in lab reports should be largely ignored in most other documents. Writing to an audience is crucial to a budding engineer, especially those engineers who lack certain social graces. Is the reader going to be a boss? A consumer? The marketing department? Fellow engineers? An engineer needs to learn how to adress each of these people, and learn how to be best understood. Intruction should be given on how to properly set up a traditional letter, how to properly use grammar in an e-mail, and how to dumb down the technical jargon of instructions so that they can be disseminated to the masses. Have students practice writing several types of document. It is my belief that a writing course should be taught with a generous helping of in and out of class writing assignments, to galvanize the concepts taught in lectures.
Teach resume writing... Good god most people, angineers and otherwise, can't write a resume to save their life...
Motivation. Most engineers can't write. It's a fact, and given the intelligence and capabilities of most engineers, a rather sad fact. Now the easiest motivation to use is by intilling the fact that engineers that can write get paid more. The average boost in paycheck for an engineer with an english or tech writing minor is $5000 a year. Not so bad for an extra 4 or 5 courses. It will also help in job hunting after leaving college. Engineers who can write, and deal well with people are rarities that are gobbled up by companies in a hurry. It gives them a competitive edge, and minimizes the need for additional employees just to act as liason between the engineers and the marketing/administration department.
I have yet to find a way to make myself, nevermind anyone else, review and revise my work. Good luck with that.
I'd be a little more helpful in general but I'm writing this at 4:30AM and I think I want to sleep. If the OP or anyone else has any question on style or grammer in their technical writing feel free to shoot me an e-mail. Most of my work is in grant proposals and an upcoming instruction manual for engineering programs and professors on incorporating team building and tech writing into first and second year college engineering curriculum.(Written in conjuction with The Birch Group, LLC.)
Please, try not to sound so stupid...
So as a former writing instructor, you should know that correct capitilization helps the reader more readily parse the sentance structure, and should be used even when the writing style is 'informal'. Lack of capitalization is just plain laziness.
E-mail, IM, and particularly SMS is killing proper writing techniques.
A One that isn't cold, is scarcely a One at all.
You said it, but I thought it. Nothing says to me "not worth reading" as a lump of text unbroken by paragraphs.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
All the people I know who can write well are people who read extensively for pleasure. As far as I'm concerned, outside of Mathematical pursuits, the majority of education should be replaced by efforts to whet people's interest to read, and then not harassing them with lectures. The average lecturer, while by no means a stupid person, is far less eloquent or erudite than some of those whose thoughts one can encounter by way of the written english word. Try to convince your students that they have something to gain by reading Jane Austen, or Mark Twain. Ideally, go back in time and convince them of this when they're nine or ten, and install enough gumption in them to ignore much of their 'schooling' in favor of their education.
It's clear that you think that your writing is well above average. However due to the lack of paragraphs I find your post to be the most unreadable on this page.
Unfortunatly this inability to split what you write about into short blocks of text that address seperate concerns is worrying in an engineer. I suspect I wouldn't like to read your code either.
Anything other than a general interest topic (like the 1960s, ideas about the American West, or fairy tales) isn't an option.
These are TERRIBLE subjects for engineers. Do you really want someone that enjoys deep, scientific analysis to suffer trying to analyze the 1960s, or the American West, or fairy tales?
And analyze he will! Or fail trying.
Some engineers simply won't put up with all the fuzzy thinking that's permitted in the humanities. They'll try to become social scientists first before writing the first sentence.
Remember, they're going to be engineers designing million dollar structures and systems. People MAY DIE if these engineers make a mistake. They need to know the science first. They need to understand their area thoroughly before proceeding.
Now you come along and ask them to engineer a paper about an enormous subject like the 1960s. Just how do you expect to them to be able to do that?So, in their desperation, they give you a mediocre paper back or nothing at all.
Remember your audience. You're not dealing with poets.
One skill on the formal writing front that definitely needs improvement is the ability in writing to selectively group common ideas while maintaining logical breakpoints between them.
In other words: know when to start a new paragraph. It immeasurably improves readability. Take a breath, dude.
Lots of good stuff has already been recommended, so I'll add what I haven't seen here, apart from joining the voices that recommend writing for your audience; never let that though leave your mind.
Precision is key, whether practicing technical or creative writing. It is a truism that every word counts. Whether you are expounding about 'a thing', 'the thing', 'each thing', or 'every thing', you must be precise about which thingy you are on about.
To be sure, precision is not an easy writing skill to learn; you need to be able to ruthlessly excise fluff from your scribblings, and reread your own words from the perspective of others.
While I agree with the OP that grammar is not critical at the first stage, basic punctuation is essential - the well known 'eats shoots and leaves' example proves that point.
Metaphor might be left aside in the early stages, but English is an idiomatic language and much of its colour comes from those idioms.
From what you have written, you are teaching folk who will be writing from positions of professional authority. That being so, metaphor is unlikely to be an issue, but common faults such as tautology and cliches will be - their use diminishes the authority of writer in the reader's mind.
Now to a specific point of personal pedantry: The clearest divide that I see between authoritative and also ran writing is in the use of prepositions.
In your own case you said, "First, let's head a couple wagons off at the pass". In this case, the missing preposition after 'couple' is commonly seen on the internet - it's kinda slang brung over from speech - but would be edited immediately (both in the US and elsewhere). No-one would say, 'a pride lions' or 'a swarm bees'.
That wasn't meant as an ad hominem attack, but it served to make my point. The list of abuse of/in/with propositions is long, but, used correctly, they add precision to a text.
If I were in your shoes, I would want to make clear to my students that there is a broad range of topics to keep in mind when writing, but that mastery isn't necessary to communicate authoritatively. However, to ignore them will result in writing that never gains the air of authority and will thus be treated as such.
One final suggestion: midmaps. For folk who find difficulty in moving their ideas from mind to paper, mindmaps are often a boon.
Marc
The best strategy on those fronts is a habitual reading of clearly-formatted texts and scrupulous multi-stage review of everything you write, both of which are somewhat outside the scope of a semester-long class.
You could try to impress this point on the students. One value of a class like this is improving their writing ability. Another value is improving their ability to improve their own writing down the road.
Aside from grammar, what I've found most useful is peer review. Knowing that my peers will be reading a piece of text dramatically improves my desire to produce quality writing. At the same time, correcting others' writing improves my skills at critiquing my own writing and draws my attention to errors that I might be making myself. Being able to see the difference between a great essay, a mediocre essay, and a lousy essay will go a long way towards convincing them that they should put some effort in beyond the first draft. You can also get a lot more write-review cycles in because you don't have to read them all yourself.
It got rid of a lot of the fear, and it got me started.
I now write considerably better than I talk, but that's another story.
Slashdot is a great place to learn to write, because any time you make the slightest grammatical or spelling error, at least 10 people will bitch at you about it.
I figured out many years after highschool that the reason why so few people understand how to write:
I think it is quite possible that most of the English teachers in North America know less about technical writing or writing essays in the social sciences than the average engineering undergrad. Infact, English teachers are the least qualified people to teach you how to write.
PhysEd teachers have a better chance of teaching you how to write!
(The most annoying part of communicating with my coworkers is translating English written with Chineese grammar into English with English grammar.)
The single best thing that helped my writing skills was editing the work of others, and I would encourage this as part of a writing course. In my case, I was editing a horrible version of bureaucrateese with long-winded phrases and clauses, all in the third person past tense. That is, after all, how many of us engineers were taught to write -- don't worry about the poor reader. Seeing a writing style we thought was good, from the reader's perspective, quickly breaks bad habits.
The next great lesson I got was learning French as an adult, where grammar was taught extensively. I've already forgotten all the French I learned, but it taught me a lot about English grammar. (I'm not suggesting you also include French grammar in your course.) Otherwise, how would I know what a subjunctive is -- we were never taught it.
In other words, if I were teaching your course[grin], I would not only include writing, but encourage ways of looking at others' writing.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)