eng522 syllabus

Eng502: Syllabus

College:
Dept.:
Course:
Credit:
Instructor:
Office:
Phone:
Email:

Prerequisites:

Arts and Letters
English
English 502: Advanced Technical Writing
3 hrs.
John Rothfork
BAA 324 (Babbitt Academic Annex) suspended by Covid-19
928.523.0559
Please send email using the BBLearn Message tool rather than sending mail to my NAU address. BBLearn will archive our mail & I will be able to find earlier messages you sent.
http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/jgr6
Graduate status

Advanced

The course title implies ("advanced") that you have taken an undergraduate course in technical writing. This is not, however, a prerequisite. Most undergraduate tech writing courses give you guided practice at:

describing mechanisms, processes, & theories
writing resumes & job letters
writing memos, email, & formal letters
writing proposals
writing formal reports comprised of:
- a letter of transmittal
- title page
- table of contents
- list of figures
- informative abstract
- review of the literature
- body (using the decimal outline system, headings, & graphics)
- bibliography & other appended material

The course should also have familiarized you with the practices of:

developing a document using headings & a decimal outline
incorporating graphics & visuals
doing recurrent audience analysis
team writing
the technical writing process of revising writer centered documents to create reader-centered documents

The authors of the texts will offer advice on these & other topics, assuming that you are familiar with the basic ideas & practices. For more information on an undergraduate course, see the publisher's site in support of Mike Markel's text, Technical Communication.

Texts:

Component Text

Application

Theory Dan Jones. Technical Writing Style. 0-205-19722-1. Allyn Bacon. Amazon.

Gerald J. Alred, Walter E. Oliu, Charles T. Brusaw. The Professional Writer: A Guide for Advanced Technical Writing. isbn 0-312-00248-3. St. Martin's Press; Amazon. The book is/was out of print, but Amazon indicates it remains in print. In any case, used copies remain available.

There are no exercises or assignments based on Alred's text, so it is optional.

What We Do in the Course

Jones: We study through a chapter in Jones for each of the 10 lessons & do some of the exercises. These offer most of the points available in the first 5 lessons. The last 5 lessons focus on case studies.

Cases: We will work through 5 case studies

Anders High School smoking problem
Smoke detector description
Blueprint problem
pH meter problem
Fly-ash permits proposal

I treat the blueprint cases in depth to demonstrate techniques of audience analysis & rhetorical strategy. You should apply similar skills in rhetorical analysis to solve subsequent cases, not just report data.

How to submit case study documents: The appearance & layout of these memos, formal letters, or reports are important. Submit these as attachments.

Acceptable file types: Your attached document must be in one of these files types:

.doc, docx
.rtf
.html
not .pdf or, if you submit a .pdf, also submit the file as another, easily edited, format.

Projects: You will do 1 slightly lengthier project:

Critique a science research journal for its policies and to better understand how it functions in the community it serves. Science research & the journals that communicate it constitute highly formal & important discourse communities that those outside the community are seldom familiar with. Psychology, education, sports, nursing, & other similar clinical fields are not dedicated to science research. They do not report research for an audience of other researchers. Do not critique clinical journals or science journals addressed to a general audience, even if they have a science background. Unlike research journals, such popular journals likely have professional staff who prepare & deliver the journal. Research journals more often rely on research authors & tech writers to produce copy. The point of this assignment is to understand the conventions of science research journals. For this assignment, research science means fields like biochemistry, astrophysics, geology, petroleum engineering, materials engineering, medical research, etc. Science, Scientific American, & comparable journals are not dedicated to publishing original research for an audience of other researcher in the same research community. They are hybrid, general audience publications. Do not critique these. Read the guidelines for submissions section & otherwise examine the journal to determine what kind of material it publishes, what audience the journal addresses, how it is supported, etc. Research journals are easily available online through Cline library.

Course Grades:

A: 90%
B: 80%
C: 65%

Submission Deadlines: A day or two late is acceptable with no explanation required. Watch the calendar. If the calendar says we are working on unit 5, I will accept late work from units 4 and 3, but not earlier. The grade for work submitted a week late can be reduced by 10%; two weeks late by 20%. Work submitted more than two units later than the unit we are working on is not accepted.

Component	Text
Application Theory	Dan Jones. Technical Writing Style. 0-205-19722-1. Allyn Bacon. Amazon. Gerald J. Alred, Walter E. Oliu, Charles T. Brusaw. The Professional Writer: A Guide for Advanced Technical Writing. isbn 0-312-00248-3. St. Martin's Press; Amazon. The book is/was out of print, but Amazon indicates it remains in print. In any case, used copies remain available. There are no exercises or assignments based on Alred's text, so it is optional.