Towards Business and Technical Writing: What Do Business Students Write? What Does Faculty Look For?

ABNER OKIRIA

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Objectives

• Define Technical Writing and explain its characteristics

• Appreciate the importance of effective writing

• Recognize the crucial role faculty have in facilitating skills development

• Critique some assumptions

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Thesis

Business writing and technical writing are Intertwined and as such should be taught together. Faculty often make assumptions to isolate technical writing and effective writing in general but the reality is that these are skills that require constant development through continuous practice.

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The three-stage writing process

1. The Planning Stage (purpose, audience, etc)

2. Drafting (free write your ideas, ignore grammar, keep your readers in mind)

3. Revising (Reread the document, revise it for clarity, coherence and conciseness, proofread for grammatical, mechanical and typographical errors)

Clair B. May and Gordon S. May (2009:14)Clair B. May and Gordon S. May (2009:14)

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General Types of Writing

Narrative: tells a story, fictitious or non, and adheres to chronology of events, e.g.

“The Most eventful Day I have Ever Had”

Descriptive: Seeks to help an audience visualize the subject of description, e.g. “Travelling in a Crowded Taxi”

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Cont…

Persuasive: Seeks to influence an audience to accept the persuader’s point of view, e.g. “All mobile phone users should buy Nokia phones”

Expository: has to do with explaining, informing, discussing, developing opinions, etc

A business report may involve two modes of writing at the same time, e.g. persuasive and expository

See Writing and Study Skills Handbook6

Other forms of writingCreative writing: writing to express, writing to

demonstrate creativity• Genres include: nonfiction, novels, poetry, short

stories, screenplays

Academic writing: writing to learn, to demonstrate competency, to think critically

• Themes/ essays• Essay exams• Lab reports/ book reports• Journals See, Lay.et.al (2000)

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Technical Writing (T.W) Conveys specific information about a technical

subject to a specific audience for a specific purpose. It is applied communication, designed to help an audience:

• Perform specific tasks• Solve certain problems NB: T.W is a subset of technical

communication that includes written documents

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Where do we find technical writing?

• User manuals• Instructions for use• Minutes• Lab reports• Software

documentation• Progress reports• News letters• Procedures• Web pages

• Emails• Advertisements• PowerPoint

presentations • Letters • Proposals• Posters• Graphics and charts• Evaluation forms and

questionnaires

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Characteristics of Technical Writing

• Clear • Accurate (Validity and precision of

information)• Comprehensive • Accessible• Correct • Concise NB: The same characteristics apply to business and

academic writing 10

What do business students write?

• Course work• Proposals (internal,

sales, etc• Dissertations• Reports• Meeting minutes• Procedural manuals• Corporate documents

• Memos• CVs, Letters• Emails• Presentations• Class notes• questionnaires• Web pages/ other

applications

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Compatibility

Business writing involves many aspects of Technical Writing making them inextricably linked

Do not teach Technical writing as a replacement for your course content. Do teach T.W to support your course goals.

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Cont…

Teach Technical Writing so that students:• Can recognize and explain its conventions• Apply the conventions of written

communication in your discipline• Analyze and evaluate the powerful role of

experts in your discipline• Synthesize what they learn about writing

(process)

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What you can teach about T.W

• Audience analysis• Formatting with graphics, block style

paragraphs, headings, bullets and numbering, managing white space, etc

• Basic genres such as memos, object descriptions and instruction

• Inverted Pyramid analysis14

Inverted Pyramid Analysis

Supporting Details & E.Gs

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Why students should learn T.W

• Functionally literate. Students will be active citizens and productive workers. Cadiero (2002)

• Critically literate. Students will learn how to belong to a community (such as a work place). Bushnell (1999)

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What we want in a student essay

• Critical reading skills• Clear and effective writing• Analysis• Mature and effective response to

secondary material • In-text citations and their

subsequent documentation in a reference page

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Questionable Assumptions

• The student has attended a writing course therefore can write effectively (WSS/ Business Communications)

• The student has mastered hidden skills, like outlining, drafting and editing

• The student has learned the necessary component skills at school

• Written assignments are assessment activities, not learning opportunities

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Refutations

• The student has attended a writing course therefore can write effectively (WSS and Business Communications)

– The WSS course at UCU is general and does not address certain specific writing needs of Business students. B.C has a limited scope

– The same courses are time barred. You can not change a life time of bad writing in just four months or 12 weeks of teaching

– Business writing has unique characteristics that faculty in business should point out to students

– Some students have generally given up on writing

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Cont…

• The student has mastered hidden skills, like outlining, drafting and editing

– Does your students’ work show evidence of an outline?

– Are you receiving final drafts with minimal spelling or typographical errors?

– Do you encourage, recognise or reward the three-stage writing process?

– Can our students make the transition from short assignments to longer research essays and dissertations?

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Cont…• The student has learned the necessary

component skills at school

– Not all schools are equal– The examination system focuses on knowledge, not

skills– Exams assume a limited set of correct answers, if not

one correct answer– Schools lack libraries and other resources to help

their students sift and compare disparate points of view

– Are secondary teachers currently being trained to teach writing?

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Cont…

• Written assignments are assessment activities, not learning opportunities– Should we measure end-product or

process? (see Murray 1972)– What does continuous assessment

actually mean?– What learning opportunities do we

actually offer our students?

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Talking Points

• Skills are learned, not taught (separates talking and actual practice)

• Skills development requires constant practice

• In order to appreciate the mastery of a particular skill, we should have attempted to exercise it ourselves

• A high-level skill, like technical writing, requires the mastery of several basic skills

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Cont…• Business communication Skills

should include a substantial component of technical writing

• Curriculum review implications• Additional Skills such as technical

writing increase employability of students

NB: These positions are currently dominated by expatriates

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Conclusion Business and Technical writing are

inseparable. Any successful writing in Business, Industry, Government and Education follows conventions of good writing in those contexts. As teachers, it is our collective responsibility to help our students develop prowess in oral, but more importantly in written communication.

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Recommendation

The Course Outline To reinforce the importance of effective

writing in general, course outlines should make these points:

• All written work and tests must be correctly formatted, clearly written and legible, with minimal errors in grammar or spelling. Illegible essays will be returned unread.

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Cont…

• All written work, presentations and tests must be your own work; with reference to the work of other scholars clearly identified and cited using a recognised format for academic writing. Any copying, plagiarism or other academic dishonesty will earn a ZERO. Assume that you are to work individually unless the lecturer or the assistant designates the assignment clearly as group work.

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List of References

Bushnell, Jack. (1999). A contrary view of the technical writing classroom: Notes toward future discussion. Technical Communication Quarterly, 8(2), 184. Retrieved April 13, 2011, from http://www.attw.org/TCQarticles/8.2/8-2Bushnell.pdf

Cadiero-Kaplan, Karen. (2002). Literacy ideologies: Critically engaging the language arts curriculum. Language Arts, 79(5), 374.

Claire B. May and Gordon S. May (2009). Effective Writing: A Handbook for Accountants. 8th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Lay, M. Mary. (2000). Technical Communication. 2ed. USA: McGraw Hill

Murray, D. 1972. “Teach Writing as Process, Not Product” in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. 3-6.

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