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I second a composition course as a prerequisite especially if the topics is
this ambitious and even more so if the students are first-year or sophomore
students. I just finished teaching two sections of technical writing to
computer science and electrical engineering students. Unfortunately, there
were a few first-year students in the courses who struggled all term because
they lacked basic writing skills (focusing, developing, providing coherence,
and mechanics) that they can learn in a composition course but I lacked time
to cover to the extent they needed. However, their real obstacle was a lack
of discipline knowledge. It's difficult to write about a debugger or a
circuit design when you haven't even finished learning the basics of
programming in Java and are struggling with your circuits course.
I agree with Nora that a tech writing course that requires students connect
their writing to their disciplinary interests in a real way makes their
writing more accurate and richer. They even write for the appropriate
audiences/users instead of the teacher.
If the school wants to "fast track" students because of a limited number of
credit hours, perhaps a "pretest" would identify those students who are
ready for the fast-paced technical writing course and those who need a more
basic writing course like first-year comp.? Life experience can make a big
difference on whether a student can write well-students who have been
working may have learned a lot about writing on the job and can do well in a
demanding course.
Thunder is good. Thunder is impressive,
but it's lightening that does the work.
Mark Twain to Nikola Tesla
*********************************************
Margaret L. FalerSweany, Ph.D.
Inst. of Professional and Technical Communication
University of Texas--Dallas
Richardson, TX 75083
972-883-4152
falersweany -at- gocougs -dot- wsu -dot- edu
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