ENGL 1025 - Technical and Professional Writing

Credits: 3
Hours/Week: Lecture 3 Lab None
Course Description: This college-level writing course emphasizes principles, techniques, and skills needed to construct technical and professional writing, using primary research and current technology, that meets professional ethical standards. Typical assignments include instructions, research reports, brochures, abstracts, proposals, and written projects. The course includes consideration of research techniques, technical format, information design, and effective visuals. This writing course assumes familiarity with a word processing program.
MnTC Goals
1 Communication

Prerequisite(s): ENGL 1020   with a grade of C or higher OR ENGL 1021  with a grade of C or higher.
Corequisite(s): None
Recommendation: CAPL 1010  or equivalent

Major Content

1. Review of the writing process, as appropriate to technical/professional contexts
2. Critical reading of technical/professional genres
   1. Understanding genre conventions
   2. Analyzing audiences and purposes
   3. Evaluating evidence and source materials

3. Introduction to technical/professional writing discourse

   1. Reviewing basic rhetoric, as appropriate to technical/professional contexts
   2. Defining purpose, need, genre, and medium
   3. Writing to meet readers’ needs
   4. Evaluating usability
   5. Collaborating
   6. Conducting primary and secondary research 
   7. Using summary, paraphrase, and quotation effectively
   8. Acknowledging resources/references
   9. Writing with coherence and clarity
   10. Employing appropriate organization and design
   11. Using visuals
   12. Responding thoughtfully and respectfully to the ideas of others
4. Planning and completion of purposeful, user-based technical/professional writing projects
   1. Instructions
   2. A substantial document, with sustained technical/professional discourse, in the student’s discipline, career field, or interest area
5. Planning and completion of other technical/professional writing projects
   1. Abstracts/executive summaries
   2. Proposals
   3. Informational materials (memos, reports, brochures, incident reports, processes and procedures, technical descriptions, white papers, manuals, web-based writing)
6. Engaging in constructive, user-based critique
   1. Providing written and/or oral responses to others’ writing
   2. Revising based on feedback and self-assessment

1. use current technology effectively to produce technical/professional documents.
2. use visuals effectively.
3. write documents that fulfill the purpose and scope of assignments.
4. articulate ethical dimensions of technical/professional communication.
5. select appropriate and effective style, organization, and format.
6. assess information to incorporate sources effectively into technical/professional documents.
7. employ standard conventions of grammar and usage.
8. analyze the needs of target audiences in order to create documents that meet those needs.
9. create documents as the result of a writing process that involves guided revision, collaboration, and/or peer review.

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