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At 03:03 PM 5/1/98 -0400, Rob Irish wrote: >>From what I have seen, and tried to resist, most technical writing >instructors separate "Substance" from "style" and focus on the latter. >As soon as that happens, the assignment is less "real". This separation >was borne out by Summer Smith's (admittedly flawed) research on advice >to students. She asked Engineering professors and Tech Writing teachers >(all TAs) to agree or disagree with this statement: > >The most important thing to do when writing technical documents is to be >accurate. >1= strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree >(You should note that within the survey several things could be called >"most important"--I'd argue that was a flaw) >Whereas the average for 31 Engineers was 3.8, the average for the 25 TAs >was 2.8. The TAs actually disagreed! So the writing loses its real >focus by becoming an exercise in style, even if it is drawn from >something real. Now you're straining. And I think you're missing the point here. Data can be "accurate" but not presented in a responsible or effective manner. It's common knowledge that statistics can be twisted to represent almost anything. (As the present discussion so aptly illustrates.) "Accuracy" then is only a part of the picture. The attitude that accuracy is *most* important may be part of that dream (becoming nightmare) of language as a transparent techne. > > >> I teach technical writing to classes of 24 and have hours of personal >> contact with them. They *also* have access to writing centre specialists in >> technical writing. >This merely confirms my point that the Writing centre is the best way to >teach writing. Why else would the classroom teacher imitate it? Well, it's *not* imitation in a context where rhetoric and composition is typically taught this way. Next thing I know you'll be arguing that writing centre's preceded Socratic dialogue ;). >> Wouldn't it mean more jobs for English graduates? > >Yeah, it might. But I think my ideal is a little different. I have an >ideal where people in any department value communication and make use of >writing to learn strategies, where they are not intimidated by marking >because they think it involves grammar. From what I have seen, the >English Departments in Canada are more likely to encourage such >malevolent marking mystification (couldn't resist the alliteration) than >to help their colleagues in other disciplines. The weird thing at UofT >is that while that is true on one hand, the department also seems to be >trying to prevent other departments from developing their own discipline >specific writing courses, or even writing-intensive courses. Apparently, we're speaking from two very different perspectives. > >Personally, I'd love it if English would be more open because then I >could do both the stuff I'm doing now and teach literature as well. >That would be my ideal job. > >Rob > Finally, agreement.