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Assignment
5: Paper on Technical Communication and the Professional Life
Pedagogical GoalsMany different types of work fall into the large category "professional writing, " e.g., legal writing, editing and other jobs associated with book publication, web development, science writing, and journalism. This assignment privileges "technical writing" not because it's the only career path open to you but because there are a fair number of jobs in technical writing in this century. So we need to consider how the adjective "technical" modifes traditional meanings of "writing" and we need to look at what life on the job is all about. To investigate the question of "technical" and "writing" you'll go on a data gathering expedition, beginning with the information provided by the writers in Savage, Sullivan, and Dragga's Writing a Professional Life.These writers offer a series of narratives or stories about their on-the-job experiences, and as you may well imagine, not every storyteller tells the same tale. So we'll find a variety of responses to our questions, as well we should. Later in the month, we'll hear speakers who call themselves technical writers and/or who teach professional writing courses here at UNM talk about work they love---so you'll get a second set of stories to work with. In addition, I'll supply you with some recent online discussion by technical writers and technical writing teachers addressing the question "who are we?" Last but not least, we'll ask for stories from class members who've been out there working in the field. Regardless of the type of professional writing you choose, you'll need to hone your ability to gather information, to organize it well, and to shape and style it for a particular audience. So you'll use this assignment to practice this necessary art, whether or not you're interested in technical writing. Rhetorical SituationYou've been asked to write an article on "techncial communication as a career path" for a magazine whose readership includes high-school students trying to choose the colleges they want to apply to and first-year college students figuring out their majors. Gathering Information, First RoundRead the following chapters from Writing a Professional Life. Write a "response paper" for each. Response papers should be a scant page long. You can use this writing space to openly examine your own responses to the writers' experiences, to the writing itself (is narrative a useful information source?), and/or the value of the information provided in light of your writing assignment. For Tuesday March 5, make 10 copies of your favorite response paper (front/back is fine) to pass out to your classmates. For Tuesday, March
5 For Thursday, March 7 For Tuesday, March 19 NOTE: MORE TO COME ABOUT OTHER INFORMATION SOURCES |