T. R. Girill
trgirill@acm.org
Technical Literacy Project
February, 2008
Try the exercises below for general self-development opportunities, or try the activities for something more specific on which you can get e-mail feedback.
Exercise:
Some (but not most) of the nonfiction writing techniques that
subsequent sections introduce are also taught in high-school
journalism classes.
But journalism offerings and enrollments have generally been on
the decline, especially in California.
(Interestingly, this has been a concern since the 1980s, as older
ERIC items such as Iorio and Garner, 1988, reveal.)
(1) How many teachers offer journalism classes at your school?
How many students take those classes per year?
(2) How many of your school's journalism teachers have science
backgrounds? If you had to rely on this as as way for your
science students to learn about writing effective technical prose,
how many science students would receive relevant instruction?
Activity:
From written or published material actually used by students
at your school, select one specific example for each of the four
"universe of text" quadrants discussed in this section.
To what extent would these example texts be appropriate for
quickly, simply introducing this fourfold distinction, and hence
the real-world role of technical writing, to your students?
Exercise:
School life is divided quite strictly by topic into academic
departments.
In life outside of school, however, whether at the level of
basic trades or advanced engineering, people must often blend
several topics or skills together for success.
The appearance of technical writing in multiple standards that
"cross the curriculum" reflects this reality.
But this can leave confusion about just who in the compartmentalized
school world is responsible for teaching such shared skills.
In your school, would it be easier to collaborate with one or
more teachers from another department (English and science, for
example) to jointly build science communication skills, or would
a separate effort be more practical?
To what extent does this depend on the size of the school?
On the personality of the relevant department heads?
On the bell schedule?
Activity:
(1) Identify several occasions in your classes (beyond the
standard lab report) when building technical literacy skills
could be integrated with student science activities already
taking place.
(2) The California Department of Education posts 179 pages of "released English-Language
Arts test questions" for the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE)
on its website at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/documents/ela07rtq.pdf
Find at least one reading (e.g., p. 84, the shower radio)
and one writing (e.g., p. 100, killer asteroids) question
that involve science prose and list some ways that you could help
your students to better prepare for those questions through
literacy activities in science class.
Exercise:
Most school (and public) libraries now have networked
"online public access catalogs" (OPACs) as software interfaces
to their collections and services.
Explore the features of your school's OPAC with the text
usability criteria in hand. Library catalogs try to meet
many of the same needs as reference books, so many usability
tests apply to both.
Is this a practical way to introduce students to product
usability while also exposing them to its relevance to nonfiction
nonnarrative text?
Activity:
Find and list some basic published texts relevant to your science class that
you or your students could assess (and compare) for usability. (One universal
example would be the shower-radio instructions, which could easily be improved,
on pp. 84-85 of the "released questions" version of CAHSEE, online at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/hs/documents/ela07rtq.pdf)
Exercise:
Successful cognitive apprenticeship presupposes that the teacher
(filling the "master craftsman" role) is a sufficiently skilled
practitioner to actually provide the guidance that "apprentices"
need.
For technical writing, this means (ideally) being proficient
with both the science content (technical guidance) and
the text-design moves (communication guidance).
How might teachers who are weak in one of these areas compensate?
Which proficiency is easier to compensate for?
What role could "packaged" writing exercises or guidelines play?
What about collaboration with a guest technical writer?
With another teacher?
Activity:
Consider note taking as one often-neglected skill where science
students could benefit from cognitive apprenticeship.
List some specific ways in which you could help students improve
the usefulness of their science notes by modeling "authentic"
notes taken outside of high school, such as
(1) note taking in criminal investigations,
(2) note taking in medical contexts, or
(3) the "Cornell system" for college notes.
Exercise:
List some relatively minor adjustments in the way that you
handle science-class literacy activities that could offer extra
support or enhanced value specifically for your ESL students.
Highlighting connectives or proleptics when you review published
material? Handing out lists of relevant science idioms or even
just key verbs?
Activity:
Explore and critique one or more online resources that you
could recommend for your ESL science students.
Candidates include
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com
which covers 5000-7000 Enlish idioms, but is a little thin on
science-relevant definitions, or
http://www.onelook.com
whose right-side response panel gives a list of simple-English
"quick definitions" for any queried idiom (four or five for 'blow up',
for example, most science relevant).
Exercise:
Pick one of the forensic-science/CSI references listed at the
end of this section and follow the link to explore the source
material for possible use with your science students.
I suggest starting with the SUID reporting form on the Centers
for Disease Control link.
It is richly detailed and heavily scaffolded; discussing its
features with students demonstrates how even seasoned professionals
can and do benefit from prompts and reminders about how to
construct a technical description useful to others.
Activity:
Suggest several ways that any one page of the CDC SUID
report form could concretely introduce basic usability techniques
and design issues to your science students.
How could your students improve the features on the selected page?