Authors and Corporations: | , , |
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In: | Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25, 2011, 2, p. 119-158 |
published: |
SAGE Publications
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Media Type: | Article, E-Article |
Physical Description: | 119-158 |
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ISSN: |
1050-6519
1552-4574 |
DOI: | 10.1177/1050651910385785 |
published in: | Journal of Business and Technical Communication |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Collection: | SAGE Publications (CrossRef) |
<jats:p> The authors describe two pedagogical strategies—rhetorical sentence combining and rhetorical pattern practice—that blend once-popular teaching techniques with rhetorical decision making. A literature review identified studies that associated linguistic and rhetorical knowledge with success in engineering writing; this information was used to create exercises teaching technical communication students to write Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRaD) reports. Two pilot studies report promising results: Preliminary findings suggest that students who were taught this method wrote essays that were perceived as significantly higher in quality than those written by students in a control section. At the same time, however, the pilot studies point to some challenges and shortcomings of exercise-oriented pedagogies. </jats:p> |