Technical Writing Courses

English 094 develops the reading and writing skills needed to be successful further academic work or in the workplace, including the rhetorical principles and compositional practices necessary for writing effective business letters, memos, resumes, instructions, proposals, annotated bibliographies, and reports.

The Student Learning Outcomes for English 094 are:

Compose a variety of well structured, organized, grammatically correct forms of business communications and short essays, including using properly documented outside sources and personal experiences. Distinguish and analyze the basic elements of business communications and college-level non-fiction readings.

To achieve the above stated goals, the course objectives for English 094 are as follows:

• Identify elements of business communication, describe how messages are adapted to various audiences and purposes, understand the importance of planning, editing, and revising messages and use proofreader's marks.
• Propose a solution to a problem at school/work in a formal letter or memo.
• Prepare and revise a variety of formal business communications, including letters, memos, instructions, reports, proposals, summaries.
• Develop and revise an effective resume.
• Design effective visuals, and use electronic graphics to enhance business messages.
• Write effective instructions that adapt the text to the previous knowledge and the needs of the audience, includes an introduction, definitions, preparations, and steps given as commands.
• Differentiate between various types of summaries, including informative, explanatory, and analytic.
• Analyze the tone of a message or letter and revise ineffective messages.
• Edit and revise their own sentences for grammar, mechanics, punctuation, and sentence boundary errors.
• Demonstrate sentence variety in their own writing.
• Appraise a writer's vocabulary in terms of diction, level, and rhetorical purpose.
• Provide adequate supporting details for rhetorical claims.
• Focus and narrow ideas from prewriting.
• Compose a well-organized, source-based short essay.
• Revise their writing to make it unified, coherent, and well-developed.
• Document external sources with parenthetical citations and a Works Cited list using MLA format.
• Apply a variety of patterns of development in writing such as cause/effect (complaint letter, instrucions, proposal); compare/contrast (reading responses); persuasion (proposal, letters), summary (annotated bibliography); and analysis (report).
• Analyze articles, reports, letters, and other modes of business communication for effective organization, purpose, tone, and rhetorical strategies.
• Analyze elements of non-fiction articles and essays, including author's thesis, main points, supporting details, and organization strategy.
• Synthesize ideas from outside sources with students' own ideas.
• Assess an author's purpose, tone, and audience in a variety of modes of business communication.