Syllabus
Technical Writing 科技英文寫作
Sep. 2008
Class Lecture Meeting Time: Every Fridays: 9:10AM –12:00(NOON)
Instructor:
Dr. Joseph Arul (周賜福) 資訊工程學系
Office Hours: Friday 1:30PM to 3:00PM(By appointment – send email for quick response)
Email:
arul@csie.fju.edu.tw Homepage: http://www.csie.fju.edu.tw/~arul
(Class lectures and homework assignments will be on this web page. Kindly refer to this
page regularly for all the announcements regarding this course.)
Office Room: SF –615 聖言樓六樓 – 615 Phone: (02)2905-3896電話：(02)2905-3896
Course objectives:
 Every student who plans to work in business and industry must master the art of
technical writing. This course will present you some guidelines to improve your
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skills in Technical Writing.
The English of an experimental research report is highly conventionalized, a fact
that represents a great advantage for non-native speakers as well as for their
language instructors. The conventions are fairly consistent across a wide variety of
scientific disciplines. This course will help students to see what those choices are
and to select the most appropriate – that is, most conventional option.
The course will prepare you to complete the kinds of practical writing projects often
required in professions such as those you will enter. Emphasis will be placed on 1)
The Process of completing any on-the-job writing assignment; 2) The specific
formats most often used, and 3) related communication tasks such as oral
presentations and graphs.
Text Book: Technical Writing: A practical approach, 6th Ed. By William Sanborn Pfeiffer
Book Company: Prentice Hall (全華科技圖書股份有限公司)
Phone:
(02)2507-1300 轉 338 傳眞: (02)-2507-4145.
Additional recommended Text Books:
1. Professional and Technical Writing Strategies, By Judith VanAlstyne 6th Edition.
2. “Successful Scientific Writing”, Janice R. Mathews and Robert W. Mathews, Cambridge
University Press, 2007
3. “How to write and publish a Scientific Paper 6th Ed.”, Robert A. Day and Barbara Gastel,
Cambridge University Press, 2006
Grading: Even though I prefer not to evaluate this course, the school requires that I submit a
grade for all students. I have not decided yet, about the method of evaluation. We will decide
during the class about the grading policy in this course. This course is mainly to help the
students as to how to write a technical paper and to give you some hints about technical
writing. Hence I may not assign lot of home works. My main aim is to present lot of valuable
hints to help you towards writing skills. (Midterm presentation, Final written report and
presentation, and Homeworks would comprise of your final score.)
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Exams: Exams will cover lectures, textbook materials and may be some writing assignments.
Documented crisis or one week’s prior notice is required for consideration of exam or
Quizzes if there is any.
Homeworks: Some papers on the technical writing will be handed over to you during the
course and you will be asked to evaluate the paper and make a critical analysis of the paper.
Turn in Policy: Turn in all home works to the instructor, preferably before class. You may
consult other students, but make sure that the homework is done on your own. Refer to the
Academic Honesty policy below.
Absence and participation Policy: Class attendance and effective, constructive participation
is important to your performance in the course and makes up a portion of the grade. If you
cannot make it to class on the date something is due, please make arrangements to have
someone else bring your assignment to me before or at the start of class. Also note the exam
absence policy mentioned earlier. Don’t wait for the last day to cover up all the materials. It
will be too hard.
Academic Honesty: Follow the University policy on academic honesty. The instructor’s
academic honesty policy is very strict; instances of academic dishonesty will be penalized,
ordinarily by at least failure on the assignment and likely failure in the course (in addition to
any University penalties). Unless otherwise stated, all work is to be individual work.
Violations of the individual work policy will be regarded as instances of academic dishonesty.
Beware of copying materials from the Internet. (Don’t forget to cite the material)
Course Outlines:
(The course materials will be taken from the appropriate web page, text books other lecture
notes. It will be informed you of its cite.)
1.
One or two weeks will be spend on the high level presentation of technical
writing. This may include technical writing in context, the technical writing
process and the types of technical reports.
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4.
We will spend one or two weeks on “Technical writing and the process of
writing” from the Book Technical writing.
One or two weeks will be spend on “Organizing information.”
One or two weeks will be spend on “Importance of graphics and figures in
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technical writing.”
One or two weeks will be spend on “Technical Research on the process of
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8.
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writing.”
Styles in technical writing.
How plain English language makes writing better?
Writing process of introduction, body and conclusion.
What is plagiarism and how to avoid during writing process?
2.
Good Luck and hope that you get lots of hints to improve your writing skills!
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Evaluation methodology for this Technical Writing Course
This course is mainly to develop the skills of a master level or doctoral level students to
translate their research results into English written report using the common norms
described by the international research community as we discuss during this semester.
Besides, you will also be able to develop your presentation skills in English in order to
effectively participate in an international conference where the medium of English is
used to present the reports. Hence, we will follow this procedure to evaluate your
progress and assessment during this course.
1. Midterm week: Every student must present an oral report of their master’s thesis in
English or any publication that you made recently, if you are a Ph. D student. If you
are a Master student, you can present a paper written by your advisor or the topic
related to your research area. The oral presentation must last 20 to 25 minutes in
English and must be able to answer the questions and doubts from the audience. This
will help you to develop your listening and presentation skills in English.
2. Final Report during the Final exam week: This will be your main evaluation for this
course. You need to choose a simple topic within a week after the course begins. The
topic need not be related to your area of research such as biology, Electronic
Engineering, Computer science, Physics or Mathematics. You can choose interesting
topics that can be understood by everyone. After submitting the topic, you can do
some research either by sending out questionnaire, interview or survey paper and so
on. I expect you to start your research in the third or fourth week of the semester.
During the 10 or 11 week of the semester try to translate your research according to
the format and the methodology we will discuss during the semester. It must be like a
short paper that you would submit for an international conference. In the last week
of the semester you must make an oral presentation as well as submit your report for
the final grade. Your final report must be two columns standard format like a
conference paper.
Plagiarism in this course will be treated severely resulting in the failure.
You may be asked to take this course for another semester.
3. During the semester there will be many short written reports to assess the
improvement during this semester. There will also be short quizzes after reading every
chapter in the text book. You must read all the chapters that will be covered from the
text book. I will also assign several research papers written in this topic. You need to
read and evaluate those papers before you write a report.
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