“Carefully defined writing activities” in a learning situation have an even less direct relationship to “writing” than “pasturized process cheese food” has to “cheese.”
This wonderful quote comes from a post by Professor E. Shelley Reid on the Writng Program Administrator’s listserv last April. Professor Reid was involved in a discussion of Automated Essay Scoring (AES), which I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago.
A sales letter (or email) is designed to entice a reader to become a customer of the writer. The most common approach to training writers to create a sales letter is called AIDA, standing for Attention Interest Desire Action It was developed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis based on his practical advertising experience in the US before the…
In the first two posts defining what I mean by “plain language,” I have focused on two points of the rhetorical triangle: textual elements like style and organization (Part One) and reader outcomes like comprehension and usability (Part Two). Now it’s time to tackle the third, the writer’s purpose. This is arguably the aspect of rhetorical context that…
I’ve been talking about the role of writing for professionals for nearly 25 years. My “talk” has always taken place in a university classroom or an academic journal. I’m not ready to stop talking in those contexts, but I am tired of their constraints. So why not talk with fewer (or at least different) constraints here? There are things…
Today, I am correcting proofs for a teaching note that will soon appear along with my lecture-tutorial on tone in Journal of Organizational Behavior Education. The paper explains the teaching philosophy behind use of video lecture-tutorials like those I have been posting here at ProsWrite. (Click on the tab to view the complete collection on…
I’ve been thinking about the nuggets of wisdom I have to share with those who are new to teaching novices to write successfully in the workplace. I came up with 3 guidelines, which I shared with some new college instructors in a workshop last week. I thought they were worth sharing on Pros Write as well. Referring to…
I’m sharing a delightful first-day-of-class speech from John McIntyre, teacher of copy editing at Loyola U in Maryland and columnist at The Baltimore Sun. His words ring true for anyone who has taught others to write for the real world. I’ll share this with students in the future. (Did I mention I’m on a sabbatical from…
