This course is designed to give students with a solid background in English fundamentals an opportunity to develop the skills and knowledge needed in technical writing. We will study the major sentence- and paragraph-level organizing principles involved in reporting technical information as well as grammatical skills and stylistic elements of technical documents.
During this course, we will study skills and concepts needed for the production and revision of student’s research-based writing. Only students who write outside the classroom will obtain the full benefit of this course.


Students will develop an appropriate technical English style by preparing a series of short directed assignments, completing a variety of structural exercises and applying them to their own coursework or research.

Recent discussions have suggested the need for an evaluation of student progress in this course. However, since this is not a major class, assigning grades seems unrealistic. As a compromise, students who complete all class assignments and regularly attend class will receive an S. Those who do not will receive a U. This policy should make this a more productive class.

Graduate students must manage constantly changing demands on their time. Frequently, important obligations may conflict with this course; the English faculty recognize this and understand that other obligations may be more important than attending this class on any particular day. However, distinguishing between acceptable, excusable absences and unexcused absences is a subjective matter that we want to avoid. Frankly, graduate students are not children and we are not your caretakers. Thus, as a compromise, we will allow a very generous five absences, with no distinction between excused and unexcused. Upon the sixth absence, for any reason, you will receive a U.

There is no primary textbook for this course. Technical Writing and Professional Communication for Non-Native Speakers by Huckin and Olsen was the major text used to develop this class, but all content is now updated and provided in the PPT files. You should identify and obtain the appropriate style guide for your major journal of interest.

Handbook of Technical Writing by Brusaw, Alred and Oliu, St. Martin’s Press, New York. 2000.

Technical Writing and Professional Communication for Non-Native Speakers by Huckin and Olsen, McGraw-Hill. 1991.

English for Writing Research Papers by Adrian Wallwork, Springer, 2011.

Grammar in Use Intermediate Fourth Edition by Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Week Topic
1 Introduction, Structure: Parallelism
2 Structure: Parallelism
3 Grammar: Articles, Structure: Noun Phrase Repetition
4 Structure: Noun Phrase Repetition
5 Structure: Information Ordering (Subject focus)
6 Structure: Information Ordering (Subject focus)
7 Structure: Process Descriptions, Grammar: Passives
8 Midterm Consultations
9 Structure: Information Ordering (Chunking sentences)
10 Structure: Verb Focus
11 Introductions, Grammar: Modals
12 Introductions, Grammar: Clauses
13 Materials and Methods Sections
14 Discussion Sections
15 Abstracts and Conclusions, Consultations
16 Consultations