The crash of an Amtrak train near Baltimore, the collapse of the Hyatt hotel in Kansas City, the incident at Three Mile Island, and other large-scale technological disasters have provided powerful examples of the ways that communication practices influence the events and decisions that precipitate a disaster. These examples have raised ethical questions about the responsibility of writers within agencies, epistemological questions about the nature of representation in science, and rhetorical questions about the nature of expertise and experience as grounds for judgments about risk.
In "The Rhetoric of Risk: Technical Documentation in Hazardous Environments, " author Beverly Sauer examines how the dynamic uncertainty of the material environment affects communication in large regulatory industries. Sauer's analysis focuses specifically on mine safety, which provides a rich technical and historical context where problems of rhetorical agency, narrative, and the negotiation of meaning have visible and tragic outcomes. But the questions Sauer asks have larger implication for risk and safety: How does writing function in large regulatory industries? What can we learn from experience? Why is this experience so difficult to capture in writing? What information is lost when agencies rely on written documentation alone? Given the uncertainties, how can we work to improve communication in hazardous and uncertain environments?
By exploring how individuals make sense of the material, technical, and institutional indeterminancies of their work in speech and gesture, "The Rhetoric of Risk" helps communicators rethink their frequently unquestioned assumptions about workplace discourse and the role of writers in hazardous worksites. It is intended for scholars and students in technical writing and communication, rhetoric, risk analysis and risk communication, as well as a wide range of engineering and technical fields concerned with risk, safety, and uncertainty.

Many employers complain about the poor communication skills of many young people seeking employment; and many people in employment are handicapped by the poor quality of their written work. While bad spelling, ineffective punctuation and faults in grammar create barriers between the writer and the reader, good English makes the reader feel at ease.
The benefits of being a good writer at work are:
Managers need to be able to communicate in order to get ideas across. If they cannot, they will be unable to make their viewpoint heard and they will be unable to influence customers, suppliers and colleagues as desired
If you can write well, you will find that your views are given prominence over those of others. Effective communication, and that includes writing, is the key to career success and advancement
This book is for those who have difficulty in getting thoughts into words or their ideas across, as well as those who are satisfied with their writing but are ready to consider the possibility of improving it. It is all about the ways in which writing at work is important - helping the reader to observe, remember, think, plan, organise and communicate.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203165993

Drawing on the advice of experts in the field, The Web Writer's Guide serves as the ideal sourcebook for tips and ideas for freelance and staff writers of online content. This book provides writers of all levels with the information they need in an accessible, easy-to-use fashion. To the many deadline- and project-conscious writers out there who need to further adapt to the dynamics of digital media, this easy-to-use, comprehensive guide serves as a remarkable guidepost.
Featuring interviews with Web writers and developers, this guide will offer writers the benefit of many years' combined field experience as well as a sense of how the content factors into various online publications.
The Web Writer's Guide toolkit includes twenty-four checklists, worksheets, and forms that aid online writers to submit complete, concise, and clean copy. The checklists are also useful career path tools. For those new to online writing, the Quick Start section of the book is organized to help you produce quality copy quickly and professionally, for the first time and thereafter.
* Expert tips for novice writers and writers experienced primarily in print
* Covers topics such as writing content for corporate and e-commerce sites, e-mail newsletters, press releases, and e-zines
* Includes a Web writer's glossary to defining online content and Internet terms

The home of trusted Mandarin dictionaries for everyday language learning. Learn how to write 250 of the commonest Chinese characters, with stroke by stroke guidance on every page. With thousands of characters to learn, beginning to read and write Chinese is a daunting task. Aimed at learners, this book takes you through 250 of the commonest characters in a clear and accessible way. The meaning of every character is explained along with information about its radical, the compound words it can form, its history, and more. There is a practice grid on every page, showing how the character is written, with space for you to practise writing the character for yourself. It is generally agreed that learners of Chinese need a working knowledge of about 100 characters in order to make themselves at all understood and to travel in China, so Easy Learning Chinese Characters is a great place to start.

This anthology brings together voices from industry and academia in a call for elevating the status, identity, value, and influence of technical communicators. Editors Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka assert that technical communicators must depart from their traditional roles, moving instead in a more influential and expansive direction. To help readers explore the possibilities, contributions from innovative thinkers and leaders in technical communication propose ways to redefine the field's identity and purposes and to expand the parameters of its work.
The chapters included here all point toward new directions for greater growth and influence of the field. Contributors depart from traditional ideas and solutions and discuss new and in some cases radical points, provoking further thought and discussion. Its exploration of fresh territory uncovers new research topics and directions, and provides an examination of both internal, industry-academia relationships and external relationships between technical communicators and other professionals. In its entirety, this collection represents an inclusive vision for the future, targeting such wide-ranging issues as creating effective professional organizations, disseminating research to diverse audiences, transitioning to more influential job roles, exerting leadership in usability, and creating hybrid identities and collaborative programs between industry and academic to support them.
The diverse voices from industry and academia will inspire readers to think differently about the discipline's identity and direction, and to build on the ideas they find herein to effect change within their own spheres. As required reading for academics and professionals in technical communication, this collection is a critical step in reshaping and reinvigorating the technical communication field to ensure its survival and growth in the 21st century.

Despite the increasingly global implications of conversations about writing and learning, U.S. composition studies has devoted little attention to cross-national perspectives on student writing and its roles in wider cultural contexts. Caught up in our own concerns about how U.S. students make the transition as writers from secondary school to postsecondary education, we often overlook the fact that students around the world are undergoing the same evolution. How do the students in China, England, France, Germany, Kenya, or South Africa--the educational systems represented in this collection--write their way into the communities of their chosen disciplines? How, for instance, do students whose mother tongue is not the language of instruction cope with the demands of academic and discipline-specific writing? And in what ways is U.S. students' development as academic writers similar to or different from that of students in other countries?
With this collection, editors David Foster and David R. Russell broaden the discussion about the role of writing in various educational systems and cultures. Students' development as academic writers raises issues of student authorship and agency, as well as larger issues of educational access, institutional power relations, system goals, and students' roles in society. The contributors to this collection discuss selected writing purposes and forms characteristic of a specific national education system, describe students' agency as writers, and identify contextual factors--social, economic, linguistic, cultural--that shape institutional responses to writing development.
In discussions that bookend these studies of different educational structures, the editors compare U.S. postsecondary writing practices and pedagogies with those in other national systems, and suggest new perspectives for cross-national study of learning/writing issues important to all educational systems. Given the worldwide increase in students entering higher education and the endless need for effective writing across disciplines and nations, the insights offered here and the call for further studies are especially welcome and timely.

This book explores how writers from several different cultures learn to write in their academic settings, and how their writing practices interact with and contribute to their evolving identities as students and professionals in academic environments in higher education.
Embedded in a theoretical framework of situated practice, the naturalistic case studies and literacy autobiographies include portrayals of undergraduate students and teachers, master's level students, doctoral students, young bilingual faculty, and established scholars, all of whom are struggling to understand their roles in ambiguously defined communities of academic writers.
In addition to the notion of situated practice, the other powerful concept used as an interpretive framework is captured by the metaphor of "games"--a metaphor designed to emphasize that the practice of academic writing is shaped but not dictated by rules and conventions; that writing games consist of the practice of playing, not the rules themselves; and that writers have choices about whether and how to play.
Focusing on people rather than experiments, numbers, and abstractions, this interdisciplinary work draws on concepts and methods from narrative inquiry, qualitative anthropology and sociology, and case studies of academic literacy in the field of composition and rhetoric. The style of the book is accessible and reader friendly, eschewing highly technical insider language without dismissing complex issues. It has a multicultural focus in the sense that the people portrayed are from a number of different cultures within and outside North America. It is also a multivocal work: the author positions herself as both an insider and outsider and takes on the different voices of each; other voices that appear are those of her case study participants, and published authors and their case study participants. It is the author's hope that readers will find multiple ways to connect their own experiences with those of the writers the book portrays.

This volume's goal is to provide readers with up-to-date information on the research and theory of scientific text comprehension. It is widely acknowledged that the comprehension of science and technological artifacts is very difficult for both children and adults. The material is conceptually complex, there is very little background knowledge for most individuals, and the materials are often poorly written. Therefore, it is no surprise that students are turned off from learning science and technology. Given these challenges, it is important to design scientific text in a fashion that fits the cognitive constraints of the learner. The enterprise of textbook design needs to be effectively integrated with research in discourse processing, educational technology, and cognitive science. This book takes a major step in promoting such an integration.
This volume:
*provides an important integration of research and theory with theoretical, methodological, and educational applications;
*includes a number of chapters that cover how science text information affects mental representations and strategies;
*introduces important suggestions about how text design and new technologies can be thought of as pedagogical features; and
*establishes academic text taxonomies and a consensus of the criteria to organize inferences and other mental mechanisms.

This comprehensive and detailed analysis of second language writers' text identifies explicitly and quantifiably where their text differs from that of native speakers of English. The book is based on the results of a large-scale study of university-level native-speaker and non-native-speaker essays written in response to six prompts. Specifically, the research investigates the frequencies of uses of 68 linguistic (syntactic and lexical) and rhetorical features in essays written by advanced non-native speakers compared with those in the essays of native speakers enrolled in first-year composition courses. The selection of features for inclusion in this analysis is based on their textual functions and meanings, as identified in earlier research on English language grammar and lexis. Such analysis is valuable because it can inform the teaching of grammar and lexis, as well as discourse, and serve as a basis for second language curriculum and course design; and provide valuable insight for second language pedagogical applications of the study's findings.

This comprehensive and detailed analysis of second language writers' text identifies explicitly and quantifiably where their text differs from that of native speakers of English. The book is based on the results of a large-scale study of university-level native-speaker and non-native-speaker essays written in response to six prompts. Specifically, the research investigates the frequencies of uses of 68 linguistic (syntactic and lexical) and rhetorical features in essays written by advanced non-native speakers compared with those in the essays of native speakers enrolled in first-year composition courses. The selection of features for inclusion in this analysis is based on their textual functions and meanings, as identified in earlier research on English language grammar and lexis. Such analysis is valuable because it can inform the teaching of grammar and lexis, as well as discourse, and serve as a basis for second language curriculum and course design; and provide valuable insight for second language pedagogical applications of the study's findings.

There are writing centers at almost every college and university in the United States, and there is an emerging body of professional discourse, research, and writing about them. The goal of this book is to open, formalize, and further the dialogue about research in and about writing centers. The original essays in this volume, all written by writing center researchers, directly address current concerns in several ways: they encourage studies, data collection, and publication by offering detailed, reflective accounts of research; they encourage a diversity of approaches by demonstrating a range of methodologies (e.g., ethnography, longitudinal case study; rhetorical analysis, teacher research) available to both veteran and novice writing center professionals; they advance an ongoing conversation about writing center research by explicitly addressing epistemological and ethical issues. The book aims to encourage and guide other researchers, while at the same time offering new knowledge that has resulted from the studies it analyzes.

Student Writing presents an accessible and thought-provoking study of academic writing practices. Informed by 'composition' research from the US and 'academic literacies studies' from the UK, the book challenges current official discourse on writing as a 'skill'. Lillis argues for an approach which sees student writing as social practice.
The book draws extensively on a three-year study with ten non-traditional students in higher education and their experience of academic writing. Using case study material - including literacy history interviews, extended discussions with students about their writing of discipline specific essays, and extracts from essays - Lillis identifies the following as three significant dimensions to academic writing:

* Access to higher education and to its language and literacy representational resources
* Regulation of meaning making in academic writing
* Desire for participation in higher education and for choices over ways of meaning in academic writing.

Student Writing: access, regulation, desire raises questions about why academics write as they do, who benefits from such writing, which meanings are valued and how, on what terms 'outsiders' get to be 'insiders' and at what costs.

"Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition" employs a series of assignments that guide students to research and write about issues confronting their individual communities. Students start by identifying a community to which they belong and focusing on problems in it, and then analyze possible solutions, construct arguments for them, decide which are likely to succeed, and consider how to initiate action.
This is a primary text for first-year composition courses, covering the basics of the writing process. The assignments are recursive. Short writing assignments in each chapter build up to longer papers. Each of the assignment questions is accompanied by a guide to thinking about and writing the assigned paper, followed by a short "Focus On" reading that provides a brief account of community activism, a media case study, or a notable success story. The longer papers are accompanied by in-class peer reading groups. Each successive peer reading attempts a higher level of conceptual critique. By working together throughout the semester, students create increasingly adept peer groups familiar with all stages of each other's research. The book is carefully structured, but there is plenty of "give" in it, allowing instructors to be flexible in adapting it to the needs of their students and courses.
"Community Writing: "
* is distinguished by pedagogy based on a collaborative, process-oriented, service learning approach that emphasizes media critique and field research on community issues chosen by individual students;
* answers real student questions, such as: Where do I find articles on my topic? What if evidence contradicts my hypothesis? How do I know if a source is biased?;
* is web-savvy--guides students into building their own Web sites, including a unique guide for critiquing the design and veracity of other people's websites; and
* is media-savvy--topics include media monopolies, spin control, dumbing down, misleading statistics, the Freedom of Information Act, "crackpot" authors, political rhetoric, and fallacious argumentation.

The EPA investigation of a 1994 chemical plant tragedy concluded that "the explosion resulted from a lack of written safe operating procedures..." While good written procedures can't guarantee zero accidents, they can reduce the number of accidents caused by human error. This new book shows how to remedy this problem through selecting and implementing actions that promote safe, efficient operations and maintenance, improve quality, continuity, profitability and cost control, build upon and record process experience, and promote the concept that operating and maintenance procedures are vital plant components. It includes practical samples of procedure formats, checklists and many references.

This book guides writers in the preparation of scientific and technical texts for specific audiences. Although some corporations have internal style guides, this book offers guidance for those writers who lack such resources. It also includes all aspects of document creation from audience analysis to indexing. Further, it provides resources for helping writers to make the transition from paper to electronic documents.
A new aspect of this edition is the examination of software support for various writing and graphic tasks. This edition adds new perspectives on preparing texts for translation, on indexing and on electronic referencing techniques. At the same time, it retains much of what made the first edition so popular: in depth guidance on creating graphic elements and useful page designs, using specialised symbols and mathematics in technical and scientific texts.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203901606

"On Second Language Writing" brings together internationally recognized scholars in a collection of original articles that, collectively, delineate and explore central issues with regard to theory, research, instruction, assessment, politics, articulation with other disciplines, and standards. In recent years, there has been a dramatic growth of interest in second-language writing and writing instruction in many parts of the world. Although an increasing number of researchers and teachers in both second-language studies and composition studies have come to identify themselves as specialists in second-language writing, research and teaching practices have been dispersed into several different disciplinary and institutional contexts because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. This volume is the first to bring together prominent second-language writing specialists to systematically address basic issues in the field and to consider the state of the art at the end of the century (and the millennium).

"On Second Language Writing" brings together internationally recognized scholars in a collection of original articles that, collectively, delineate and explore central issues with regard to theory, research, instruction, assessment, politics, articulation with other disciplines, and standards. In recent years, there has been a dramatic growth of interest in second-language writing and writing instruction in many parts of the world. Although an increasing number of researchers and teachers in both second-language studies and composition studies have come to identify themselves as specialists in second-language writing, research and teaching practices have been dispersed into several different disciplinary and institutional contexts because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field. This volume is the first to bring together prominent second-language writing specialists to systematically address basic issues in the field and to consider the state of the art at the end of the century (and the millennium).

This distinctive monograph examines the dynamic rhetorical processes by which scientists shape, negotiate, and position their work within an interdisciplinary community. Author Ann M. Blakeslee studies the everyday rhetorical practices of a group of condensed matter theoretical physicists, and presents here the first substantial qualitative study of the planning and implementation of discursive practices by a group of scientists. This volume also represents one of the first studies to use situated cognition and learning theory to study how knowledge of a domain's discursive practices is acquired by newcomers.
Unlike previous studies of scientists' rhetorical practices, which have focused primarily on the finished or published texts, Blakeslee's involvement with the physicists as they engaged in the composing processes--from jotting down planning notes through publishing a scientific paper--suggests an alternative view of audience based on cooperative interaction between authors and their interlocutors. From this innovative perspective, functional knowledge of audiences comes only by entering into some community of practice, in which readers also become self-defining interlocutors and even participants in joint projects. Blakeslee's research follows the physicists' work into communal, interactive dynamics, looking at their overt attempts to get feedback from members of their audiences, what that feedback was, and how they responded to it.
This work addresses and extends a model for audience analysis that consists of two primary operations: getting to know and understand one's interlocutors, and determining how to reach and influence them. In doing so, it offers important insights into the dissemination of scientific information, and thus will be of great interest to scholars and students in the areas of rhetoric of science and technology, composition, rhetorical theory, and scientific writing.

StartUp is a completely new course for adults and young adults who want to make their way in the world and need English to do it. StartUp makes learning easy and relevant, focusing on meaningful language that builds student confidence in using English, both in and out of class. Teachers are supported in numerous ways, minimizing preparation time and providing a flexibility that allows for personalized teaching and focus on the skills that are important for their classes. - English for 21st century learners: StartUp helps students learn English as it is spoken and used in the 21st century, such as in text messages, emails, and podcasts; in informal social texts and conversations; and in formal texts and discussions for academic and business contexts. Students acquire collaborative and critical thinking skills they need to succeed in study and at work. - Personalized, flexible teaching: StartUp gives you the flexibility to teach the way you want. The structure, the wealth of support materials and the practice app offer more options to flip the class, to focus on different strands and skills, and to extend and differentiate instruction to meet students' individual needs. - Motivating and relevant learning: The rich integrated digital content draws students in with engaging video stories, coaching videos, video talks on compelling topics - such as innovation, relationships, and art - and much more to build the language and skills they need. - ActiveTeach allows teachers to present in class with ease and to access all the audio and video where they need it. - The new Pearson Practice English App with QR codes takes students from page to practice, and audio and video for out-of-class practice. - Rich digital media: video conversations, video talks, media projects, and presentation skills integrated throughout for listening and speaking practice. - Specific support from Grammar Coach and Pronunciation Coach videos. - MyEnglishLab provides more intensive online practice. - Comprehensive assessment program in ExamView and MyEnglishLab.

Intermediate students and their teachers will find this compact manual an invaluable resource for essay-writing and debate in German. Thirty sections provide questions and vocabulary on a range of contemporary issues guaranteed to stimulate thought and discussion. Includes introductory notes on approaches to group work and writing strategies. Topics include:
*computers
*the environment
*young people
*war and peace
*the third world

This book surveys the history of basic writing scholarship, suggesting that we cannot adequately theorize the situations of basic writers unless we examine how they construct their own conceptions of their identities, their constructions of their relationships to social forces, and their representations of their relationships to written work. Using a cross-disciplinary analytic model, Gray-Rosendale offers a detailed examination of the oral conversations that take place within one basic writing peer revision group. She explains the ways in which the students' own conversational structures impact and shape their written products. Gray-Rosendale then draws out the potentials of her work for basic writing administrators, curricula builders, and teachers.

Increasing numbers of adults are enroling in doctoral programmes, but their earlier college lives often do not prepare them for the rules of the academic game. Many have no idea what a dissertation looks like, how it gets that way, or what options are available to them.
This book is a practical guide for students who need help in progressing from the decision to write a dissertation to the planning, writing and defending of it. It includes samples of proposals and dissertations that have been accepted and data drawn from a number of sources, including focus groups with doctoral students and graduates and responses to an open-ended questionnaire from doctoral students across the United States.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203024575

This book explains and demonstrates how creative writing can be used successfully in the context of professional education where traditionally a more distanced approach to reporting on professional experience has been favoured. It is based on many practical examples, drawn from several years' experience of running courses for social workers, nurses, teachers, managers and higher education staff, in which participants explore their professional practice through imaginative forms of writing. The participants experience of the work is presented through a discussion of interviews and evaluative documents. The book includes a set of distance-learning materials for those wishing to undertake such work for themselves or to establish similar courses, as well as a full analysis of the link between professional reflection and the artistic imagination. The book makes available a new and more broadly-based approach to the process of professional reflection, and the concept of the patchwork text has general relevance for debates about increasing access to higher education qualifications.

A feast for all food writers, "The Resource Guide for Food Writers" is a comprehensive guide to finding everything there is to know about food, how to write about it and how to get published. An educator at the Culinary Institute of America, Gary Allen has compiled an amazing handbook for anyone who wants to learn more about food and share that knowledge with others.
Including a foreword by Mr. Tim Ryan, Senior Vice President of the Culinary Institute of America, this multifaceted guide teaches readers how to:
* find appropriate libraries
* use catalogs, directories, bibliographies and periodicals
*and locate specialty booksellers.
Chapters on the writing process provide real guidance on:
*how to write
*what resources are helpful
*and how to combat writer's block In the final section, the intimidating task of getting published is tackled with specific help in drafting proposals and finding the appropriate publisher.
An impressive menu of resources, this authoritative reference is essential for every epicurean, from the food service professional to the ambitious home gourmet.

"Writing Business: Genres, Media and Discourses" offers an analysis of the genres and functions of written discourse in the business context, involving a variety of modes of communication. The evolution of new forms of writing is a key focus of this collection and is only partly attributable to the ever increasing application of technology at work. Alongside machine-mediated texts such as electronic mail and computer-generated correspondence, the contextualised analyses of both traditional genres such as facsimiles and direct mailing, and of lesser studied texts such as invitations for bids, contracts, business magazines and ceremonial speeches, reveal a rich complexity in the forms of communication evolved by organisations and the individuals who work within them, in response to the demands of the social, organisational and cultural contexts in which they operate. This rich textual variation is matched by a discussion of a range of methodological approaches to the development of business writing skills, including rhetorical analysis, organisational communication analysis, social constructionism, genre analysis and survey and experimental methods. Using authentic data and benefiting from a fresh, interdisciplinary approach, the volume will be of interest to students and researchers of business communication, Language for Specific Purposes (LSP), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), and sociolinguistics.