How to teach engineering students to become better writers - Ron Choi ENG 574

Beer, David F. "How to teach engineering students to become better writers." Professional Communication Conference. Garden City, 1989. 106-107.

In this conference paper, Beer asserts that despite the conventional wisdom, engineers can be taught to be effective written communicators.  He goes on to provide a list of specific recommendations for teaching engineering students to write, including:

•  Engineering departments should take responsibility for educating engineering students , not English departments, to provide real-world context and ensure that engineers are taught to write as required by their professions.
• Do not accept the convention wisdom that engineers cannot write.  Engineering students are intelligent, and therefore can be taught.  Beer also recommends using “technical communication” instead of “English”.
• Treat technical communication as a series of tasks for problem solving.  This aligns the teaching style of technical communication to match other engineering classes.
• Use the metaphors of signal noise and control systems (common engineering concepts) to help engineering students relate to issues with syntax, grammar and other undesirable communication traits. 
• Provide relevant assignments.  Tailor the writing tasks to be appropriate for what the engineering students will actually need to do in the future.
• Provide a grading checklist, such that the students can breakdown the task into smaller components, and provide a semblance of objectivity.
• Use visual aids, under the assumption that many engineers are visual learners.
• Motivate learners with a real application, e.g. a class newspaper.

Beer’s paper does not contain any references or bibliography, however, at the time he was a senior lecturer in the department of ECE at the University of Texas, Austin, and taught technical communication to numerous engineering students. 

As a former engineering student myself, I found this source to have a lot of phenomenological validity.  It would also appear to validate some of my own theories on the matter – that engineers are intelligent enough to communicate effectively, however they may not have the motivation or the proper education to learn how to do so.  I would like to find more research data to back up this single qualitative account of what has worked in one professor’s classroom.