1. Towards Business and Technical Writing: What Do
Business Students Write? What Does Faculty Look
For?
ABNER OKIRIA
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2. Objectives
• Define Technical Writing and explain its
characteristics
• Appreciate the importance of effective
writing
• Recognize the crucial role faculty have in
facilitating skills development
• Critique some assumptions
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3. Thesis
Business writing and technical writing
are Intertwined and as such should
be taught together. Faculty often
make assumptions to isolate technical
writing and effective writing in general
but the reality is that these are skills
that require constant development
through continuous practice.
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4. The three-stage writing process
1. The Planning Stage (purpose, audience,
etc)
2. Drafting (free write your ideas, ignore
grammar, keep your readers in mind)
3. Revising (Reread the document, revise it for
clarity, coherence and conciseness,
proofread for grammatical, mechanical and
typographical errors)
Clair B. May and Gordon S. May (2009:14)Clair B. May and Gordon S. May (2009:14)
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5. General Types of Writing
Narrative: tells a story, fictitious or non, and
adheres to chronology of events, e.g.
“The Most eventful Day I have Ever Had”
Descriptive: Seeks to help an audience
visualize the subject of description, e.g.
“Travelling in a Crowded Taxi”
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6. Cont…
Persuasive: Seeks to influence an audience to
accept the persuader’s point of view, e.g. “All
mobile phone users should buy Nokia phones”
Expository: has to do with explaining, informing,
discussing, developing opinions, etc
A business report may involve two modes of
writing at the same time, e.g. persuasive and
expository
See Writing and Study Skills Handbook
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7. Other forms of writing
Creative writing: writing to express, writing to
demonstrate creativity
• Genres include: nonfiction, novels, poetry, short
stories, screenplays
Academic writing: writing to learn, to
demonstrate competency, to think critically
• Themes/ essays
• Essay exams
• Lab reports/ book reports
• Journals
See, Lay.et.al
(2000) 7

8. Technical Writing (T.W)
Conveys specific information about a
technical subject to a specific audience for
a specific purpose. It is applied
communication, designed to help an
audience:
• Perform specific tasks
• Solve certain problems
NB: T.W is a subset of technical
communication that includes written
documents
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9. Where do we find technical writing?
• User manuals
• Instructions for use
• Minutes
• Lab reports
• Software
documentation
• Progress reports
• News letters
• Procedures
• Web pages
• Emails
• Advertisements
• PowerPoint
presentations
• Letters
• Proposals
• Posters
• Graphics and charts
• Evaluation forms and
questionnaires
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10. Characteristics of Technical Writing
• Clear
• Accurate (Validity and precision of
information)
• Comprehensive
• Accessible
• Correct
• Concise
NB: The same characteristics apply to business and
academic writing
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11. What do business students write?
• Course work
• Proposals (internal,
sales, etc
• Dissertations
• Reports
• Meeting minutes
• Procedural manuals
• Corporate documents
• Memos
• CVs, Letters
• Emails
• Presentations
• Class notes
• questionnaires
• Web pages/ other
applications
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12. Compatibility
Business writing involves many
aspects of Technical Writing making
them inextricably linked
Do not teach Technical writing as a
replacement for your course content.
Do teach T.W to support your course
goals.
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13. Cont…
Teach Technical Writing so that students:
• Can recognize and explain its conventions
• Apply the conventions of written
communication in your discipline
• Analyze and evaluate the powerful role of
experts in your discipline
• Synthesize what they learn about writing
(process)
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14. What you can teach about T.W
• Audience analysis
• Formatting with graphics, block
style paragraphs, headings,
bullets and numbering, managing
white space, etc
• Basic genres such as memos,
object descriptions and instruction
• Inverted Pyramid analysis 14

15. Inverted Pyramid Analysis
Supporting
Details &
E.Gs
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16. Why students should learn T.W
• Functionally literate. Students will be
active citizens and productive workers.
Cadiero (2002)
• Critically literate. Students will learn how
to belong to a community (such as a work
place). Bushnell (1999)
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17. What we want in a student essay
• Critical reading skills
• Clear and effective writing
• Analysis
• Mature and effective response to
secondary material
• In-text citations and their
subsequent documentation in a
reference page
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18. Questionable Assumptions
• The student has attended a writing course
therefore can write effectively (WSS/
Business Communications)
• The student has mastered hidden skills,
like outlining, drafting and editing
• The student has learned the necessary
component skills at school
• Written assignments are assessment
activities, not learning opportunities
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19. Refutations
• The student has attended a writing course
therefore can write effectively (WSS and Business
Communications)
– The WSS course at UCU is general and does not
address certain specific writing needs of Business
students. B.C has a limited scope
– The same courses are time barred. You can not
change a life time of bad writing in just four months
or 12 weeks of teaching
– Business writing has unique characteristics that
faculty in business should point out to students
– Some students have generally given up on writing
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20. Cont…
• The student has mastered hidden skills, like
outlining, drafting and editing
– Does your students’ work show evidence of an
outline?
– Are you receiving final drafts with minimal
spelling or typographical errors?
– Do you encourage, recognise or reward the
three-stage writing process?
– Can our students make the transition from short
assignments to longer research essays and
dissertations?
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21. Cont…
• The student has learned the necessary
component skills at school
– Not all schools are equal
– The examination system focuses on knowledge, not
skills
– Exams assume a limited set of correct answers, if not
one correct answer
– Schools lack libraries and other resources to help
their students sift and compare disparate points of
view
– Are secondary teachers currently being trained to
teach writing?
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22. Cont…
• Written assignments are assessment
activities, not learning opportunities
–Should we measure end-product or
process? (see Murray 1972)
–What does continuous assessment
actually mean?
–What learning opportunities do we
actually offer our students?
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23. Talking Points
• Skills are learned, not taught (separates
talking and actual practice)
• Skills development requires constant
practice
• In order to appreciate the mastery of a
particular skill, we should have attempted
to exercise it ourselves
• A high-level skill, like technical writing,
requires the mastery of several basic skills
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24. Cont…
• Business communication Skills
should include a substantial
component of technical writing
• Curriculum review implications
• Additional Skills such as technical
writing increase employability of
students
NB: These positions are currently
dominated by expatriates
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25. Conclusion
Business and Technical writing are
inseparable. Any successful writing
in Business, Industry, Government
and Education follows conventions of
good writing in those contexts. As
teachers, it is our collective
responsibility to help our students
develop prowess in oral, but more
importantly in written communication.
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26. Recommendation
The Course Outline
To reinforce the importance of effective
writing in general, course outlines should
make these points:
• All written work and tests must be
correctly formatted, clearly written and
legible, with minimal errors in grammar or
spelling. Illegible essays will be returned
unread. 26

27. Cont…
• All written work, presentations and tests
must be your own work; with reference to
the work of other scholars clearly
identified and cited using a recognised
format for academic writing. Any
copying, plagiarism or other academic
dishonesty will earn a ZERO. Assume
that you are to work individually unless
the lecturer or the assistant designates
the assignment clearly as group work.
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28. List of References
Bushnell, Jack. (1999). A contrary view of the technical writing
classroom: Notes toward future discussion. Technical
Communication Quarterly, 8(2), 184. Retrieved April 13, 2011, from
http://www.attw.org/TCQarticles/8.2/8-2Bushnell.pdf
Cadiero-Kaplan, Karen. (2002). Literacy ideologies: Critically engaging
the language arts curriculum. Language Arts, 79(5), 374.
Claire B. May and Gordon S. May (2009). Effective Writing: A
Handbook for Accountants. 8th
ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Lay, M. Mary. (2000). Technical Communication. 2ed. USA: McGraw
Hill
Murray, D. 1972. “Teach Writing as Process, Not Product” in Cross-
Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader. 3-6.
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