First Night of Class

Yesterday was the first day of the summer term, and I'm thrilled with how well class went last night. My students are so bright and quick to catch on to the kind of writing we're doing in this class (Professional and Technical Writing) and concepts such as rhetorical purpose and primary and secondary audiences. To get an idea of how great these students are, consider this: On the agenda for last night's class was defining technical communication. I was going to pontificate about it, but as soon as I got in there, I looked around the room at the students and asked them what they thought it was. Their answers, which I wrote on the white board:

• information
• relaying messages in scientific/technical fields
• representations of data
• writing for a non-expert audience
• purpose-driven writing
• science writing (e.g. New York Times science columns)
• presentation of research
• business communication: memos, etc.
• inter-office, organizational communication
• concise way to exchange information

This was a baseline reading; I hadn't said a word about the concept of technical communication, and they presumably hadn't read the textbook yet. I'm impressed. :)