Teaching Technical Writing to Non-Native Speakers of English

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest J. Parkin
Keyword(s):  
Special Needs ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
Expository Writing ◽  
Good Program ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Preparatory Work ◽  
The U.S

Teaching technical writing to non-native speakers of English is complicated by their special needs. Central to the discussion is the idea that expository writing ought to be a key element of any program purporting to teach English. The nature of proper preparatory training is discussed with specific reference to the language groups American trainers are likely to encounter working in the U.S. or abroad. The justification for specific practices is discussed and should enable instructors to develop further strategies for training. Once the preparatory work is completed, effective technical writing instruction for non-native trainees requires modification of a good program for native speakers. Training is most effective if material is presented in culturally familiar and intellectually compatible ways.

Improving Technical and Bureaucratic Writing

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Mohan R. Limaye
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Technical Writing ◽  
Semantic Relationships ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Expository Prose

This article emphasizes four syntactic-rhetorical imperatives which make written messages easier to read. 1. Keep subjects and their verbs close together. Since native speakers of English expect verbs to follow subjects closely, any intervening element makes the processing of information difficult. The longer the intervening element, the more difficult the comprehension of the message. 2. Use appropriate prepositions between nouns to explicitly indicate their semantic relationships. Long nominal phrases are hard to understand because these implicit relationships create ambiguity. What compounds the difficulty of the message is that all the nouns in the phrase, except the last one, assume the function normal to adjectives namely, modification. 3. Help readers to segment syntactic units correctly. The obstacles to readability in this area are the omission of commas and of the signals of subordination, and the misplacement of modifiers. 4. Match textual sequence with chronological sequence. If the sequence of the events does not match the sequence of their reporting in a piece of technical writing, that piece of expository prose is bound to communicate poorly.

scholarly journals Intelligibility of English Mosaic Speech: Comparison between Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 6920
Author(s):  
Santi ◽  
Yoshitaka Nakajima ◽  
Kazuo Ueda ◽  
Gerard B. Remijn
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Mosaic Block ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Speech Stimuli ◽  
Degraded Speech ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
New Information ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Speech Segments

Mosaic speech is degraded speech that is segmented into time × frequency blocks. Earlier research with Japanese mosaic speech has shown that its intelligibility is almost perfect for mosaic block durations (MBD) up to 40 ms. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the intelligibility of English mosaic speech, and whether its intelligibility would vary if it was compressed in time, preserved, or stretched in time. Furthermore, we investigated whether intelligibility differed between native and non-native speakers of English. English (n = 19), Indonesian (n = 19), and Chinese (n = 20) listeners participated in an experiment, in which the mosaic speech stimuli were presented, and they had to type what they had heard. The results showed that compressing or stretching the English mosaic speech resulted in similar trends in intelligibility among the three language groups, with some exceptions. Generally, the intelligibility for MBDs of 20 and 40 ms after preserving/stretching was higher, and decreased beyond MBDs of 80 ms after stretching. Compression also lowered intelligibility. This suggests that humans can extract new information from individual speech segments of about 40 ms, but that there is a limit to the amount of linguistic information that can be conveyed within a block of about 40 ms or below.

A Multi-Faceted Global Virtual Team Project Linking Tech Comm Education in the U.S. and France

2018 ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Pam Estes Brewer ◽  
Patricia Minacori
Keyword(s):  
Technical Communication ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Instructional Materials ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Team Project ◽  
The U.S

The authors of this chapter report on a multi-faceted, technical communication project and what U.S. and French professors learned about designing similar projects and about what students find most important. The project challenged students to write in unfamiliar genres, to collaborate with students in another culture, to better understand the field of technical communication in another country (practice and education), to edit the writing of non-native speakers of English, and to increase understanding of international technical communication. Students provided reflections that explored their return on experience. This chapter includes pedagogical foundations, challenges, and recommendations as well as instructional materials for designing such a project.

Mundialização do conhecimento científico, distribuição de poder e controle do privilégio epistêmico na Geografia.

GEOgraphia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (36) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Joseli Maria Silva ◽  
Marcio Jose Ornat
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

Este artigo tem por objetivo evidenciar alguns dos elementos que sustentam a lógica de centralidade do discurso científico anglo-americano nas redes mundiais de conhecimento, bem como destacar as mazelas da influência desta hegemonia científica nos processos de identificação das sexualidades no Brasil. Os argumentos do texto estão baseados nos princípios epistêmicos expressos na Sessão Publishing for Non-Native Speakers of English, que fez parte do Encontro Anual da Association of American Geographers (AAG) realizado em Tampa, Flórida, em abril de 2014. A organização das redes mundiais de conhecimento científico tem reforçado o lugar de enunciação anglo-americano que cria as representações de mundo que extrapolam o cenário acadêmico, atingindo também as experiências cotidianas e os movimentos sociais e políticos de travestis e transexuais brasileiras.

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