ESL 535 - Introduction to Technical Writing
Semesters offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
Course developer: Jin Pennell, Senior Lecturer, Linguistics; teaching in LAS for 15 years
1. How would you describe the course to someone unfamiliar with the subject?
This course covers essential skills in technical writing, such as communicating specialized knowledge to a range of audiences and communicating with clear wording, structure, and design. Assignments include instructions, reports, proposals, or other technical communication tasks commonly done in STEM fields. This course also includes instruction on using AI writing tools responsibly and effectively and fundamental writing skills that can support the utilization of such tools.
2. What made you want to create this course?
Before this course was created, there was no technical writing course specifically designed for international graduate students. While there are a number of graduate-level scientific and technical writing courses on campus, none of them provide specific instructions for international students who speak English as their second language. Moreover, the primary focus of these courses is writing for publication or grant, and they primarily enroll PhD students in a particular discipline who are in the later stages of their study. However, 80% of the international graduate students who need ESL are Master’s students who may or may not wish to stay in academia after graduation. So, I created this course to target students from technical fields in their first year of graduate study who need basic training in common genres in technical writing.
3. Were there any challenges you faced while designing or teaching the course? How did you overcome it?
The course faced two main challenges. First, balancing academic and professional writing skills was difficult, as survey results showed half the students aimed for academia and half for industry. To address this, I selected genres useful in both areas, such as grant writing and technical reports. The second challenge was teaching writing with GenAI, given its rapid evolution. To ensure longevity, I designed open-ended materials. For example, the first unit featured a "GenAI Tool How-to Guide" assignment, where students chose an AI tool and created a manual for using it critically. This approach allows both the tool and the guide to adapt over time, making the materials flexible and future-proof.
A special acknowledgement to the faculty members who contributed to the needs analysis part of the course development: Jill Huang, John Popovics, Ali Toosi, Stephen Parente, Sayan Mitra, Raluca Ilie, Klara Nahrstedt, Emily Ziegler, Kate Newton, Hilary Selznick, Julie Zilles, Aaron Geiger, Celia Elliott, and Lance Cooper.
4. Now that you've offered the course at least once, what do you hope students took away from it the most?
I hope my students learned how to critically engage with AI tools at each stage of their writing and how to help their readers easily find what they need from their writing, understand what they find, and act on the message no matter who their audience is.
View more new course spotlights from LAS Educational Excellence.