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Subject:Re: If You Were Gonna Teach... From:Meg Halter <aiki4us -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 7 Mar 2002 09:00:59 -0800 (PST)
--- Tom Murrell <trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> If you were going to teach a writing course to your Subject
> Matter Experts,
> what would you stress?
If I were you, Tom, I wouldn't even think about discussing
things like styles in Word. They won't be interested, they won't
care. However, it might be worthwhile to tell them about the
spellchecker and to explain that the spellchecker is our friend.
Seriously... Of course, the content should depend on the
attendees. If they are not native speakers, perhaps a summary of
common boo-boos, that includes an explanation of why it's wrong
and how to fix it.
If they are like the people I often deal with, it might be
useful to explain a little bit about structuring information and
why it is a good thing to do. Things like using paragraphs of a
reasonable length, each paragraph dealing with one subject.
Sentences that don't run on. Using lists. That sort of thing.
That said, my experience is that many people are not receptive
to this sort of thing. Either they believe they already write
well or they rationalize that it's not important to do so. I
hope your audience isn't like this.
Good luck.
-- Meg
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