Behavioral Talk-Write as a Method for Teaching Technical Editing

Abstract

s "talk-write" pedagogy suggests a method for conducting workshop sessions on stylistic editing. Teachers should narrow the focus of each class to one stylistic goal, such as preventing overuse of nominalizations. After explaining the goal and demonstrating alternatives, the instructor divides the class into teams of two students apiece. One acts as primary editor and attempts to revise a set ofproblem sentences ; the other supervises the work as secondary editor, makes suggestions for improvement, and serves as a liaison with the instructor who circulates through the class, answering questions, resolving disputes, and approving or rejecting the finished set as presented by the secondary editor. This process-oriented method allows the teacher to apply several basic behavioral principles: to focus on individual students, to start with the students' naive repertory of responses and build from there, to work with freely emitted behavior, to insure frequent and brief responses, to reinforce quickly appropriate responses, and to achieve the desired behavior through sequential steps.

A course in document management

“…One is the myth (probably acquired during our school years) that writing is essentially a private process, something we do pretty much alone. The quality of writing, according to this "academic perversion" [2], is primarily a product of a repertory of skills we have inside us.…”