Engineering Communication: From Principles to Practice

Expertly designed to address the specific needs of engineering students, Engineering Communication teaches them how to write and communicate effectively and professionally. It provides an understanding of how rhetorical and linguistic concepts can help solve everyday problems in writing and speaking in the workplace. In addition to the standard skill of grammatical writing, the book teaches students how to write with precision and objectivity as well as how to assess and adjust for specific audiences. Theory and practice are bridged through a series of principles (rather than steadfast rules) intended to help students examine, question, and refine their communication skills.

Features

* Smart organization. Content is separated into a series of easy-to-follow principles (19 in total) which together
help students improve their overall writing and communication skills in a step-by-step fashion.
* Practical. Students are taught transferable skills rather than simply being given templates to copy, giving them
a workable and versatile knowledge of grammatical, effective writing.
* Real-world strategies. Real documents prepared by professional engineers; for example, a full-text project
report on the failure of a crane at an aluminium plant is thoroughly analyzed. This model, as well as samples of
work from engineering students, is provided to help students gain an understanding of how to apply successful
communication strategies in the workplace.
* Helpful learning tools. The appendix includes guides to grammar basics such as sentence structure, clauses,
and conjunctions, giving students a solid grounding in the basics of writing before they progress through more
complex examples.
* Written for engineers. The text is written by experts in engineering communication to address the specific
communication requirements of engineering students and professionals.
* Grammar guide. An accessible grammar guide has been included at the end of the book for quick reference.

Robert Irish has been the director of the Language Across the Curriculum (LAC) program in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at University of Toronto since the program began in 1995. He has taught writing to graduate and undergraduate students in engineering and architecture for ten years. Peter Eliot Weiss is the associate director of LAC. In addition to working in a wide range of courses as a communication resource person, he leads oral communication workshops and teaches a section of the program's 'Written and Oral Communications' course.