Teaching Business and Technical Writing in China: Confronting Assumptions and Practices at Home and Abroad

Integrating Technical Communication Into China’s English Major Curriculum

“…Therefore, one concern about introducing technical communication into Chinese universities is whether topics such as ethics and social responsibilities would find a place in the classroom. Dautermann (2005) voiced similar concerns when she realized she was using marketing and business as a ''hook'' to teach technical writing in China. So even though we have a practicality pitch that seems to sell technical communication well to Chinese teachers and students, we should be careful in making that pitch so that we do not promote a version of technical communication education that we have learned to avoid in the United States-skill courses that have little or no humanistic value (Miller, 1979) and are practical in only the low sense of the word (Miller, 1989).…”

“…Teacher training can prove to be a challenge because China's English teachers often lack interdisciplinary training and the confidence to address other subject matters-which may be why they focus on teaching vocabulary in the first place (Duan & Gu, 2005). To facilitate teacher training, more exchanges between Chinese teachers and technical communication professionals and more workshops and institutes, such as those reported by Barnum et al (2001), Dautermann (2005), Ding and Jablonski (2001), and Tegtmeier et al (1999), are needed.…”

Writing for an International Audience in a US Technical Communication Classroom: Developing Competences to Communicate Knowledge Across Cultures

“…Scholars had theorized frameworks for developing such pedagogies (Kampf 1999;Thrush 1997). And, a few researchers had reported what they had learned by working in international classrooms and organizations abroad (Dautermann 2005;Thatcher, 2006). What appeared unavailable were practical applications of this scholarship and research into its successes and shortfalls.…”

The global horizons of professional communication: critical theoretical approaches to the discipline's emerging cultural issues

“…Weiss 1997;Yli-Jokipii 2001;Ulijn, Lincke, and Karakaya 2001;DeVoss, Jasken, Hayden 2002;St. Amant 2005b;Dauterman 2005;Kuiper 2007). In other instances, globalization has been an implicit backdrop against which I suggest that acknowledging the following characteristics of the globalizing world can help the discipline more critically and comprehensively approach globalization:…”

“…Perhaps most valuable for these goals are research sites focusing on nonprofit, international aid, or volunteer organizations that require professional communication practitioners and instructors, such as Fulbright faculty exchanges or Peace Corps business development and teaching programs (Dauterman 2005).…”