Playing with Style in the Technical Writing Classroom

I’ve bene thinking about how I can incorporate play more into the technical writing classroom. I could have my students try generative sentence writing when they are writing their proposals, but I want to incorporate this theme throughout the semester with more of the projects, and I want it to be substantive.

 

For example, what if they played with their personal branding style? We could we examine our individual LinkedIn profile accounts, discuss personal branding and its importance in the workplace. The branding lesson is something we’ve already discussed, but what if we went back and played. Tweak it to make it sound like how they would like their personal branding sound, rather that the usually stiff summaries we usually read. Then, as a class we could do a small peer review where others read the summary and write a few words to describe how the summary sounds. Finally, the writer can decide if they are happy with their summary of if they need to do more playing and experimenting.

 

I think that play, in general, helps students think more critically. One of the lessons I use is a fairy-tale interviewing game. One of my colleagues was mastermind behind this lesson, and it works amazingly well. For one of the larger projects, the students have to interview someone, and so it’s nice to get them accustomed to the process. For the game, two students take turns interviewing one another. One is the interviewer, and the other is the interviewee who also happens to be a fairy-tale character. The game works on a point system. The goal is for the interviewer to ask enough questions thoughtfully to guess who the fairy-tale interviewee is. The interviewer can ask any question besides asking who the interviewee is. Every time the interviewer asks the interviewee a close-ended question, the interviewee gets a point. Every time the interviewer asks a follow-up question, they get a point. If the interviewee gets three points, they win. And every five points the interviewer gets, they get to guess who the fairytale character is.

 

This activity has been in many ways. For example, students remove passive voice when they interview a subject, they feel more comfortable interviewing someone, they think critically of what questions will guide the conversation, how to respond with follow-up questions, in a timely manner, and how to be more comfortable with the entire process. Then, we switch gears and I have the students interview the subject as a real person, and I’m so impressed with the new creative ways they interview their classmates. In previous semesters when I had my students interview one another, they tended to be stiff and uncomfortable, but this activity serves as an invention-esque activity that leads them to the interviews they will conduct later.

 

I’m still trying to think about other ways to incorporate play and style in technical writing because I feel like there is a need and it is exciting to see my students engage in with materials they previously disliked with a new energy, creativeness, and critical thinking I haven’t seen before.