His knowledge of rhetorical principles enables the English teacher to criticize the content as well as the form of a technical report because the report is a verbal model of an object, process, or product. This relationship between content and rhetoric means that the English teacher can base his evaluation of the written work of science and engineering students on these three axioms:
Axiom I. Poor rhetoric signals poor technical knowledge.
Axiom II. Poor rhetoric manifests unscientific thinking.
Axiom III. Poor rhetoric demonstrates a lack of concern for engineering values.
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References
1.
SawyerT. M., “First Things Last: Composition for Seniors, Not Freshmen,”Technical Writing and Communication, 1(2), pp. 139–145 (April 1971).
2.
These relationships of theories and language to empirical data and knowledge are discussed philosophically by Karl Popper throughout his book, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London, 1963).
