Helping Technology Students Improve Their Reading Skills

摘要

Unlike teachers in many academic disciplines, technology and CTE teachers offer hands-on learning. They tend to use frequent demonstrations, experiments, and practical applications in their teaching. And, quite often, students enrolled in technical programs prefer hands-on activities over reading and writing. While hands-on learning works well for conveying technical skills (Wilson & Cleland, 1989), most technical jobs will also require good reading, writing, and oral communication skills. In the future, communication skills will grow in importance as our ever-changing, ever-more-complex technology calls for continual learning throughout a career. Success for our students will depend on excellence not only in technical skills but also in the essential communication skills needed to process the information in documentation, trade journals, and operations manuals (Society for Technical Communication, 1995).