Instructor's Page:
Online Class Period on Making Connections

Description of Class Period

Our lesson on making connections in technical writing is designed to help engineering and science students avoid discontinuities between sentences and connect those sentences in engaging ways. Hindering many engineers and scientists from this effort is that they know only two or three ways to connect sentences. This lesson teaches them more than ten different sentences openers used in scientific writing. This class period is suited for a course in technical communication.

Objectives of Class Period

  1. Persuade students that making connections is important in scientific and technical writing
  2. Show engineering and science students a suite of sentence openers for connecting sentences
  3. Have students practice using those openers so that those openers become part of each student's repertoire.

Online Class Period

For the online class period, students should do the following:
  1. View the films of Lesson 5: Connecting Your Ideas.
  2. Take a comprehension quiz posted on the course's online platform
  3. Draft a biography (5-7 sentences) that uses four distinctly different sentence openers
  4. Optional: Post the biography on the course's online platform for peer critique or instructor review.

Reference

  1. Alley, Michael, The Craft of Scientific Writing, 4th ed. (New York: Springer Verlag, 2018), Lesson 5.

Possible Questions for Comprehension Quiz

Identify the sentence opener in the examples below.
  1. In minutes, the mountain emitted a cloud of hot rock and gas.
    a) Adverb
    b) Propositional phrase
    c) Participial phrase
    d) Infinitive phrase
    e) Dependent clause
  2. However, debate has arisen over the source of the steam.
    a) Adverb
    b) Propositional phrase
    c) Participial phrase
    d) Infinitive phrase
    e) Dependent clause
  3. To understand the source for steam in volcanic eruptions, we have to determine how much water the magma contains.
    a) Adverb
    b) Propositional phrase
    c) Participial phrase
    d) Infinitive phrase
    e) Dependent clause
  4. Although precursors for the eruption had been studied for months, the timing and power of eruption surprised many scientists.
    a) Adverb
    b) Propositional phrase
    c) Participial phrase
    d) Infinitive phrase
    e) Dependent clause
  5. Its slope collapsing, the mountain emitted a cloud of hot rock
    and gas.
    a) Adverb
    b) Propositional phrase
    c) Participial phrase
    d) Infinitive phrase
    e) Dependent clause

​Answers: 1(b); 2(a); 3(d); 4(e); 5(c)
Sponsors
     Leonhard Center, College of Engineering, Penn State
​     National Science Foundation, NSF EAGER Award  1752096

​Content Editor
     Michael Alley, Teaching Professor, College of Engineering, Penn State

Film Editors
     Richelle Weiger, College of Engineering, Penn State
     Casey Fenton, College of Engineering, Penn State
​For the academic year 2019-2020, we are collecting comments, questions, criticisms, and suggestions for the films, text, and quizzes of each lesson on scientific writing. To help us understand your input, would please let us know what your discipline is and whether you are a student, professional, or faculty member?