From April 16th through April21st, Georgia State University Professors Baotong Gu and George Pullman visitedour college from the United States, and, on both April 18th and April 20th,collaborated with our college’s Professor Yeping Qian to teach an MTI coursetitled “Technical Writing”.

Professor Baotong Gu lectured onproposal writing and provided a detailed explanation of CRAP design principles(i.e. Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity) in technical writing.Professor George Pullman began his lecture with the classical rhetoric ofAristotle and went on to deliver a detailed introduction to the foundation oftechnical writing theory as well as the argumentation writing method proposedby Stephen Toulmin. Two MTI students, Sheng Chen and Yating Chen, respectivelydelivered lectures during class, which were both highly praised by the twovisiting professors, introducing infographics and poster design to their classmates.

This MTI “Technical Writing”course is currently in its second year of being offered at our college and isone of only a few pilot courses of its kind offered at institutions of highereducation all over China. As experts in technical communication, ProfessorsBaotong Gu and George Pullman provided our college with an initial plan forrelevant future courses and, on the afternoon of April 18th, argued favorablyfor the possibility of similar undergraduate courses.

During this one week visit, ProfessorsGu and Pullman not only deepened our graduate students’ awareness andunderstanding of technical communication, but also advanced and promoted ourcollege’s “Technical Writing” course and, to a certain extent, English writingpedagogy in general.