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Course Descriptions
Course Resources
Schedule:
**Policy & Planning
**Science & Statistics
Staff
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This intensive, hands-on writing course is designed to achieve excellence in writing through clarity in thinking. Critical thinking involves evaluating information to reach a well-justified decision or recommendation and critical writing is the clear, unambiguous communication of your information. The goal of this course is to develop your skills as a writer and editor/reviewer in order to make FWS policy and science writing clear, well-organized, persuasive, and logical. During this course, you will have an opportunity to practice techniques that relate critical thinking to writing using relevant Service documents and examples. In-class reviewers will provide you with one-on-one sessions to evaluate your writing and offer immediate feedback in order to improve your skills. Because it takes time and practice to improve writing skills, the course continues supporting the writers’ development for one year using writing coaches, on-line resources, and self-paced exercises. This course aims to influence your writing for the long term. During the four and a half day course,
you will have an opportunity to write job relevant materials. Instructors will provide evaluation of writing samples
in order to identify weaknesses in writing and work on improving exactly
what you need. Following the course, your writing skills
development continues with a personal coach for a year
to influence your writing for the long term.
Who Should Attend: This course is designed for individuals who are competent in basic writing skills but are interested in strengthening their ability to communicate through their government writing. We are targeting FWS biologists and managers whose job includes writing and reviewing a variety of documents in the context of a regulatory program including: findings, regulatory decision documents, technical reports, recommendations, comment letters, informational documents, and planning documents. This course does not offer a comprehensive treatment of technical scientific writing skills development. Participants need to agree to continue in the follow-up writing coaching program following the course.
Length: 5 days/36 hours
College Credit: 2 semester hours
Objectives: By the end of this session, the participant will be able to:
- Develop, organize and link ideas into clear, persuasive and logical writing.
- Use critical thinking skills to differentiate between fact and opinion, identify author bias, develop inferential skills, and recognize logical fallacies and faulty reasoning.
- Apply simple techniques (such as the IRAC format) that make your documents analytical, reasoned and understandable.
- Write well-organized sentences, paragraphs and documents using proper conventions with reference to legal and biological standards.
- Review and apply grammar, sentence structure and plain language rules.
- Diagnose problems in writing samples and increase your ability to inform others how to improve.
- Edit and revise writing samples so that they are concise, contain relevant information, and are free of errors.
| Availability: |
Annually |
| Contact: |
Karene Motivans |
| Branch: |
Conservation Science & Policy Branch |
| Phone: |
304/876-7458 |
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