Writing Technical Documentation

B2 · Upper-intermediate1 hr 7 minIT & TechnologyLesson 2 of 8 · Outline

Aims

Goal: write documentation a new colleague can follow on day one without asking you anything — specific steps, stated prerequisites, real examples.

The lesson, stage by stage

  1. Warm up5 min

    Warm-up: Documentation someone can actually follow

    2 warm-up questions

  1. Reading10 min

    Reading: The Art of Technical Writing

    Read a 184-word text about The Art of Technical Writing

  2. Vocabulary8 min

    Vocabulary: Technical Documentation Vocabulary

    7 items

  3. Reading10 min

    Reading: A model README, written in full

    Read a 241-word text about A model README, written in full

  4. Practice7 min

    Practice: Fix the Documentation

    Error-correction exercise, 4 items

  5. Practice7 min

    Practice: Technical Writing Precision

    Gap-fill exercise, 5 items

  6. Dialogue10 min

    Dialogue: Documentation Review Meeting

    Role-play: Your team lead asks you to improve documentation for a new feature (3 lines)

  7. Discussion10 min

    Discussion: Your mission: the day-one test

    3 discussion questions

Open the full lesson

The remaining 7 stages of this lesson, with the procedure, the examples and the exercises, are included with Starter, along with the interactive version you can teach from. Lesson 1 of this course is free: the full plan is on this site, and a free account opens it in the interactive player.

Target vocabulary

In a Tuton account these words become your student's vocabulary deck, so they come back in practice between lessons.

documentationspecificationREADMEchangelogAPI referencedeprecatedend-user

This plan comes from the Tech Workplace Communication course in the Tuton library. Browse all free lesson plans.