Engineering Communication Practice Exam
Course Introduction
Engineering Communication explores the principles and practices of effective communication within engineering contexts. The course covers written, oral, and visual communication methods tailored for technical audiences, including the preparation of reports, proposals, technical documents, and presentations. Emphasis is placed on clarity, accuracy, and professionalism, as well as collaboration and ethical considerations in engineering communication. Students will develop practical skills for conveying complex information, working in teams, and engaging with diverse stakeholders in both academic and professional engineering environments.
Recommended Textbook
Technical Communication 11th Edition by Mike Markel
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Technical Communication
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Q1) Which of these is a measure of excellence in technical communication?
A) accuracy
B) terseness
C) plainness
D) celerity
Answer: A
Q2) As used in Chapter 1, what does correctness mean?
Answer: Correctness refers to a document's adherence to conventions of grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, and usage.
Q3) One basic purpose of design features is to create a positive impression with a document. What is one other purpose mentioned in Chapter 1?
Answer: The other two purposes are to help readers navigate the document and to help them understand the document.
Q4) Technical communication involves knowing where to find trustworthy information.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 2: Understanding Ethical and Legal Considerations
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Q1) A writer preparing an electrician's manual is considering inserting company-designed danger symbols to denote the potential for electrocution. In deciding whether to do so, what should the writer's primary concern be?
A) codes of conduct
B) liability law
C) copyright law
D) whistle-blowing
Answer: B
Q2) Which of the following preferences does Creative Commons NOT give copyright owners a means to control?
A) whether their work can be shared only in noncommercial environments
B) whether users of the work must attribute it
C) whether the copyright will expire after a fixed amount of time
D) whether others may alter or build on the existing work
Answer: C
Q3) To be effective, a code of conduct must stipulate penalties.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 3: Writing Technical Documents
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Q1) Why should you save proofreading until the end of your project instead of proofreading as you are drafting?
A) Studies show that writers can effectively increase their focus as they approach the end of a long, tiring project.
B) When you are drafting, everything you write is subject to being revised, moved, or even deleted.
C) Proofreading is the most efficient way of working through the writing process.
D) None of the responses are correct.
Answer: B
Q2) Which of the following does Chapter 3 suggest as a method for effective proofreading?
A) reading the revised portions of your document, which you print in a different color
B) reading backwards
C) reading aloud
D) reading in a quiet space
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Writing Collaboratively
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Q1) According to the research cited in Chapter 4, which two of the following behaviors might students from other cultures exhibit?
A) unwillingness to respond with a definite "no"
B) reluctance to initiate new tasks or perform creatively
C) unwillingness to meet at certain times
D) routinely arriving late for team meetings
Q2) Chapter 4 offers several suggestions for conducting efficient meetings. Which of these is NOT a suggestion from the chapter?
A) Be aware of group members' body language and nonverbal communication.
B) Have one team member write down the decisions made at each meeting.
C) Avoid a formal schedule and make sure each team member gets to say whatever is on his or her mind.
D) Summarize the major decisions and assign tasks to finish before the next meeting.
Q3) Videoconferencing allows two or more people in separate locations to see and hear each other simultaneously. What other two activities does videoconferencing allow participants to perform?
Q4) What is one of the advantages of collaboration mentioned in Chapter 4?
Q5) In what way does collaboration allow an organization to grow?
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Chapter 5: Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose
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Q1) Which of these is NOT a variable "beneath the surface" of daily life in a culture?
A) distance between ranks
B) need to spell out details
C) prevalence of technology
D) distance between business and private life
Q2) Your company has completed an audience analysis for the manual you are writing for users of a new accounting system. The manual will be given to the 750 employees in the company's accounting department. Some members of the audience are experienced accountants and others are not; some have MBA degrees and others have bachelor's or associate's degrees; some were recently hired and some are long-term employees; some are managers and some are bookkeepers. How might you best accommodate your audiences?
A) Include different sections for the different audiences.
B) Write the manual to the lowest level of the audience.
C) Write the manual to the highest level of the audience.
D) Prepare an audience profile sheet.
Q3) Why are graphics especially useful when communicating with people from other cultures?
Q4) for what primary purpose do private companies use social-media data?
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Chapter 6: Researching Your Subject
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Q1) Government publications are not usually listed in indexes or by abstract services.
A)True
B)False
Q2) You are writing a report about technical methods used for desalination of seawater. Which of these resources is least likely to provide the technical information you need?
A) a website for professional water-treatment engineers
B) a book about industrial desalination
C) a discussion board about ecology
D) a blog by a leading expert in desalination
Q3) You are interviewing the mayor of your city for a report on the prospects for high-tech manufacturing there. Which of the following questions will be most effective in an interview?
A) Are tax incentives helping to retain expanding companies?
B) How well are tax incentives helping to retain expanding companies?
C) How long have you been the mayor?
D) Do companies complain about the tax system here?
Q4) What is the difference between secondary research and primary research?
Q5) What is the function of an RSS feed?
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Chapter 7: Organizing Your Information
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Q1) Of the options listed below, which is the most effective way to organize a document explaining which of three different trucks your company ought to buy for its fleet?
A) classification
B) comparison and contrast
C) spatial
D) chronological
Q2) The following two headings indicate which type of organizational pattern?
Two Tasks You Must Complete Today
Other Tasks That Need Your Attention
A) more important to less important
B) general to specific
C) whole-by-whole comparison
D) problem-methods-solution
Q3) The first step in comparing and contrasting two or more items is to determine the criteria: the standards or needs you will use in studying the items.
A)True
B)False
Q4) A proposal routinely makes use of which organizational pattern?
Q5) what is partition?
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Chapter 8: Communicating Persuasively
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Q1) In the following excerpt from a proposal seeking funding to upgrade a police department's crime lab, which technique for making a persuasive case listed below does the writer NOT use?
In the past four years, the department's crime lab has experienced an increase in fingerprint evidence for comparisons. The increase in volume is a result of submissions from other rural agencies in the state. However, because our agency cannot access data maintained within the state's Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), submissions are limited to manual searches of the 14,000 files maintained by our department. You can imagine the likelihood of missing a fingerprint match while looking through thousands of fingerprints by hand. In fact, Harlan Andrews, a Senior Investigator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's laboratory, reports that manual searches often fail to find matches when in fact fingerprint matches exist. To prevent such errors, our department needs to upgrade its computer system to allow access to AFIS.
A) commonsense arguments
B) examples
C) expert testimony
D) numerical data
Q2) What type of argument poses only two alternatives when in fact there might be more?
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Chapter 9: Emphasizing Important Information
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Q1) Which of these examples shows the most effective transition from the first sentence to the second?
A) New screening techniques are being developed to combat computer viruses. They are the subject of a new research effort at Big State University.
B) New screening techniques are being developed to combat computer viruses. These techniques are the subject of a new research effort at Big State University.
C) New screening techniques are being developed to combat computer viruses. A new research effort at Big State University is focused on fighting computer viruses.
D) New screening techniques are being developed to combat computer viruses. Nevertheless, they are the subject of a new research effort at Big State University.
Q2) What kind of transitional words are for example, for instance, and in other words?
A) illustration words
B) addition words
C) contrast words
D) summary words
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Chapter 10: Writing Correct and Effective Sentences
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Q1) Which of the following is a run-on sentence?
A) The adventurer walked for days and days, for weeks on end, for what seemed like an eternity; he found himself in a state of perpetual exhaustion.
B) He is a little bit sour, she is a little bit sweet, and I am a little bit stale.
C) I left the room when he yelled at me.
D) Vote for Pedro he will represent you well.
Q2) A euphemism is a bit of shoptalk, a word or phrase that has a precise meaning to members of a particular group, organization, profession, or occupation but may have little meaning for people outside that group.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A nominalization is a verb that has been transformed into a noun, as when to install becomes to effect an installation, or to analyze becomes to conduct an analysis.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What two guidelines will help you to avoid causing confusion when using clusters of adjectives?
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Chapter 11: Designing Print and Online Documents
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Q1) What is the definition of queuing?
A) Queuing is a page-design technique in which two or three columns are distributed evenly across the page.
B) Queuing is a page-design technique in which visual patterns show levels of importance.
C) Queuing is a page-design technique in which text and graphics are arranged in a symmetrical pattern.
D) Queuing is a page-design technique in which text and graphics are arranged in a straight line, or queue.
Q2) Chunking is the practice of using visual patterns to distinguish types of information so that readers can decide what they want to read.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which principle states that the human eye is drawn to-and that the brain interprets-differences in appearance between two items?
Q4) Chapter 11 lists three kinds of physical impairments that may prevent someone from fully using your site. One is hearing impairment. What is another?
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Chapter 12: Creating Graphics
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Q1) Which of the following is structured to emphasize the person or group with responsibility for certain tasks?
A) deployment flowchart
B) deployment organization chart
C) logic tree
D) diagram
Q2) Graphics typically increase the costs of translating documents intended for international readers.
A)True
B)False
Q3) what is the most important characteristic of an infographic?
Q4) Chapter 12 identifies four stages in the process of creating graphics. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the chapter?
A) trademarking
B) planning
C) revising
D) producing
Q5) Chapter 12 suggests that you consider four factors when planning a graphic. One is audience. Name two other factors you should consider.
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Chapter 13: Reviewing, Evaluating, and Testing Documents and Web Sites
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Q1) One factor affecting the usability of a document or website is its efficiency of use. What are two other factors?
A) subjective satisfaction
B) ease of learning
C) length
D) price of the document or website
E) None of the responses are correct.
Q2) In which stage of the reviewing process are you most likely to benefit from using your word processor's outline view?
A) revising
B) editing
C) proofreading
D) all three stages: revising, editing, and proofreading
Q3) Usability testing is the process of performing experiments to determine that a product functions at a minimally acceptable level before the manufacturer devotes time, money, and other resources to creating documentation for the product.
A)True
B)False
Q4) what is a prototype?
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Chapter 14: Writing Correspondence
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Q1) Provide an example of a letter cliché.
Q2) Chapter 14 offers several guidelines for writing inquiry letters. One is to explain who you are and why you are writing. What is another guideline?
Q3) Chapter 14 states two reasons language errors in correspondence are unprofessional. One is that they suggest a lack of respect for your reader and for yourself. What is the other reason?
Q4) What types of incidents and developments related to your organization should be the subject of posts on a company-sponsored microblog?
Q5) A small manufacturer of computer games discovers an error in the instructions shipped with the latest product. A writer at the company has been asked to write a letter to recent purchasers of the product explaining the correct information and apologizing for the mistake. Which of the following elements would NOT appropriately be included in this letter?
A) blind-copy notation
B) a heading
C) a subject line
D) a discount offer on another product
Q6) What does the notation "cc" stand for in a letter, memo, or email?
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Chapter 15: Writing Job-Application Materials
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Q1) Why is it important to include keywords in your LinkedIn profile?
Q2) Chapter 15 lists four questions you should ask before posting an electronic résumé on an Internet job board. One question is "Who has access to your résumé?" What is one of the other questions?
Q3) As you develop your professional brand online, you should include keywords that employers look for in your field.
A)True
B)False
Q4) what does it mean to be a "passive applicant" for jobs?
A) Your résumé uses more passive verbs than active verbs.
B) You do not submit application letters, but you do send out plain-text copies of your résumé.
C) You maintain contacts with professionals in your field and keep an open mind about future job opportunities.
D) You pay a placement firm to submit your job-application materials for you.
Q5) Chapter 15 lists six guidelines for building the foundation of your professional brand. One is to research what others have done. Name two other guidelines.
Q6) what is an elevator pitch?
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Chapter 16: Writing Proposals
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Q1) What are the main categories of resources required for completing a proposed project?
A) personnel, potential, and qualifications
B) personnel, facilities, and equipment
C) qualifications and experience
D) personnel, budget, and tangential resources
Q2) A task schedule is almost always drawn in one of three graphical formats: table, bar chart, or network diagram.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of these is NOT a common deliverable for the end of a research project?
A) completion report
B) progress report
C) recommendation report
D) project report
Q4) What are indirect costs?
Q5) Formative evaluations are intended to assess the quality of a completed project. A)True
B)False
Q6) What do the initials RFP stand for?
Page 18
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Chapter 17: Writing Informational Reports
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Q1) Identify three of the issues you should be sure to address in a field report?
Q2) What are the five basic formats for informational reports discussed in Chapter 17?
Q3) what is the primary purpose of a directive?
Q4) When you are recording meeting minutes and an argument arises, you should record both the argument and its outcome in order to ensure comprehensiveness.
A)True
B)False
Q5) which of the following is NOT a typical informational report?
A) an incident report about the response of your company's security team to an unauthorized visitor on your property
B) a proposal to study why a piece of your company's machinery failed at a customer's site
C) a directive about where employees should park while a construction crew will be blocking some parking spaces
D) meeting minutes recording decisions reached during a committee meeting
Q6) It is not appropriate to add appendixes to informational reports.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 18: Writing Recommendation Reports
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Questions
Q1) The essential questions answered in the introduction of a recommendation report are similar to those answered when introducing what other kind of document?
A) a proposal
B) an incident report
C) meeting minutes
D) a job-application letter
Q2) What fundamental question does the methods section of a recommendation report answer?
Q3) In the recommendations section of a recommendation report, you should avoid recommending that the organization take no action, or no action at this time.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Into what two categories can criteria be classified?
Q5) What fundamental question does the conclusions section of a recommendation report answer?
Q6) The back matter section of a recommendation report serves two primary purposes. Identify one.
Q7) In a decision matrix, which factor demonstrates a criterion's importance?
Page 20
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Chapter 19: Writing Lab Reports
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Q1) Which of these guidelines should you follow when writing conclusions?
A) Review the purpose of your lab and the hypothesis (or hypotheses) you tested.
B) Summarize the most important implications of your findings.
C) Do not introduce any new information or analysis in this section.
D) All responses are correct.
E) None of the responses are correct.
Q2) You should write the sections of a lab report in the order in which they will appear in the report.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What does prepublication permit an author to do and what is it designed to take advantage of?
Q4) How familiar should you assume your audience will be with the particulars of your experiment?
Q5) Scientific research does not entail persuasive writing; providing the facts from an experiment is sufficient.
A)True
B)False
Q6) What are author guidelines?
Q7) In the context of a lab report, what does replicability mean?
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Chapter 20: Writing Definitions, Descriptions, and Instructions
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Q1) Which of the following provides the best conclusion to a set of instructions on assembling a toy airplane for children under age 10?
A) Have fun!
B) --End Of Page--
C) Use your toy carefully.
D) The propeller should turn as you roll the airplane's wheels. If the propeller does not turn, make sure the wheel axle is turning the gear on the motor.
Q2) Descriptions are rarely incorporated into longer documents; instead, they usually appear as separate documents.
A)True
B)False
Q3) You are a technical writer for Landson Toy Company. Landson has just designed a new, more durable swing set for 6- to 10-year-olds. Which of the following should you include in the Introduction to the swing-set installation guide?
A) a list of the tools the user needs to assemble the swing set
B) the reasons the user should carry out the instructions
C) the safety precautions the user must take
D) a list of parts included with the swing set for assembly
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Chapter 21: Making Oral Presentations
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Q1) where on a presentation slide should you place the claim you are making?
A) in the headline area at the top
B) in the body of the slide
C) in a graphic in the middle of the slide
D) in the middle of the footer area
Q2) Chapter 21 describes four types of oral presentations, including impromptu presentations. What are the other three?
A) contemporaneous presentations
B) extemporaneous presentations
C) scripted presentations
D) prescriptive presentations
E) memorized presentations
Q3) One disadvantage of using handouts during a presentation is that your audience might read the handout instead of listening to you.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Chapter 21 lists a number of points to keep in mind if you become nervous before giving an oral presentation. One is to realize that you are prepared. What is one other mentioned in the chapter?
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