The General Motors Institute (GMI), a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Motors Corporation, was created to provide leaders for its parent organization. GMI is a fully accredited undergraduate college that offers degrees in industrial, electrical, and mechanical engineering and in industrial administration. Since people in business and industrial organizations must communicate well in order for their organizations to function effectively, GMI places great emphasis on teaching communication skills. One typical course, Written and Oral Communication II, teaches speaking skills; it also teaches writing as a functional, utilitarian skill. Students are taught to keep in mind the readership and the intended use of each report they write, as they plan and write each part of it: preface, introduction, development, and conclusion. The course avoids a rigid taxonomic approach, in which all industrial writing is divided into categories such as reports, letters, memos, and proposals. Technical writing is taught as the designing of pieces of writing to meet the needs of specific situations. (GW)