Work in progress - a new approach for understanding student and workplace writing in engineering

This project addresses a well recognized problem in engineering education: the mismatch between the writing skills of engineering program graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace. Previous research has emphasized academic contexts and workplace case studies. This project provides a new perspective by investigating the language used in a large number of texts written by students and practicing engineers. The innovative approach uses ¿corpus linguistics¿-computer-assisted techniques from the field of applied linguistics-and a multidisciplinary team of engineering faculty, linguists, and practicing engineers. The analysis allows us to better understand differences between student and practitioner texts with respect to vocabulary, grammar, and rhetorical organization, and to consider the writers´ choices relative to the functions they fulfill for the school and workplace contexts. Based on the empirical analysis, suggestions will be made for specific instructional tasks that develop skills for workplace writing. Although the project focuses on civil engineering, the approach can be adapted to any field.