Preliminary Analysis of Student and Workplace Writing in Civil Engineering

Abstract

In this paper we describe some preliminary results of a project that addresses a continuing problem in engineering education: the mismatch between the writing skills of engineering program graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace. This problem is commonly identified in surveys of employers, who express dissatisfaction with the writing skills of their new hires, and in survey of alumni from even strong engineering programs, who express dissatisfaction with the writing preparation they received 1,2 . In engineering education research, the problem has most often been examined with case studies of individuals 3 , examinations of particular courses and internships 4 , or surveys of the types of communication engineers undertake 5 . This project takes a new approach to investigating the problem and devising instructional materials. It focuses first on the empirical analysis of language features in a large collection of texts written by numerous students and practitioners. Instructional materials are then based on the specific language differences found between the student and practitioner texts. The project is innovative in including applied linguists (who study language variation in different communication contexts), engineering faculty, and engineers in local consulting firms. This combination, along with interviews of student writers, brings multiple perspectives to the interpretation of the language analyses. While the project focuses on civil engineering, the general approach can be applied to any field.