A Comparison of Practitioner and Student Writing in Civil Engineering

Abstract

Background Numerous studies have identified a gap between the writing skills of engineering program graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace; however, few studies have analyzed the writing of practitioners and students to better understand that gap and inform teaching materials.Purpose This study sought to compare word-level, sentence-level, and organizational differences in writing by practitioners and students and to identify differences that are important for engineering practice. I also sought to demonstrate the untapped potential for linguistic analyses to contribute to understanding engineering writing.Design/Method I used techniques from applied linguistics -corpus linguistics and rhetorical move analysis -supplemented with interviews of practitioners and students. The analysis investigated the interaction of language features, their functions, and writers' motivations.Results Student writing had more complicated sentence structures, less accurate word choice, more errors in grammar and punctuation, and less linear organization. These characteristics decreased effectiveness in areas that practitioners considered important: accurate and unambiguous content; fast, predicable reading; liability management; and attention to detail. Underlying the student writing problems were misconceptions about effective writing, ignorance of genre expectations, weak language skills, and a failure to appreciate that written words, not just calculations, express engineering content. ConclusionsThe findings better define the gap between student and practitioner writing, and are a basis for instructional materials that target important student writing weaknesses. Journal of Engineering EducationV C 2017 ASEE.

The Use of Passives and Impersonal Style in Civil Engineering Writing

“…This analysis is part of a larger project that investigates the writing of civil engineering practitioners and students and then develops teaching materials to improve undergraduate students' preparation for workplace writing (see Conrad, 2014Conrad, , 2015Conrad, , 2017Conrad, Kitch, Pfeiffer, Smith, & Tocco, 2015;Conrad, Kitch, Smith, Lamb, & Pfeiffer, 2016;Conrad, Pfeiffer, & Szymoniak, 2012). Civil engineering deals with the built environment, covering projects such as roads, bridges, buildings, tunnels, landslide mitigation structures, drinking and waste water systems, and other infrastructure.…”

Genre maps as a method to visualize engineering writing and argumentation patterns

“…Graduate engineering programs continue to focus on developing technical skills and knowledge rather than writing skills although academic currency is based on the ability to write and communicate technical ideas, not just succeed in research or coursework. While a few researchers consistently publish rigorous engineering communication and writing research (Leydens, ; Leydens, ; Leydens & Olds, ; McNair & Venters, ; Moskal & Leydens, ; Paretti, McNair, Belanger, & George, ) in technical communication venues, there has been a recent increase in publications addressing engineering writing in engineering education research venues such as the Journal of Engineering Education , the International Journal of Engineering Education , and the European Journal of Engineering Education (Baba, Cin, & Ordukaya, ; Conrad, ; Goldsmith, Willey, & Boud, ) and in the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research (Paretti, McNair, & Leydens, ). At the graduate level, engineering writing literature is scarce and usually focuses on proposed interventions (Simpson, Clemens, Killingsworth, & Ford, ; Yalvac, Smith, Troy, & Hirsch, ; Zemliansky & Berry, ), such as Adams' Dissertation Institute that seeks to increase persistence and completion for underrepresented PhD students through writing bootcamps (Artiles, Matusovich, Adams, & Bey, ; Hasbún, Matusovich, & Adams, ).…”

Quantitative Comparison between Writing Attitudes of U.S. Domestic and International Engineering Graduate Students

“…For example, Fillenwarth et al [13] studied the development on disciplinary discourse in engineering undergraduates' résumés, positing that disciplinary discourse is an important part of developing academic literacy and developing an identity within a specific field. Similarly, Conrad [14] used genre analysis to study the word choice, syntax, and sentence development in written documents of undergraduate civil engineers and compared those documents to those written by professional civil engineers. Anthony [15] analyzed how well an established writing model for introductions applied to software engineering research articles.…”