Developing disciplinary discourse in a first-year engineering course: The DELNA initiative

Abstract

First-year students in higher education settings tend to face ongoing challenges with variations in discursive practices and genres within their discipline. Within this context, a Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA) was administered to first-year engineering students to assess the strengths and needs of their ability to navigate academic language. The purpose of this paper is to report on our initiative to support student’s development of academic literacy, specifically their disciplinary language proficiency through the implementation of pedagogical support activities.

A Multimodal framework to develop discursive skills in engineering

“…For example, to demonstrate competency in communication skills and lifelong learning, graduates of our engineering program are required to identify and communicate knowledge in a credible manner, use multiple modes of communication and develop communication skills iteratively in addition to summarizing, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluation knowledge from sources (CEAB). However, novice undergraduate engineering students may be illequipped to demonstrate such skills (D'Silva & Kinnear, 2021). Consequently, engineering programs across North America have sought to incorporate these competencies within their curricula (Ford, 2006) to prepare engineering students for their professional working environment.More importantly, the globally diverse nature of teamwork in engineering has demanded the necessity of effective communication skills in the workplace as engineers need to engage in complex and varied communicative tasks with a range of audiences.…”