A Corpus Linguistics Approach for Assessing Student and Workplace Writing in Civil Engineering

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Engineering - Civil (54) Linguistics (84)An on-going and persistent challenge facing engineering faculty and students is the development of students' writing skills to meet the demands of undergraduate engineering programs and the workplace. A multi-disciplinary team of faculty from linguistics and engineering, along with practicing engineers, addresses the challenge through detailed examinations of written texts. The research analyzes the structure of student and professional writing assignments in order to describe and examine the mismatch between the writing skills of engineering program students/graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace. The innovative and multi-disciplinary approach to examine written texts by professional engineers and engineering students has the potential of providing new insight into the practice of writing in the workplace and the development of writing skills writ large, as well as providing guidance in the instruction of writing for professional settings. A rigorous evaluation plan includes assessing the success of the project by an independent evaluation consultant and the submission and acceptance of research articles in peer review of journals and the acceptance of paper presentations at professional meetings.