This presentation was a part of online participation via Google Hangout in the panel discussion on 'Teaching Writing Skills to Engineering Students. It was organised by Samvad Faculty forum of Dept. of Communication Skills, Marwadi Education Foundation's Group of Institutions, Rajkot (Gujarat - India)

1. Teaching Writing Skills
to Engineering Students
Dilip Barad
Panel Discussion via Google Hangout
30 Nov 2013, Saturday
12/2/2013

2. The Scaffold
• Writing skills:
– Is it difficult? Why? What makes it so difficult?
• Why English to Engineers?
– "Engineers don't need to know how to write. Why are
you making us do this?"
• Should English be taught by subject teachers
rather than English specialist?
– An article by Christine Robinson and Gerard Blair
• The Writing Process: English for Engineers:
– Help of ‘Study Academic Writing’ - CUP
• Use of ICT – from word processors to web tools
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3. Writing skills:
Is it difficult? Why? What makes it so difficult?
• Writing is one of the four basic skills in
learning language. Compared to the
others, writing is considered to be the most
complex and difficult skill to master.
• This difficulty, according to Richards and
Renandya (2002: 303),”lies not only in
generating and organizing of ideas but also in
translating these ideas into readable texts”.
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4. Writing skills:
Is it difficult? Why? What makes it so difficult?
• Oshima and Hogue (1991) also asserted that
good writing in English requires good grammar
and good organization. Moreover, Tangermpoon
(2008:1) emphasizes writing is the most difficult
because “it requires writers to have a great deal
of lexical and syntactic knowledge as well as
principle of organization in L2 to produce good
writing.”
• It further indicates that writing is not an easy
work to do and potentially creates many
problems; therefore it may induce anxiety and
frustration for many people especially English as
a Second Language (ESL) learners. (…)
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5. Why English to Engineers?
Why language proficiency to Engineers?
• In engineering, the transition from idea to
product requires that the engineer produce
clear proposals demonstrating the idea's
practicality and economic feasibility.
• Writing is a key element in this process.
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6. Should English be taught by subject
teachers rather than English specialist?
• This leads us to the question of ‘who is the
English specialist?’
• Masters of Arts with English, are they
specialist to do this job?
• Are the recent recruits to teach English to
Engineering students capable to teach?
• Are they good enough to be called ‘English
specialist’?
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7. In an article ‘Writing skills training for Engineering students in
large classes’ by Christine Robinson and Gerard Blair
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8. English Writing processes
• The aim of teacher is to:
1. Introducing the idea that writing is a set of
processes.
2. Showing how to distinguish between formal
and personal styles of writing.
3. Looking at the grammar of formal discourse.
4. Practicing visualizing text as a pre-writing
step.
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9. Thinking about writing processes:
1. When you write an important text, do you make
more than one draft?
2. If option is given, do you prefer to write on paper
or use a computer? Have you ever asked yourself
why?
3. What do you do before you start writing?
4. How do you start writing? Do you begin at ‘the
beginning’ or jump in wherever you have some
ideas? Do you think one approach is better than
another?
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10. Thinking about writing processes:
5. What do you do while you are writing? Do
you stop and think? Do you ever go back to
the beginning and start again?
6. When you finish your first complete
draft, what do you do next?
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11. Recognizing technical writing
• Read:
– Linguists were and remain convinced by Noam
Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, who discovered that however
disparate human languages seem, all share a
common, basic structure, seemingly hardwired into
the brain.
* Identify three features of this sentence that you
think are technical or formal.
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12. • Read
– The way you speak says a lot about you.
• Identify three features of this sentence that seem
non-technical to you.
• Discuss with your partner….
• Let us see the answers …
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13. Features of formal/technical and
informal/personal writings
• In first sentence:
– Complex sentence > which can be simplified to
make it suitable for our purpose
– Serious subject
– Reference to technical, ‘linguists’ and ‘Noam
Chomsky of …’
– Use of passive voice ‘Linguists were and remain
convinced by N.Chomsky …’
– Shows truth status of statement, ‘seemingly hardwired
into the brain’.
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14. • In second sentence:
– Vague vocabulary, such as ‘way’, ‘say’ and ‘a lot’ –
lack of precision.
– Directly addressing the reader, ‘you’ –
conversational style
– Simple sentence structure.
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15. Formal
After
distinguishing
some features of
writing, let us
now recognize
levels of
formality
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Reader
Engineers
Family & friends
Content
Serious thought
conversational
Style
Complex
sentences
showing
considerable
variety in
construction
Mostly simple
and compound
sentences
joined by
conjunctions
such as and or
but
Organization
Clear and well
planned
Less likely to be
as clear and as
organized
Grammar
Likely to be
error free
May not always
use complete
sentences
Vocabulary
Levels of formality
in writing
Informal
Technical and
academic
language used
accurately
Use of short
forms, idioms
and slang

16. Read the following sentences and tick
F(formal) and I(Informal)
Sentences
I couldn’t finish the interview on time.
The initial tests were completed and the results
analyzed by June 2008.
I’d like to start by drawing your attention to
previous research in this area.
In the 1990s, some researchers started to point
out the problems with this theory.
He agreed with me that this procedure didn’t
make much sense.
We’ll repeat the test sometime next year.
While it is still too early to draw firm conclusions
from the data, preliminary analysis suggests the
following trends are present.
In addition, the research attempts to answer two
further related questions.
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F
I
Notes

17. The writing process:
Visualizing your text
• Before we study Grammar and Linguistic
relativity of formal writing, let us see how can
we visualize our text?
• To write texts that are technical, begin by
thinking about three key elements: audience,
purpose and material.
• Ask yourself 3 questions…
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18. Ask yourself:
1. Who is the text for? (A)
2. Why is the text needed? (P)
3. What resources – data, evidence, reference
material, and so on – have I got that I can
use? (M)
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19. Ideas for starting technical text
• Material: make sure you have enough
material, resources, data, evidence etc
available.
• Highlight ideas, evidence and arguments.
• Purpose: is it report or argument. Going to be
used for???
• Audience: who are readers? How will they use
the text? Their depth of knowledge n reading?
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20. Use of ICT: from word processors to web tools
• Word processor, in this case MS Word, offers
some handy tools under its Tools menu which
can be applied in improving writing skill. For
examples:
• Spell checking
• Grammar checking
• Thesaurus
• Dictionary
• Synonym and antonym
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21. It is supported by research
• Kulik (2003) claimed that in three out of the four
studies that have been conducted, word
processing produced significant positive effects
on student writing skills.
• He also asserted with regular use of word
processors, young writers might even get into the
habit of revising and reorganizing their
compositions, and this habit might affect the
quality of their writing even when they were
writing with paper and pencil alone.
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22. Internet
• Blog
– Seriousness
– Published globally
– better output than pen-pencil tasks
• eGroups: Yahoo or Google
– Threaded interaction
– Dual benefit: Teacher controlled as well as peer
learning
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23. Blogs for Writing Skills
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24. Story 1
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25. Story 2
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26. Story 3
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27. Social Media
•
•
•
•
WatsApp
FaceBook
Twitter
Google+
– These give immense opportunity to teachers to be in
constant touch with students which helps in
monitoring use of language by students and it may
result into proficient use of language.
– Teacher can ‘engage’ students for more hours with
language > helps improve language proficiency.
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28. References:
• Hampton, Roberta S. 1989a. “Community involvement in alphabet and
material development.” Notes on Literacy.Interest level: lay specialist.
• Writing skills training for engineering students > large classes >
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3447697?uid=3738256&uid=3108
85715&uid=2134&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=60&sid=21103081617713
• http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/241
• http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/437/How_to_Build.pd
f?x-r=pcfile_d > download article
• http://www.monash.edu.au/lls/llonline/writing/engineering/index.xml
• https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/4/19/
• http://www.ryerson.ca/feas/students/current/wst/index.html
• http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/
• http://neeyhapuzee.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/the-use-of-computer-inimproving-writing-skills/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/OWLPurdue#p/u/0/cV6ycLsAXrQ >
vidcast on YouTube
12/2/2013

29. Thank You
Department of Communication Skills
Rajkot (Gujarat – India)
www.dilipbarad.com
12/2/2013

30. 12/2/2013