Explicitly Teaching Five Technical Genres to English First-Language Adults in a Multi-Major Technical Writing Course

In this paper, I report the effects of explicitly teaching five technical genres to English first-language students enrolled in a multi-major technical writing course. Previous experimental research has demonstrated the efficacy of explicitly teaching academic writing to English first-language adult...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of writing research 2014-06, Vol.6 (1), p.29-59
Main Author: Boettger, R.K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
explicit teaching
genre theory
quasi-experiment
technical communication
technical writing
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In this paper, I report the effects of explicitly teaching five technical genres to English first-language students enrolled in a multi-major technical writing course. Previous experimental research has demonstrated the efficacy of explicitly teaching academic writing to English first-language adults, but no comparable study on technical writing exists. I used a mixed-method approach to examine these effects, including a control-group quasi-experimental design and a qualitative analysis to more fully describe the 534 texts produced by 316 student writers. Results indicated the genre participants constructed texts demonstrating a significantly greater awareness to audience, purpose, structure, design, style, and editing than participants taught through more traditional approaches. Within the technical genres, participants demonstrated greater awareness to audience, purpose, and editing in the job materials text type than with correspondence or procedures text types.
ISSN:2030-1006
2030-1006
DOI:10.17239/jowr-2014.06.01.2