English Writing Program for Engineering Students
Hui Mien Tan Kung Shan Institute of Technology (Taiwan)
Introduction
As our current world has entered the era of international communication and advanced technology, there are more and more chances for engineers and technical professionals to convey technical information in English for various purposes. Therefore, besides learning general English as an international language, engineering students of colleges and technical institutes need to be equipped with adequate writing ability so that they can communicate technical information clearly on at least a basic level. A good English writing proficiency can be a contributing factor to their professional recognition and career prospect.
This paper proposes a pragmatic English writing program for engineering students of colleges and technical institutes with intermediate ESL proficiency. It can be used as a writing course, or as part of a general English course. The program covers a syllabus outline and instructional approaches on basic writing skills with particular reference to technical writing. Georges [2] explains that the purposes of technical writing are to inform and persuade; the subjects are things and development; and its characters are direct, objective and specific. In short, this is a program which aims to train students in writing clear, concise and effective English.
Syllabus Outline
This program consists of four stages.
(1) Preparation Stage
This is the stage for building up students` confidence or reshaping their perceptions of English writing. Some engineering students may think that English writing is a very difficult task; yet they can still write comprehensibly if they know how to apply the basic grammar rules and make use of simple, concrete words. The ability to express their ideas in clear and understandable English is something they can acquire systematically.
To start with, ask the students to write a few short essays on topics they are very familiar with such as self introduction, description of a family member, a close friend, daily living patterns or their own chosen topic. Chose a topic in which they have concrete content to write about. A few guidelines and vocabulary may be provided if students are of a low-intermediate level. Encourage them to use the words and structures they are familiar with. The writing process at this stage serves as a warm-up exercise. Let the students work on something they can easily handle as a way to help them experience some competence in freely expressing themselves. For the revision part, leave the common errors for the students to correct themselves by giving indicative symbols or abbreviations, and revise those awkward expressions. Respond to the content and write encouraging remarks whenever possible.
(2) Tools Acquisition Stage
Many grammatical constructions are important for writing good English. The principle of this stage, however, is to let the students first get familiar with a few basic essential tools that can enhance their sentence clarity in technical writing. Other relevant constructions can be reviewed if time is available.
A. Use of Subordinate Clauses
Technical writing involves a lot of analytical writing. Subordinate clauses are powerful tools for analyzing the logical relationships among ideas such as a chronological development, a cause-effect relationship, a purpose relationship and a condition relationship.
Students can get familiar with this kind of construction by the following steps. First, briefly explain the meaning of a subordinate clause. Then give the students a list of complex sentences. Ask them to identify the subordinate clauses and the subordinating conjunctions, as well as to explain the relationship expressed in each sentence. The next step is practice. Ask the students to combine two sentences or a set of isolated ideas into one sentence by using appropriate subordinating conjunctions. For example:
New racing bicycles have disc wheels. Wind resistance is reduced. [3]
Copper is highly conductive. It is used for electric wiring. [3]
The water is heated. It reaches a pre-set temperature. [3]
The program was written in FORTRAN.
It is longer than a machine language version.
It can run on many different computers. [4]
Eunice set fire to the cat. The cat jumped into the pool.
The cat could not swim. Rodney rescued the cat. [4]
Finally, ask them to make up their own complex sentences.
B. Use of Relative Clauses
Technical writing often involves detailed definition or modification of a particular term. Relative clauses can be useful tools for defining and qualifying nouns instead of putting a long list of technical nouns or adjectives before a noun. In that case, the sentence can be less confusing. The "where" clause is also useful for describing the location of stages described in a process.
Similarly, give students a list of sentences that contain clauses introduced by a relative pronoun. Ask the students to identify the relative clauses and explain their functions. Examples of restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses should be included for the students to find out how differently they function. The following type of sentence completing exercise can help the students understand and apply relative clauses, for example:
Students ___ are more likely to get good grades.
Aluminum, ___, is used to make aircraft.
The new method, ___ ,is faster than the conventional method.
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