Chapter 6 Empirical Experiences of academic literacy
6.5 Interview data
6.5.3 Students‘ perceptions of Technical Report Writing
In the next subsection, I describe students‘ perception of technical writing and themselves as revealed in the interview transcripts.
Figure 6-2 Profiles of students interviewed
Student Level when interviewed
Student 1 First year, semester after completion of Tech com course
Student 2 First year, semester after completion of Tech com course
Student 3 First year, semester after completion of Tech com course
Student 4 Third year, four semesters after completion of Tech com course Student 5 Third year, four semesters after completion of Tech com course Student 6 Third year, four semesters after completion of Tech com course Student 7 Second year, two semesters after completion of Tech Com course Student 8 Second year, three semesters after completion of Tech Com course Student 9 Second year, three semesters after completion of Tech Com course Student 10 Second year, three semesters after completion of Tech Com course Student 11 Second year, three semesters after completion of Tech Com course Student 12 Second year, three semesters after completion of Tech Com course Students 13, 14, 15 and 16 First year (group interview), during the semester they were taking the
Tech Com course
Student 17, 18, 19 and 20 First year (group interview), during the semester they were taking the Tech Com course
Student 21, 22, 23 and 24 First year (group interview), during the semester they were taking the Tech Com course
One of the themes that emerged in the data is that students drew their understanding of technical report writing both from the way the course was structured pedagogically and from the learning activities that they had to engage in.
Student 1: Well uhh, from what we did, it‘s just a report of some, like an experiment, something that you carry out as an engineer or yah, I think so that what we did, we did a report on an experiment that we carried out.
Student 2: I think it‘s being able to write in a language according to the profession you are going to choose and not just writing formally, anyhow, but being able to communicate in scientific terms.
Student 3: It‘s about, say you do your research, then say you do the experiment, then you have to write like the introduction on the topic itself, the project that you doing, then the results, then the discussion. But the most important thing is the results and discussion.
Student 7: Um, yeah, it‟s just another form of communicating..expressing your ideas to other people... and another form is engineering drawing....
Student 13: Actually, we kind of figured it out; it‟s more like a presentation where you‟ve to market your prototype, you are selling it to manufacturing company trying to impress them so that they can manufacture your product.
Another student who was in his third year of study added another view related to his understanding of what technical report writing is. This is what he had to say:
Student 4: Ah well what I got from what we did, is that, ah, basically the, we learning on how [ah sigh] to communicate with each other in terms, in engineering terms and in an engineering manner, so that when we are in the industry we can, ah, if we are having a discussion with somebody or if we are writing something down or whatever, we know how to relay information to fellow engineers. Cause I think the way we, the way you communicate, whether its orally or written with an engineer is different from the way you communicate with a friend who is not an engineer or a doctor...
Five conceptions of technical report writing emerge from the above excerpts. For student1, technical report writing is about reporting on a process, while student 2 sees it as use of language characteristic of English for specific/academic purposes.
Student 3 takes it from the point of view of the structure of the course, while student 7 sees it as one of the many ways of communicating engineering knowledge.
Student 13 considers technical report writing as a marketing strategy while student 4 takes a broader perspective that looks at the relevance and need for acquisition of discourse to gain membership in a discourse community. It is also clear from the above that students drew their conceptions from their experiences in the course, hence the use of phrases like ‗we kind of figured it out‟, ‗from what we did‟ or „what I got from what we did‟. This just goes to prove that indeed academic literacy is situated and contextual. Indeed, students‘ learn by doing and being. Difficulties arise, however, when the context and approaches to teaching and learning do not provide students with opportunities to fully engage with the discourses in their discipline of choice.
Students also indicated that at first they were not comfortable with technical writing as a representation of engineering knowledge. Examples of comments related to this idea are as follows:
Student 1: I took it as an English subject, so that‘s what it seemed like to me and at the beginning I was a bit sceptical about my marks.
Student 4: Back then, we were just doing the Maths and the Physics, we didn‘t have to do any of the stuff, we were more like, Ah, we took it for granted so to say.
Student 14: Our brains are set on calculations and what not, when it comes to writing and English it switches off for the meantime.
Student 15: Well it was frustrating at first cause I liked English but I thought English was over from school, so just to write again it was pretty tough
It is clear from these excerpts that the engineering students interviewed in this study did not see writing as something that they had to do as engineers. It was not a central activity of ‗being an engineer‘ (Perelman, 1999 p. 65). However, their perceptions seemed to have evolved as time progressed and they realised that it was a necessity for an engineering profession. Students have also indicated that they have seen the need for the course much later in the academic life, in second or third year when they have had to do technical report writing.
Student 1: ….well throughout the years or throughout the 4 years, I think we are going to be a lot of doing report writing in some of our modules so by us having this module in the first semester it helps us to gain knowledge that we would require write those reports, the formatting, everything so it‘s gonna be useful (student interviewed one the following semester)
Student 4: Now we are faced with a situation where we have to do prac reports and um, it‟s difficult, I wouldn‘t say difficult, but you are expected to do things in a certain way, which I am, which I am pretty sure Technical Communications tried to prepare us for, on which it did on some level, but...
since we were back then, we were just doing the Maths and the Physics, we didn‟t have to any of the stuff, we were more like, Oh, we took it for granted so to say.
Student 14: I never thought it was important the first few days ..until we realised this is going to help us in future even if the lectures end this semester as Dr xxxx said we will use report writing.