A Meta-Analysis of the Teaching of Technical Writing to Students for Whom English is not a First Language

Barbara Lehman, Ohio State University, Columbus
Joyce Nduna, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa
Thea van der Geest, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
Chris Winberg, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa

1. Background and rationale
The social context in which universities operate has changed globally. The numbers of students have increased, and there is more diversity among student populations worldwide. In order to meet the challenges of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations, teachers of technical writing need to understand the particular language needs and social contexts of students for whom English is not a first language. Teachers of technical writing are faced with decisions regarding the kind of language forms, topics, and functions to address when teaching, developing materials, or designing assessment tasks intended for ESL speakers – or intended to be inclusive to a minority group of ESL speakers in a technical writing program. There are empirical studies available to inform these decisions, and these research-based studies can provide essential information to assist teachers of technical writing in making principled pedagogical decisions. The research reported in this meta-analysis surveys empirical research intended to inform teaching, learning and assessment practices for university-level Technical English language instruction for students for whom English is not a first language

2. Technical writing – a working definition
For the purposes of this study, we define ‘technical writing’ as writing done for professional purposes (or in preparation for such professional purposes). Such writing would include various forms of professional writing: patient care plans, funding proposals, progress reports, technical reports, scientific articles for journals, and so on. In academic settings professional technical writing is often ‘pedagogized’ for learning purposes. We have included these forms, and other ‘simulated’ forms of technical writing in our meta-analysis. Following this definition, we would not consider a generic academic essay to be a piece of technical writing, because it is not a simulated or pedagogized version of an equivalent professional form. A student’s research report would, however, be considered as technical writing as it approximates to writing found in professional contexts, such as technical reports. We acknowledge that definitions of technical writing are likely to be contested, and have tried to be flexible and inclusive in the meta-analysis in order to capture data that is as rich and as varied as possible, but which has coherence and focus.

3. Methodology of the Meta-analysis
Extensive internet searches using Eric, Science Direct, Emerald, and other data bases were done by Thea van der Geest and Chris Winberg at the Teaching and Learning Centre at IUPUI in November 2004. These searches captured approximately 200 research-based articles, in journals such as CCC, Tesol Quarterly, The Journal of Technical Writing, IEEE Professional Communication Transactions, etc. The survey of journal articles directed us to a number of book-length studies as well as masters’ and doctoral dissertations. All of these will be captured in the full bibliography for the final report.  Our reading of these articles, books and dissertations is almost complete, and a database of the main findings of the readings has been developed, which will be attached as an Appendix to the final project report. Selection criteria for inclusion in the database required the article to be empirically based and to deal with ESL students’ strengths and difficulties in acquiring specific aspects of technical writing. In many empirical studies, there were matching findings for expert technical writing. Where these were described or implied this was included in the database. The poster to be presented at the CCCC 16 March 2005 (which explains/demonstrates the meta-analysis methodology) is attached.

4. Initial findings
The first half of the database captures the methodology employed by the researchers included in the study. The articles surveyed thus far indicate a variety of methodologies, with sample sizes ranging from case studies of a single subject, to surveys with over 100 participants. Data production and data analysis techniques also display a wide variety of approaches and strategies.

The second part of the data base extracts and summarizes the findings reported by the researchers with regard to: 1) the experiences and practices of ESL students in contexts of technical writing; 2) the characteristics of expert technical writing in English. Where the researchers included data on 3) teaching approaches; 4) implications for teaching; or 5) gaps in their study, these were included in the database

4.1 Characteristics of ESL students’ technical writing
The meta-analysis of research based studies of ESL students’ technical writing reveals a focus on written academic prose, with the overwhelming majority of the research on the technical research article (in science or medicine). The specific writing elements targeted in the studies include: the textual features of disciplinary genres (Boscher 2001; Braine 1995; Levis & Levis 2003; Makalela 2004; Parks & Maguire 1999); specialist terms (Leki 2003), and textual organization (St. Amant 1999). The meta-analysis of past research based studies of ESL students’ technical writing reveals an initial focus on issues of lexico-grammatical error, style and register inappropriateness and difficulties with the organization of text. The overwhelming majority of the recent research on ESL students’ technical writing focuses on how the social practices of students’ home-based primary and secondary discourse communities impact on the acquisition of technical writing competence in English.

4.1.1 Lexicon, grammar and organization of text
These issues were captured with specific regard to technical writing, not to generic academic writing. A number of studies report on ESL students’ difficulties with lexico-grammatical choices – particularly with regard to register (Carreoan 1996), standard and specialized word forms (Leki 2003), L1 transfer (Matsuda & Jablowski 1998), and general editing. Inappropriate stylistic or grammatical features (for example over-simplified syntax, over-use of the be-copula, etc) are the focus of several studies (Cummin 2001; Hinkel date?). The organization of text, in particular topic coherence (Davis 1997), comparative or contrastive relationships (Allison 1984), and the selection, ordering and integration of information from various sources into texts (Shi 2004; Boscher 2001) are marked as problematic for many ESL speakers.

4.1.2 Socio-cultural issues in technical writing
An increasing number of recent studies highlight the role played by ESL students’ cultural norms on technical writing. Students’ lexico-grammatical and organizational choices are influenced by politeness structures (Makalela 2004), hierarchical social structures (Tichenor 1993), ‘personalising’ traditions (Woodward & Kron 2004), ‘high context’ expectations (Thatcher 1999), or ‘power/distance’ concerns (Goby 1999). These and other cultural influences inhibit the drawing of strong conclusions (Tichenor 1993), employing appropriate hedging structures in scientific writing (Hyland 1995), or in misunderstanding assignment requirements (Braine 1995). It is for implicit cultural reasons that many novice ESL writers tend to select a more wordy, formal, hortatory, embellished style – and try to win over the reader by emotional persuasion, rather than logical argument (Fergusson 1997).

Recent studies have indicated the difficulties experienced by ESL students (particularly at the post-graduate level) of building strong, professional identities. ESL students’ operational difficulties with English impact on their self-image, tending to create a non-expert identity, despite technical proficiency (Leki 2003; Benson & Heinrich 1995). The non-expert identity experienced by ESL students is often reinforced by ESL teachers, who have tended to characterize ESL speakers as recipients (rather than producers) of knowledge (de Guerror & Villamil 2002), and by ESL curricula which many ESL speakers perceive to be ‘irrelevant’, particular in contexts where they have professional qualifications, but need to learn English technical writing (Pulko & Parikh date?). The unfamiliar use of English similarly creates confusion with regard to students’ understanding of ‘audience’ (Moody 1992).

There are some promising trends developing in the area of technical writing which address these difficulties: 1) the introduction of multilingual educational strategies into English technical writing contexts (Hornberger 2003; Moody 1992); 2) greater individualization in ESL curricula and feedback (Levis & Levis 2003); 3) the setting up of collaborative writing teams in both academic and professional contexts (Parks & Maguire 1999), and 4) the potential of Web-based technologies in terms, not only of access to information, but of access to a greater variety of written texts and real-time communication between English first language and ESL speakers globally (Kleifgen & Haixiao 1995).

4.2 The characteristics of professional technical writing in English
The meta-analysis of past research based studies of technical writing reveals a focus on written academic prose, with the overwhelming majority of the research on the technical research article in science or medicine.

4.2.1 Surface textual features
The majority of the studies describe the surface characteristics of academic or professional written registers, with respect to a large number of co-occurring linguistic features, such as imperatives (Swales et al 1998), conditionals (Ferguson 2000), personal pronouns (Kuo 1999), existential there (Huckin & Pesante 1988), politeness markers (Myers 1989), citation patterns (Salager-Meyer 1999), procedural vocabulary (Marco 1999), collocational frames (Marco 2000), the special classes of verbs used in research articles (Hunston 1995; Thompson & Ye 1991; Williams 1996) and the complex noun phrase structures typical of scientific prose (Halliday 1988; Love 1993; Varantola 1984), and other general  (corpus based) grammatical features of academic prose  (Biber Johansson, Leech, Conrad & Finegan 1999; Conrad 1996, 2001).

4.2.2 Discursive features of technical texts
Many of thestudies on academic discourse published over the past 20 years (see the extensive survey of research in Grabe & Kaplan 1996) adopt a rhetorical or social/historical perspective, describing the rhetorical structure of academic texts and the way the practices of researchers in particular discourse communities shape the conventions of academic genres. Most studies focus on scientific research reports (Bazerman 1988; Berkenkotter & Huckin 1995; Gilbert & Mulkay 1984; Halliday & Martin 1993; Swales 1990; Valle 1999), medical research prose (Atkinson 1999;) or professional writing in engineering contexts or medical contexts (Winsor 2002, Medway 2001).

Studies of the rhetorical organization of technical writing have focused for the most part on particular genres, elements or ‘moves’ in texts (Chaudron & Richards 1986; Flowerdew & Tauroza 1995; Khuwaileh 1999; Nattinger & DeCarrico 1992; Strodt-Lopez 1991) and, in particular, on the overall discourse organization of the research report (Flowerdew 1994). The hedging devices used in scientific writing have been particularly well researched (Crompton 1997; Grabe & Kaplan 1997; Holmes 1988; Hyland 1994, 1996a, 1996b).

4.3 Implications for teaching, learning and assessment of technical writing
Many of the studies implicitly or explicitly address the implications of their research for teaching, learning and assessment practices. Recommendations include: the need for guidelines or fuller explanations for assignments (Boscher 2001; Tichenor 1993), the need for discipline specific writing courses (Braine 1995; Pulko & Parikh n/d); the advantages of collaboration between writing and content specialists (Davis 1997; Matsuda, 1998; Pulko & Parikh n/d); Van Naerssen & Eastwood 2001), balanced approaches (Yoshida, 1997), the recognition of cultural differences within technical/scientific writing (Feguson 1997; Hyland 1995; Makalela 2004; St. Amant 1999; Thatcher 1999), and the attribution of sources (Shi, 2004).

5. The way forward
It must be pointed out that the findings above are tentative: they need to be cross-checked and additionally supported across the data base. The other piece of work still to be done involves the matching of ESL students’ difficulties (4.1 above) against the characteristics of professional-level technical writing (4.2 above). This work should tell us what we know about the effective teaching of technical writing to ESL speakers. The final piece of work to be done involves identifying the ‘gaps’ – as identified by the authors themselves or as evaluated by ourselves. This will tell us what we still need to know.