Adjunct Language Instruction For English As a Second Language Engineering Students In The Writing Of Physics Laboratory Reports

This study investigated the extent to which adjunct language instruction (ALI) was effective and identified the factors that influenced the effectiveness. In exploring the effectiveness, this study attempted a study on engineering students in UiTM using customized lab report writing instructional materials. A needs analysis was conducted and it showed that engineering students preferred learning report writing to personal essay writing. The students' preference for learning report writing set the stage for further exploration. Sixty students were instructed lab report writing in content-based writing using genre-based materials based on the students' actual Physics lab experiments, called Physics Adjunct Language Instruction (PALI). The results showed that the students' grades of lab report writing improved. Another test was carried out to find whether teaching writing in an ALI approach was able to meet the writing needs of engineering students. This test used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) as an analytical tool. As SEM requires a sample size of 200 to 300 respondents, another instruction using similar materials, PALI, was carried out on 260 engineering students. The structural model showed that there were two factors that influence the improvement of the students' lab report writing in PALI. The factors were the teaching conduct and the preference for materials. In summary, the research revealed three main findings. First, the type of writing needed by engineering students in UiTM was report writing. Second, the PAL1 led to an improvement in the engineering students' lab report writing (t = -8.01, p = .000). Third, PAL1 provided two factors or conditions necessary for its success: the way the lab report writing was taught (/3= 0.451) and the preference of materials which are related to the learners' content subject (/3= 0.419). These two necessary conditions contribute 69.9 % (R* .699) to meeting the success in lab report writing of these engineering student

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PROJECT-BASED LEARNING (PBL) FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN ESP CLASS

Teaching English for Specific Purpose (ESP) for non-English Department students is challenging yet exciting since the teacher is required to be more creative in creating a teaching and learning strategy. The use of English for Engineering students is necessary to support the capability of their hard and soft skills. In ESP class, the students learn about vocabulary skills in terms of Engineering and other skills such as writing, reading, speaking, and listening. Those skills are learned correspondingly through some learning activities using applicable teaching strategies such as Project Based Learning (PBL). PBL is introduced as an educational approach focused on the student-centered method. In PBL, the students are given opportunities to explore their capabilities, build their confidence, and improve their motivation to prepare themselves for real work life. This research used a literature review as supportive evidence to measure the efficiency of PBL for teaching Civil Engineering students in semester 1 of the 2021/2022 academic year. Journals, books, and proceeding through computer and electronic databases are used as the basis for data collection. The result found that PBL is an effective and interesting approach that is suitable for teaching Engineering Students compared to traditional and lecture-based approaches. Moreover, PBL is appropriate to gain extensive knowledge of Civil Engineering concepts through intriguing learning activity that enhances the student’s confidence and motivation for real-world projects in the future

Threshold concepts: Impacts on teaching and learning at tertiary level

This project explored teaching and learning of hard-to-learn threshold concepts in first-year English, an electrical engineering course, leadership courses, and in doctoral writing. The project was envisioned to produce disciplinary case studies that lecturers could use to reflect on and refine their curriculum and pedagogy, thereby contributing to discussion about the relationship between theory and methodology in higher education research (Shay, Ashwin, & Case, 2009). A team of seven academics investigated lecturers’ awareness and emergent knowledge of threshold concepts and associated pedagogies and how such pedagogies can afford opportunities for learning. As part of this examination the lecturers also explored the role of threshold concept theory in designing curricula and sought to find the commonalities in threshold concepts and their teaching and learning across the four disciplines. The research highlights new ways of teaching threshold concepts to help students learn concepts that are fundamental to the disciplines they are studying and expand their educational experiences. Given that much of the international research in this field focuses on the identification of threshold concepts and debates their characteristics (Barradell, 2013; Flanagan, 2014; Knight, Callaghan, Baldock, & Meyer, 2013), our exploration of what happens when lecturers use threshold concept theory to re-envision their curriculum and teaching helps to address a gap within the field. By addressing an important theoretical and practical approach the project makes a considerable contribution to teaching and learning at the tertiary level in general and to each discipline in particular

A higher-education teaching module for integrating industry content and language through online recruitment advertisements

Empirical evaluations of practical teaching units integrating content and language in higher education are rare and deserve more attention. The current article aims to narrow this gap by providing an empirical study of an integrating content and language in higher education (ICLHE, Smit & Dafouz, 2012) teaching module. It investigates the effectiveness of a content-based English for specific purposes module in tertiary aeronautical engineering education, which incorporates recruitment advertisements as online resources. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach and surveyed three aeronautical engineering student groups (N = 141) over three consecutive years on their perceptions of the module’s learning outcomes. This longitudinal survey was complemented by a teacher-assessed writing task and a qualitative content analysis of online recruitment advertisements (N = 80) in a self-built corpus. All three year groups rated the 10 questionnaire statements on a 5-point Likert scale rather equally, thus suggesting a similar perception of academic achievement stemming from the module’s completion. This student view was supported by the results of the writing assignment. In short, the module’s effectiveness was corroborated both quantitatively and qualitatively, which identifies this teaching concept as a feasible way forward

Designing online learning for scientific writing: Collaborations, creations and transformations

This thesis is a multilayered approach to understanding the complex processes involved in designing, developing, implementing and evaluating online learning environments for academic writing in discipline contexts. The study is broadly situated in the field of educational design research (EDR). It brings together theories of pedagogical design, including those of multimodality and educational linguistics, with the practical implementation and evaluation of designs in context. From an applied perspective, the research addresses the problem of providing support for students to improve their academic writing, in particular the writing of the laboratory report genre, a key genre in science and engineering disciplines. For teachers and others involved in the design of online teaching and learning, the aim is to provide design principles to support the process of creating effective resources to teach academic writing online. These principles cover all stages of the process from design to evaluation. The thesis comprises three main stages which focus on the processes involved in the development of an online program for supporting students writing a report in Physiology, the Flexible Electronic Report-writing Tool (FLERT). The first focuses on the collaborations of the design team in creating the online learning resources within a ‘communities of practice’ framework. I use discourse analysis, based on the theory of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), to identify knowledge and relationship building among participants. The second draws on both multimodal social semiotics and SFL to examine how network and screen designs created for laboratory report writing programs in science and engineering have evolved over time. The third uses a multi- and mixed methods approach, together with SFL, to examine two cycles of implementation and evaluation of FLERT to assess how students have transformed their learning through their interactions with the program. The relationships among the outcomes from these three stages provides insights into: • the practice of design for learning; • the meaning making characteristics of the products of design for teaching and learning purposes; • the interactions of student users with the designed products and the influence of design features on student learning; • design principles, both general principles for online learning program design and those, at a more local level, for teaching academic writing online

Exploring an Exam-Practice Approach to Teaching Academic Reading and Writing in China: Teacher Perspectives and Materials Analysis

This study explores teacher perceptions of an approach to teaching academic reading and writing that focuses on local English for Academic Purposes (EAP) exams (the Exam-Practice Approach) and presents a textual analysis of the teaching materials. The research context is the EAP component of an international foundation year programme for undergraduate students embarking on Business or Engineering pathways at a British university operating in China. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with English teachers and analysed thematically. This data was enhanced through participant observation, documentary evidence and a survey. Findings indicate concerns regarding the separation of academic reading and writing skills, and a mismatch between course aims and assessment. Contextual factors influencing the development of the local EAP programme are identified and concerns are raised over a perceived lack of purpose in teachers’ professional roles. Corpora were constructed from the reading input in the EAP materials divided according to the students’ disciplinary studies (Business and Engineering) and a keyword analysis conducted using the British Academic Written English (BAWE) reference corpus. This was supported through the manual analysis of rhetorical functions in reading materials. Findings indicate that the reading input does not provide a coherent model of target situation writing and that the local academic reading materials contain language features that directly contradict local writing instruction. The primary implication of the findings of this study for pedagogical and professional practice is that course assessment can greatly influence the development of an English for Academic Purposes programme. Focus on English-language test practice risks alienating teachers and reinforcing a deficit model of Chinese students. The purpose of the EAP programme therefore needs to be clear and assessment should reflect that purpose

Technical Report Writing In Engineering Studies

Technical reports are very important in engineering domain, as they are the main genre in reporting and communicating information among members in an engineering community. In addition, the engineering students need to be competent in writing technical report because an effective technical report will determine them in being hired and being promoted in their future career. A set of questionnaires was distributed to sixty undergraduates from the Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) to seek the engineering students’ knowledge on technical report writing. Additionally, samples of students’ technical report writing were analysed by using the Genre Analysis approach for technical report writing (Cheung & Lai, 1997) to identify the Move Structure involved in writing technical report. The findings indicated that the students have already obtained the knowledge of generic structure in report genre and five Move Structure were identified in technical report writing. This study has recommended the ESP practitioners to use the genre-based approach in teaching technical report writing to the students as it allows them to have better understanding on how the technical reports were structured and organised

A Needs Analysis of the Assessed Writing Genres of a 1st Year Undergraduate Engineering Programme

Increasing numbers of non-native English speakers (NNES) are studying at English-medium universities. This increase of students has stimulated the need for EAP instruction, so students can become competent in the discourse conventions of their chosen academic community. The purpose of this research was to carry out a needs analysis (NA) of a 1st year Engineering programme at an English-medium university. A case study approach was used to gain a deeper understanding of the writing requirements of 1st year Engineers and to influence teaching and learning within the School of Engineering (SOE). The methodology used to carry out the NA included genre analysis of institutional artefacts, and interviews and focus groups with faculty and students

USING OPINION-GAP ACTIVITY TO DEVELOP ENGLISH TEXTBOOK FOR INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING STUDENTS AT FIRST YEAR

The objective of this study is to develop English textbook material for industrial engineering students using opinion gap activity as an approach. The subject of this study is students from industrial engineering students in first semester at the morning class who consist of 44 students. The reason the researchers chose the industrial engineering department was to continue the project researchers had done in the previous semester related to the development of English books for industrial engineering students. The study was an ADDIE study. The subject was first grade students of industrial engineering program at University of Muhammadiyah Gresik. The procedure of the study were conducting the needs analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluating the materials through expert judgment, and writing the final draft materials. The instruments to collect the data were the needs analysis questionnaire and interview. Expert validation starts from the design process to material development. The expert that the researcher uses is a lecturer who has experience in teaching English for industrial engineering majors and is also experienced in developing teaching materials. Based on the results of need analysis that researchers have done researchers finally developed the book with the main goal is to improve the communication skills of industrial engineering students at the intermediate level. This book consists of 6 chapters namely consultant engineer, project engineer, IT engineer, safety & health engineer, industrial designer and plant engineer

Use of a Gamified Platform to Improve Scientific Writing in Engineering Students

The general purpose of this study was to determine the potential of using a gamified platform in the development of scientific writing skills among engineering students at a Peruvian university. To this end, a gamified web platform named Call for Papers for Engineers was designed. This platform contains mini-games focused on developing reading and writing skills for articles related to the engineering area. A quantitative methodological approach was employed, with a quasi-experimental design involving two groups: an experimental group and a control group, with pre-and post-test measurements. Additionally, the gamified platform was validated through expert judgment, and user satisfaction levels were assessed. The main results indicate that the content developed in the course and the use of the gamified web platform were effective teaching methods, as the students in the experimental group demonstrated higher performance after using the gamified platform compared to the control group. Furthermore, participants in the study expressed satisfaction with the use of this technological resource, finding it motivating and user-friendly.This research was funded by Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa. It is part of the project “Transmedia Gamification and Video Games to promote scientific writing in Engineering students”, under Contract No. IBA-IB-38-2020-UNSA