Explicitly teaching five technical genres to English first-language adults in a multi-major technical writing course
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2014.06.01.2Keywords:
explicit teaching, genre theory, quasi-experiment, technical communication, technical writingAbstract
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.Published
2014-06-15
How to Cite
Boettger, R. K. (2014). Explicitly teaching five technical genres to English first-language adults in a multi-major technical writing course. Journal of Writing Research, 6(1), 29–59. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2014.06.01.2
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Copyright (c) 2014 Ryan K. Boettger
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.