RESPONDING TO TECHNICAL WRITING IN AN INTRODUCTORY ENGINEERING CLASS: THE ROLE OF GENRE AND DISCIPLINE
A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first-year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy.
Although recent theory and practice in Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) has emphasized the discipline-specific nature of writing pedagogy, it is still generally assumed that the preference for facilitative commenting that prevails in composition holds for writing instruction in any discipline. In our work in WAC at Ohio State University we found this assumption at odds with the practices of accomplished teachers of writing in other disciplines, which led us to begin an investigation of these practices. In this article we discuss the perspectives of compositionists on commenting, our study of a particular engineering professor's commenting style, and our analysis of data collected during that study. We offer conclusions about the role of genre with respect to commenting styles and the limitations of applying composition practices to writing instruction in other disciplines.
A review of the composition literature on responding to student writing reveals a pervasive promotion of "student control of their texts" achieved through facilitative rather than directive comments. C. H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon reviewed the state of the art on teacher commentary in 1981 and advised that commenting be part of a conversation between teacher and student in an environment that fosters revision and gives students control over their writing. Three years later, Brooke K. Horvath synthesized current views on written response, among them that response is most effective when it is used to foster revision, and that the goal is to return control of the paper to the student (140).
Since Horvath, there have been no literature reviews on commenting, though several theorists and researchers have included some literature reviews in their publications. These publications reflect concerns about the effect of teachers' comments which has driven much of the research and theorizing. Publications categorize, analyze, and theorize about the best kind of comments, consistently advocating facilitative comments. Brannon and Knoblauch maintain that comments should help students see the ways in which the intention of the writer is not yet effective. Their concern is that the students retain control of their texts by having a choice in what to do. Nancy Sommers has similar concerns and advice. Leonard Podis and Joanne Podis identify facilitative comments as those which encourage student potential and advocate a method of response in which teachers analyze difficulties in student drafts as a way to understand the intentions of student writers and to help them find those intentions. Both Patrick Sullivan and Frances Zak give evidence for the effectiveness of positive as opposed to negative comments, the implication of which is that positive comments have a more facilitative effect. Nancy Welch equates control of text with personal growth, maintaining that a student will "take charge not only of a particular text and a particular revision but also of the person she is and the person she is becoming" (501). In a similar vein, Richard Bullock urges that comments should not judge and should be non-directive. In an early article about student control, Elaine Lees identifies the teacher's goal as"leading students to revise for themselves" (373). Richard Straub and Ronald Lunsford develop a method of analyzing the ways in which a selected group of commentators differ in degrees of being facilitative and directive; nonauthoritative modes of commentary were one of the seven similarities found among the participants in the study (373).
In 1996, Straub began to challenge the status quo within composition. He noted the "remarkable consistency [with which] the recent scholarship on response has urged us to reject styles that take control over student texts and encouraged us instead to adopt styles that allow students to retain greater responsibility over their writing" (223). He reviewed recent scholarship on response and questioned what he saw as facile dualisms between facilitative/directive, authoritative/collaborative, and masculine/feminine that have dominated the discussion, arguing that compositionists too easily equate directive response with authoritarian response (224-25).
Although Straub's essay initiated a challenge to the status quo on commenting in composition courses, over the last ten years the consensus for facilitative commenting has faced a second, "external" challenge--a challenge brought by the widespread shift to a more discipline-specific perspective on the teaching and study of writing. This shift, which has been variously called "writing-in-the-disciplines," "writing-to-communicate,. ... learning-to-write," and a "rhetorical" approach to WAC, was in part motivated by a dissatisfaction with generic approaches to writing instruction in composition that elided differences between academic disciplines and genres of writing within those disciplines. Global, generic application of techniques in writing pedagogy--general emphases on process, writing-to-learn, and expressive writing--have not been well-received in many disciplines, and composition scholars have increasingly affirmed the importance of the study of rhetorical practices and writing conventions within particular disciplines as a means of improving pedagogy.
With respect to commenting, this shift has resulted in several studies of writing outside of composition that question the consensus for facilitative commenting. Larry Beason, in a study of writing-across-the-curriculum classes, evaluated both teacher and peer feedback and concluded that while feedback patterns of both teachers and students have some similarities to those in composition courses, there are other patterns that need to be evaluated. In another study comparing composition writing with writing in other disciplines, John Hagge found that formal conventions are more highly valued in occupational writing than in composition courses. With respect to technical writing in particular, Sam Dragga argued that research on commenting has focused on the essay and has erroneously assumed that "student writing is generic and that the kinds of comments appropriate to introductory composition are also appropriate to technical writing" (202). His comparison of technical writing teachers and technical editors and supervisors leads to a recommendation that technical writing teachers (many of whom are trained in composition studies programs) adopt the responding techniques of technical editors and supervisors, particularly the use of explicit and systematic directives, questions, and suggestions.
There is potential, we believe, in a "writing-in-the-disciplines" approach for teachers of technical writing, and the shift to research in discipline-specific conventions is a positive change for several reasons. Because technical writing is the genre of academic writing that is in many respects least similar to the genres typically taught and studied by compositionists, it would seem likely to benefit from such a shift in focus. Furthermore, there is much potential in collaboration between technical writing teachers with backgrounds in composition and teachers of technical writing in various disciplines; compositionists bring an understanding of the history and theory of writing instruction, while teachers within the disciplines bring a deep understanding of the discipline's writing conventions and genres. But in what concrete ways can teachers of writing in the disciplines capitalize on the potential of such a collaboration?
One area of collaborative potential is responding techniques--an area that has a direct effect on teaching effectiveness. Through combining their complementary areas of expertise, compositionists and practitioners/teachers of technical writing in technical fields can improve our understanding of how and why commenting strategies vary from field to field and genre to genre, and what the more effective commenting strategies in a particular field or genre might be.
Purpose
Our study, of which this article is a part, begins an exploration of the responding techniques of engineers whose courses for beginning students require a significant amount of technical writing. In general, we are interested in the genre conventions of student engineering papers, the ways in which the writing of those papers are taught by engineers, and the ways in which such methods and conventions compare with those of other fields. Our focus in this study is responding techniques of engineering teachers and the ways in which responses to writing can be understood and effectively employed by teachers. We address in particular the following issues:
1. What kinds of comments does an engineering professor make on drafts of student papers in an introductory class and how do students revise on the basis of those comments?
2. How do the kinds of comments given by an engineering professor compare to those made by technical writing teachers and professional technical editors?
3. Is there a relation between the kinds of comments given by the professor and the genre of the assignment?
Research Procedure
We began our investigation with a case study, reported here, by gathering data on commenting in a freshman engineering course required of all engineering students at Ohio State University. In this course, Engineering Graphics 166 (EGI66), students learn basic graphics and problem-solving skills. During the last half of the course, while they continue to learn new skills, students do a team design project that allows them to apply the skills they have learned to a "real life" situation. As part of the design project, students must collaboratively prepare a formal written report and make an oral presentation.
The written report is to be a professional document. Students are expected not only to learn the technical material necessary to solve the assigned problem, but also to learn the format and conventions of a formal technical report. The report must contain the following elements: (1) cover page, (2) table of contents, (3) list of figures, (4) introduction and statement of the problem, (5) requirements and constraints (i.e., the criteria the final product must meet), (6) preliminary concepts, (7) analysis of preliminary concepts and selection of a final design, and (8) description of the final design (including both a written description and a set of drawings that could be used to construct the object).
Because of the large demand for this required course, eight to twelve sections are taught each quarter. A common syllabus is used, but there are some small variations from section to section. In some sections, students simply submit the final report at the end of the quarter. In others, students are required to submit drafts for comment earlier in the term. In our case study, the professor in the section that was observed had the students turn in a draft of the first half of the report about four weeks before the end of the term. She commented on that draft and returned it. Two weeks later, the draft of the second half of the report was due. Comments on that draft were returned with one week left in the quarter, and students were expected to make revisions and submit the entire report for a grade on the last day of class.
The professor who participated in this case study was recommended by her department chair as a member of the faculty with expertise and interest in writing pedagogy. She has taught EG166 more than twenty times, receiving consistently high teaching evaluations from students. In addition, prior to joining the engineering faculty, she worked for a decade at a scientific research firm writing winning proposals and preparing high-quality technical reports for a variety of customers. At that firm she served both as a project manager and as a line manager, and thus had experience in preparing technical reports and in reviewing and commenting on reports prepared by others. In many ways, then, this professor is less representative than exceptional; in addition to her extensive experience in professional writing, she is more interested in writing instruction than many engineering professors, and she comments more extensively and in more detail than is typical.
Students in the classes observed were primarily freshman engineering students. In order to be admitted to the class, they were required to be enrolled in, or have completed, calculus. Most of the engineering students came from the top 15 percent of their high school classes and had a math ACT score of at least 25. While the students were generally technically competent and highly motivated, they did not need to meet any minimum standard for writing competence, and few, if any, had ever written a technical report.
Data were collected in four ways:
1. Observation of classes. One of us observed classes and took field notes when the professor discussed writing, such as when the paper was introduced or when drafts were returned.
2. Review of drafts and final reports. Copies were made of the drafts and final reports of each team in the professor's classes over three consecutive quarters (one academic year). The comments on the drafts were categorized and counted to gain an understanding of the professor's commenting technique, and then the final reports were compared with the drafts to determine how the students revised on the basis of the various types of comments.
3. Student interviews. Students were interviewed to obtain their views on aspects of the writing assignment.
4. Discussions with the professor. The professor was regularly consulted about the presentation of the assignment, the goals of the assignment, and her commenting techniques and methods of instruction.
In this article we employ two related but distinct approaches to analyzing the data collected. In the first, we compare the data with research data on commenting patterns and strategies in other fields of technical writing. In the second, we analyze the relation of the professor's comments to the genre conventions of the paper they address.
Comparison with Research on Comments in Other Technical Writing Fields
A particularly useful precedent in research on responding in technical writing is Dragga's 1991 article "Responding to Technical Writing," which was mentioned briefly above. Reflecting the shift to writing-in-the-disciplines, Dragga argues that research on responding to writing has over-emphasized the standard English essay and is therefore inadequate as a guide for effective commenting strategies in fields such as technical writing. His study compares the commenting strategies of technical writing teachers with the commenting strategies of professional technical editors by analyzing their responses to a variety of identical papers. His findings suggest that technical writing teachers should occupy a middle ground between the composition teacher and the technical editor; commenting strategies should demonstrate a concern for both product and process, and commenting strategies should foster both a sense of individual and collaborative authorship.
Dragga's study draws on the work of Alan Purves and adapts the speech act theory of J. L. Austin as the basis for his analysis of commenting styles. The fundamental distinctions drawn from Austin divide modes of discourse into locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts. Using Dragga's examples,
the locutionary act is the discourse as written or spoken (e.g., the assertion "I have organized the files at the office."). The illocutionary act is the intention of the discourse (e.g., a criticism of the listener/reader for not having organized the files previously). The perlocutionary act is the specific response desired by the speaker/writer from the listener/reader (e.g., that the listener/reader keep the files organized or that the listener/reader proceed to organize other materials at the office). (203)
Dragga's use of Austin's theoretical structure is effective in pointing out the many ambiguities and misunderstandings that attend the relationships of illocution, locution, and perlocution.
In the process of explaining his results and qualifying his conclusions, Dragga notes the many ways in which the context of professional editing differs from an academic context--ways which might justify the differences between the responding strategies of teachers of technical writing and professional editors that he finds in his study. But there are teachers of writing who fall between these two extremes and who could provide a third, complementary foil; engineering faculty, for instance, teach in an academic context, but they rarely have a background in the field of composition and they are generally very aware of the professional demands--including writing skills--that will soon be made on their students. How does an experienced engineering teacher respond to writing?
Methods of Comparison
We largely adopt Dragga's methodology of categorization for purposes of comparison; using his method of analyzing teachers' comments into seven categories of locutions enables us to compare commenting by the engineering professor with Dragga's results of the commenting styles of professional editors and academic teachers of technical writing. Dragga divides comments into seven categories:
1. "Compliments are locutions referring to communicative successes and using honorific words (e.g., 'good,"nice')" (207). Examples from our study include:
• "Good mental picture here."
• "While I made several comments on this section, I was very happy to see the introductory paragraph. It is important, and you have a good understanding of what should be in it."
• "Good."
2. "Criticisms are locutions referring to communicative failures and using pejorative words (e.g., 'wrong,"poor')" (207). Examples from our study include:
• "Poor choice of location of dimension."
• "Sloppy."
• "This is not an acceptable draft."
3. "Directives are locutions exhibiting the syntactic structure characteristic of commands (i.e., [you]+present tense verb, imperative mood: e.g., 'insert comma here'; or you+modal of obligation+verb: e.g., 'you must ...," you need to ..., "you ought to ... , "you should ...')" (207). Examples from our study include:
• "If you use subheadings here, they should appear in the text as well."
• "Turn Fig. 3 180 degrees."
• "Give figure number and title."
4. "Suggestions are locutions referring to likely revisions and using modals of possibility or probability (e.g., 'might,"could,"would'), quasi-commands (e.g., 'try to ... , "consider ... ,'), or explicit indicators (e.g., 'I suggest that... ')" (207). Examples from our study include:
• "This statement might be a little strong."
• "Try not to use first person in technical reports."
• "Could make the front view section A-A and put all dimensions on the section view."
5. "Questions are locutions ending in a question mark, using interrogatives (i.e., who, what, which, when, where, why, how), or exhibiting the syntactic structure characteristic of questions (i.e., modal+subject+verb: e.g., 'Should you explain... ?' or be+subject: e.g., 'is this ... ?')" (208). Examples from our study include:
• "If you said this to 50 different people in a mall, would they each have a mental picture of the same device?"
• "What is the first thing a prospective customer would ask if you offered to sell him a GOLD candle holder?"
• "Do you mean it makes recycling easier?"
6. "Explanations are locutions referring to in-text markings of accompanying locutions" (208). Examples from our study include:
• "The reader will expect them [with directive to use subheadings]."
• "People have a negative reaction to the term 'economic class [with criticism that the term 'economic class' sounds bad].'"
• "For example, research on the sizes of dogs people own would help you decide how big to make the dog dish [with directive to show how data was used to refine final design]."
7. "Observations are all remaining locutions (i.e., locutions impossible to categorize as either compliments, criticisms, directive, suggestions, questions, or explanations)" (208). Examples from our study include:
• "Information needs weren't discussed."
• "Table of contents required."
• "First paragraph describes the holder. Second paragraph describes how it works."
In addition to strictly parallel comparisons to Dragga's study provided by a common method of categorization of comments, we extend and adapt Dragga's methodology by introducing a distinction between linguistic and graphic elements of a paper. In our preliminary study of writing in engineering we were struck by the relative importance of visual elements. Consequently, in order to begin analyzing this variable we subdivided Dragga's categories into comments that address issues of format or graphics and comments that address issues of linguistic form (i.e., comments that address locutions). For example, in our study the comment "Fine bar graph" would be categorized as a graphic compliment, while the comment "Fine introduction" would be categorized as a linguistic compliment (in Dragga's study they would both be categorized simply as compliments). Comments pertaining to matters of format, to visuals, or to proper methods of referencing visuals within sentences are all considered graphic comments.
Finally, it should also be noted that employing Dragga's categories requires overlooking many non-linguistic forms of commentary and editing. The professor edited student drafts frequently, employing a wide variety of signs that reflected her background as a professional technical writer: sentences and sentence parts were rewritten, circled, and repositioned with arrows; errors in parallel construction were indicated by circles, words, and arrows; inconsistencies in graphs and drawings were pointed out with arrows and questions marks. None of these editing comments are represented by the seven locutionary categories, since they are not, strictly speaking, locutions. But beyond lacking sentence structure, such editing comments are difficult to categorize and quantify. With locutions, the standard unit is the sentence; one sentence counts as one unit. How many units does a one-word insertion count? The same number of units as a completely rewritten sentence? How many units does a redrawn bar graph count? A series of repositioned page numbers in a table of contents? Without the advantage of the sentence unit the task quickly seems arbitrary. Nevertheless, the importance of the editing should not be overlooked for several reasons:
• The professor devoted a lot of her commenting time to editing.
• The students revised consistently and successfully on the basis of editing comments.
• The importance of visuals in the reports often led to visual editing which is not common in English papers or the commenting research that has emphasized the English essay. But in the field of engineering the visuals are as important--or more important--than the linguistic component (below we discuss the importance of visuals in the student papers).
• The editing was a means of modeling the engineering style and voice, acquiring both of which are goals of the design report.
Comparing the Comments: An Engineer and Teachers of Technical Writing
In Dragga's study, technical writing teachers' most common form of comment was the question, followed by directives, criticisms, compliments, suggestions, explanations, and observations, respectively (210). The results of the engineering professor's comments offer several marked differences, as shown in Tables 1 and 2. Note first in Table 1 that the most frequent comment given by the teachers of technical writing is the question (40 percent), while the engineering professor only questions in 15 percent of her comments. According to Dragga, this is a point in favor of the engineering professor, in that questions often do not give clear revising strategies to students (211). However, as can be seen from his examples (e.g., "Could you combine these two sentences?"), he has in mind primarily comments that address linguistic elements of the paper. But as seen in Table 2, the majority of questions posed by the engineering professor pertain to graphic elements of the paper. Unlike questions that pertain to linguistic elements of a paper, the questions posed by the professor concerning graphic elements of the paper usually had clear, directive perlocutions. For example:
• "Where is the hole in the top and front views?"
• "Why do you have this circle?" (followed by: "Round is made by creating 1/4 circle tangent to top and side. When tangent, no line of intersection shown.")
• "Why is this picture here?" (followed by: "It is not the final design. This will confuse the reader.")
• "Where is hole in this view?"
• "Where are the multiple views and the dimensions?"
Thus, even in the relatively few instances that she does employ questions, the professor's questions rarely suffer from the ambiguity typical of questions criticized by Dragga.
The most dramatic difference represented in Table 1, however, occurs in the relative amount of observations. The technical writing teachers almost never make observations (3 percent), while almost a third (30 percent) of the engineering professor's comments are observations. But again, the particular context of the class requires some explanation of her observations. Like her questions, her observations usually have a clearly directive intent. Consider the following typical examples:
• "Information needs weren't discussed."
• "Table of contents required."
• "Solid cylinder diameter goes on longitudinal view."
• "Usually the 'organization of the report' is a separate paragraph that says what is found in each section of the report."
• "This page goes before the introduction."
• "First paragraph describes the holder. Second paragraph de-scribes how it works."
• "Graph isn't on the next page--where the reader would expect to find it."
• "This section needs an introductory paragraph."
Almost all of these observations are very close to directives. For instance, "Information needs weren't discussed" easily becomes "You need to discuss information needs" or "Discuss information needs." Furthermore, the perlocutions of the observations and their close directives are identical; the teacher wants the student to include a discussion of information needs. As Dragga noted in an e-mail exchange concerning the results of this study, the passive nature of the observations is consistent with the general emphasis in engineering on passive constructions. And in this case the passive construction puts a softer edge on some of the many directive comments, which might reduce the cumulative, wearing effect that consistently directive comments might have on the student.
Consider then, the overall picture of the relationship between the teachers of technical writing with backgrounds in composition and the engineering professor:
• A plurality (40 percent) of the technical writing teachers' comments are questions. The engineering professor, however, asks much fewer questions (15 percent), and when she does, they usually pertain to graphic elements of the paper, where they are highly directive.
• In contrast to the technical writing teachers' emphasis on questions, the most frequently made comment by the engineering professor is directive--fully a third of her comments classify as directive.
• Almost a third of the engineering professor's remaining comments are observations, which, as we have seen above, also usually have clearly directive illocutions. Observations, however, are the least prevalent comment among technical writing teachers (only 3 percent).
• Almost all of the engineering professor's editing marks, which did not qualify as locutions and hence are not represented in the table, are directive.
In sum, the engineering professor has art overwhelmingly directive commenting style--much more directive than the technical writing teachers with backgrounds in composition.
When interviewed, the engineering professor was not surprised that her comments appeared to be directive. "Most engineering students are talented and highly motivated," she observed, and added:
They want to do their work well, and generally appreciate clear, concise direction. Very few of them have experience writing a technical report, but they do their best to prepare good first drafts. My comments on their drafts are designed to meet several objectives. First, I try to provide students with the information they want, and need, to prepare a solid technical report. At the same time, I want to recognize the effort the students have already made and to be encouraging; thus the "softer edge" on comments. Finally, because engineering students have a tendency to do exactly what is asked of them, i.e., incorporate editorial suggestions verbatim--and sometimes mindlessly--where possible, I make "observations" which require the students to think about a "problem" with their report and to devise their own "solution to the problem." The trick is to write comments that lead the students to do what you want without actually telling them what to do--and to accomplish this with very. few words. In short, the goal is to get students to think about and learn how to write a good technical report rather than simply to have them prepare one report to my specifications.
Interviews with students corroborate the professor's perception that students "generally appreciate clear, concise direction." Randomly selected teams of students were interviewed after they received comments on their drafts from the engineering professor. When asked how they would respond to her comments, they said they understood the comments and that they would "do what she told us to do." In general, the attitude of the engineering students concerning the directive comments was positive and accepting. When the final reports were compared with the marked drafts, it was clear that students had incorporated the instructor's comments.
Comparing an Engineering Professor to Professional Editors of Technical Writing
Dragga found that the majority of professional editors' comments were directives, questions, and suggestions. None of the editors offered observations, because the illocutions and perlocutions of observations are often obscure (213). Criticisms among editors were atypical, and though compliments were often given orally, they were rarely written (note that Dragga did not quantitatively analyze the comments of editors, so there is no numerical basis for comparison) (213).
Like the editors, the professor has a high percentage of directives and questions. However, unlike the editors, her percentage of suggestions is low. The low number of suggestions may be due to the introductory status of the classes she teaches. Dragga points out that suggestions by the editors are usually preludes to negotiations with the writer about an aspect of the writing. Such negotiation is more likely when an editor comments on an experienced writer's paper--a writer who in some cases is more a peer than a student. The difference in experience between the engineering professor and her students, however, would be much greater, so negotiation would seem a less likely possibility.
Again, as was the case with the teachers of technical writing, the engineering professor offers more observations than editors. Dragga found that none of the editors and supervisors he interviewed said they offered observations in their commentary on writing because the "illocutions and perlocutions of observations ... prove either obscure (and thus inefficient) or passive (and thus unproductive), designating either no clear revising activity or no revising activity" (213). As discussed above, the engineering professor's passively-constructed comments generally do not suffer from obscure illocutions and perlocutions, and they are in fact highly directive. Given, then, the highly.directive nature of her observations, her commenting style is not radically different from the style of professional editors, though the comparison cannot be quantified and is less clear than is the case with the comparison to the teachers of technical writing.
The Design Report, Visuals, and the English Essay: Comparing Commenting Style to Genre
Having compared the data with research on commenting patterns and strategies in other fields of technical writing, we now analyze the relation of the professor's comments to the genre conventions of the paper they address. What, then, might be the sources of the engineering professor's high degree of direction? Is such a high degree of direction justifiable? Dragga notes that the highly-directive commenting strategies of professional editors reflect their emphasis on writing as product rather than process (213). In engineering classes there is a similar emphasis; very few of the engineers teaching the design report at OSU, for example, require drafts of the report. But the engineering professor whose comments we studied appears to be even more directive than the teachers or editors in Dragga's study, especially when one considers that many of her comments were directive editing, a form of commenting which is not even reflected in the seven categories used in the comparison with Dragga. Part of the degree of direction can be explained by the introductory level of the class: the students have had little or no experience in the genre and would therefore more likely need more direction than a professional writer receiving editorial advice. But there are additional reasons inherent in the genre of the design report that shed light on the highly-directive commenting style of the professor.
Shift in Audience
For many students the design report may be the first time they have been required to write in a genre determined rather strictly by an external, non-academic "real" audience rather than in a genre heavily influenced by a teacher's individual preferences and requirements. Many genres that students typically employ in English classes-especially those which emphasize personal voice--allow fairly wide variations within general conventions. The design report, however, has more prescriptive conventions and allows the writer less latitude for improvisation.
Commenting on papers that reflect this shift in audience requires an adjustment from the commenting strategies employed on a standard English essay. A teacher's global comments on an English composition essay might result in wholesale restructuring of a paper; such global restructuring, however, almost never occurs in a design report, unless the original topic were to be thrown out entirely. Once the topic is chosen the construction of the paper is largely prescribed; it has eight parts that appear in a precise order (cf. the description above). The papers can thus be written piecemeal--as they usually are by the groups of engineering students who work on them. Broad, facilitative comments that are often useful on an early, inchoate draft of an English essay emphasizing personal voice have no real parallel in a design report. Instead, the engineering teacher is usually trying to make clear the expected content of each section.
The Report as a Visually Organized Reference Tool
A salient result of the shift in audience in the design report is that readers will not read the report linearly from cover to cover, but will instead refer to sections of the report that are pertinent to their interests. The professor often pointed out that the design report should satisfy three types of readers, few of whom will read the report linearly: the reader who consults only graphics, the reader who consults only the written text, and the reader who uses both integrally. Satisfying all these readers is a difficult and radical shift for students. They may have had to satisfy the "text" reader in English class or the "visual" reader in math class, but few have likely been asked to satisfy all three of the above readers, in the same document, simultaneously.
Even when first-year students have written in more "objective" genres similar to the design report that also require them to draw on sources other than their personal experience, it is usually in the form of the research paper. But though the research paper moves away from the narrative structure of personal experience essays, it is still highly linear in form and fairly fluid in local convention. As a genre, the research paper rarely draws on visual cues any more than the standard English five-paragraph essay does, and even when graphics are used in research papers it is rarely, or never, assumed by teachers in the humanities that some readers will read only the graphic elements.
There are several consequences to such non-linear reading of the report. First, there is a need for overt visual guideposts such as tables of contents, headings, subheadings, lists of figures, and the like. Student writers are, however, more accustomed to giving semantic, transitional phrases for such guideposts, and few have had experience giving the sort of visual cues required by the design report, where a transitional phrase might be replaced by a heading. They are thus unaware of the need for strict consistency in visual format required to facilitate ease of navigation through the report. Second, they do not understand the need for sections of the report to be semantically self-contained so that a reader can understand parts of the report that are read in isolation from the rest of the report. The repetition of information and the frequent use of introductions that is required for semantically self-contained sections would be viewed as useless redundancy by most students' previous writing instructors, who would usually assume that the audience would read the entire document linearly.
Commenting on a paper with such a hypertextual/visual structure leads to an emphasis on visual conventions, which is often a matter of arraying elements of the page--whether graphs or headings or page numbers--in the proper format so that the reader can navigate easily through the paper. Thus, it is not only an emphasis on product over process in engineering that results in a more directive commenting style, it is also the structure of the paper; the hypertextual/visual nature of the paper leads to an emphasis on visual conventions--on proper format--which in turn results in an emphasis on very directive commentary. Facilitative comments simply do not work well when you must correct students on detailed matters of format convention.
Visual Prewriting
The effects of visual orientation do not, however, merely affect the product of the design report or the teacher's commenting strategies, they also affect the process of writing the report. Through discussions with the engineering professor concerning prowriting we learned that engineering students, unlike most English students, often do their planning and prewriting graphically, through diagrams, drawings, graphs, and charts. Consequently, it is often the case that when students in engineering actually write sentences down they are in a fairly late stage of thinking through their project; their writing-to-learn often occurs graphically. In fact, one of the drafts for the design report required in the class we studied was primarily a set of drawings.
The effect of visual orientation in writing has been addressed very little in composition theory, but it would seem probable that it would have broad effects on the success of commenting strategies. It is often the case with English papers--or it is at least argued by compositionists that it should be the case--that later drafts have more directive commentary because global, facilitative comments have already been absorbed in earlier drafts and the evaluation of the writing as a product is often at hand. But since engineers often do their early thinking visually, then it would seem likely that the written drafts handed in by students are often products of a later stage in the thinking process. It would seem reasonable, then, that like the later drafts of English essays, such "later" drafts of engineering papers would also be best served by more directive comments.
Conclusion
Comparing the engineering professor's comments with Dragga's data on professional editors and teachers of technical writing highlights the extent to which her commenting style is directive. The high degree of direction in her commentary is, however, at least partially explained by the context of the introductory class and the genre conventions of the paper she commented on. More research on the commenting of other engineering professors in this course and in other courses is needed to confirm the efficacy of such a high degree of direction. But to what extent are the results of our study applicable to genres other than this particular design report? Although it would certainly not be wise to simply assume that comments that are effective in one particular context are effective generally, nevertheless, given the relationships between genre conventions and commenting outlined in the second section of this article, it would seem plausible to formulate the working hypothesis that any genre that has more extensive and prescriptive genre conventions than the English composition essay would be a candidate for a more directive commenting style. More specifically, it would seem plausible that the highly directive commenting style of the professor we studied could be effective in other genres that had at least some of the following characteristics of the design report:
• A non-linear, hypertextual form in which the reader's navigation is guided by visual cues.
• The expectation that readers will often not read the document entirely, but use it as a reference tool for selected information.
• The expectation of divided readership, where some readers will only read linguistic elements of the document, and some only visual elements.
• The extensive use of visuals.
• The exclusive or partial use of visuals as a form of invention and prewriting.
Because many of the genre forms grouped under the broad term "technical writing" display at least some of these characteristics, it would seem that there is at least preliminary evidence for a more positive view of directive commenting in some types of technical writing pedagogy such as the design report described above. However, these characteristics are certainly not necessary and sufficient conditions for directive commenting, and additional research is needed to refine our understanding of the interactive relationship of these characteristics with each other and with the other elements of particular genres.
Our findings, then, appear to reinforce the arguments of Beason, Hagge, and Dragga that the commenting strategies developed in composition cannot be exported to other disciplines in toto. This limitation on the applicability of commenting strategies leads to a broader question of the extent to which the training that writing teachers receive in composition programs can be successfully applied in other disciplines and genres. If effective commenting must be tailored to a particular genre, what else must be? Our study would indicate that the emphasis on process prevalent in composition, for instance, might need to be broadened to take into account nonlinguistic forms of the writing process such as graphs and drawings.
Finally, our study points to the need to develop research methodologies that are tailored to specific genres and disciplines. In our study, for example, the use of speech act theory limited our categorization and analysis of written comments to locutions; we are aware of no methodology of similar power that has been developed to analyze the visual elements (or visual comments) used in many technical genres. Because technical genres often differ so substantially from the genres typically studied in composition, the field of technical writing stands to gain much from developing its own research practices.
Table 1 Kinds of Comments by Engineering Professor and Dragga's Technical Writing Teachers
Legend for Chart:
A - Number of Comments by Engineering Professor
B - Percentage of Comments by Engineering Professor
C - Percentage of Comments by Teachers of Technical Writing in
Dragga's Study
A B C
Compliments 93 8% 9%
Criticisms 18 2% 12%
Directives 387 33% 23%
Questions 179 15% 40%
Suggestions 56 5% 8%
Explanations 83 7% 5%
Observations 351 30% 3%
Total 1167 100% 100%
Table 2 Engineering Professor's Linguistic and Graphic Comments
Legend for Chart:
A - Comments on Linguistic Elements
B - Comments on Graphic Elements
A B
Compliments 74 19
Criticisms 12 6
Directives 197 190
Questions 71 108
Suggestions 27 29
Explanations 57 26
Observations 194 157
Total 632 535
Percentage 54% 46%
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By Paul Miller, Ohio State University; Jaye Bausser, Ohio State University and Audeen Fentiman, Ohio State University
Paul Miller and Jaye Bausser are doctoral candidates in rhetoric and composition at Ohio State University. Audeen Fentiman is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Ohio State University.