Academic and Workplace Genres

Students will be asked to choose and research particular social situations, analyze texts produced in the contexts of these situations, and present the results of these explorations in written assignments and oral presentations. Students will be asked to go through drafting and peer review and revision processes while working on the course assignments. In-class time will be provided for peer review sessions.

Artemeva, Natasha. Carleton University (2003). Academic>Courses>Genre

Current Trends and Issues in the Qualitative Research Literature: A Bibliography

A review of publications which employ qualititative research in the study of education.

Artemeva, Natasha. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Resources>Bibliographies>Education

From Page to Stage: How Theories of Genre and Situated Learning Help Introduce Engineering Students to Discipline-Specific Communication      

This article describes a discipline-specific communication course for engineering students offered by a Canadian university. The pedagogy of this course is based on North American theories of genre and theories of situated learning. In keeping with these theories, the course provides a context in which students acquire rhetorical skills and strategies necessary to integrate into a discipline-specific discourse community. The authors argue that such a pedagogical approach can be used to design communication courses tailored to the needs of any discipline if the following three key conditions are met: assignments are connected to subject matter courses, a dialogic environment is provided, and the nature of assignments allows students to build on their learning experiences in the course.

Artemeva, Natasha, Susan Logie and Jennie St-Martin. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing

Inquiry into Advanced Academic Writing

This course is designed to meet two objectives. First, it offers an opportunity for students to conduct a collective inquiry into the theory and practice of academic writing. Second, it allows students to practise, explore, and experiment with various strategies for enriching their own writing.

Artemeva, Natasha. Carleton University (2002). Academic>Courses>Writing

Introducing Engineering Students to Intellectual Teamwork: The Teaching and Practice of Peer Feedback in the Professional Communication Classroom    

A rich discussion of collaboration as integral to writing in academia and the workplace has been on-going for some time among writing instructors and researchers. The outcomes of this discussion have convinced some writing instructors to promote peer feedback as one of the forms of collaborative writing in the classroom. In this paper we report on the preliminary stages of a longitudinal study of the role and place of peer feedback in the development of students' writing.

Artemeva, Natasha and Susan Logie. LLAD (2002). Articles>Education>Engineering>Collaboration

"Just the Boys Playing on Computers": An Activity Theory Analysis of Differences in the Cultures of Two Engineering Firms      

Using activity theory as a supplement to genre studies, this article explores a case of the disintegration of a traditional engineering firm. It focuses on the causes of such disintegration and the role of different types of communication in serving as sites where contradictions can be brought to visibility and resolution. The authors' goal is both to show the power of activity theory in illuminating issues of tension, contradiction, and dissonance that lead to the breakup of the original organization into two separate firms and point to fundamental differences in the cultures of traditional engineering firms and software design enterprises.

Artemeva, Natasha and Aviva Freedman. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Engineering

Teaching Communication Skills  

Communication skills training can be a hard sell among busy engineering students, but as professionals they won't get far without it. In fact, communication skills are the lifeline of any career. Carleton University has found a way to get the message across.

Artemeva, Natasha and Aviva Freedman. Engineering Dimensions (2000). Articles>Education>Communication

Through the Looking Glass: Identifying Causes of the Alice-Syndrome in Undergraduate Engineering Writers

This study grew out of a question asked by an engineering professor at the University of Windsor, Peter Frise, who observed while reading design proposals from his fourth year students: 'Many of these kids actually write like engineers! What accounts for the difference between those who do and those who don't?' Peter had just moved from teaching Engineering at Carleton where he specialized in introducing first-year students to their engineering studies. In Windsor, his responsibilities had shifted to primarily fourth-year and graduate students. He remembered only too well how ineffective and unengineering-like the writing of his first year students had been. We picked up Peter's question and began to collect data.

Artemeva, Natasha and Janna Fox. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Articles>Education>Engineering

Toward a Unified Social Theory of Genre Learning    

This article discusses the development of a unified social theory of genre learning based on the integration of rhetorical genre studies, activity theory, and the situated learning perspective. The article proposes that these three theoretical perspectives are compatible and complementary, and it illustrates applications of a unified framework to a study of genre learning by novice engineers. The author draws examples from a longitudinal qualitative study of a group of novice engineers who developed their professional genre knowledge through both academic and workplace experiences. These examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for the study of professional genre learning.

Artemeva, Natasha. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Rhetoric>Engineering>Genre

Traveling in Space and Time: A Study of Learning Trajectories in Student Acquisition of Engineering Communication Strategies

My preliminary studies have shown that students do indeed acquire basic communication strategies appropriate for their chosen field that help them to become acculturated in workplace contexts. In other words, they begin to genre their 'way through social interactions, choosing the correct form in response to each communicative situation [they] encounter,' which they do 'with varying degree of mastery'. The subject of my CCCC 2003 presentation is a series of events that occurred in the life of one of my longitudinal study participants. In the presentation, I related these events to the audience and then analyzed them using Rhetorical Genre Studies as a theoretical tool.

Artemeva, Natasha. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing

The Writing Consultant as Cultural Interpreter: Bridging Cultural Perspectives on the Genre of the Periodic Engineering Report      

The periodic engineering report can become a source of conflict and frustration when North American engineers collaborate with colleagues abroad. To overcome such difficulties, technical companies may hire writing consultants, who then take on the additional role of cultural interpreters, helping the partners bridge differences in both the practice of engineering and the language and culture of each country. As such a writing consultant, I worked with a Canadian engineering company, its Russian contractors, and a Russian translator to analyze the sources of difficulties in their reports. The language of the reports was English, but differences in tone as well as reader expectations about organization, format, and appropriate content caused misunderstandings among the collaborators. Contrastive rhetorical analysis helped to identify problems in both the conception of the report as a document and the translation of particular text.

Artemeva, Natasha. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Rhetoric>Reports