Assessing Proficiency in Engineering English      

Though engineers around the world conduct their work in nearly every language on the planet, there are very few who never use English for some aspect of their job. The largest professional engineering organizations use English as their primary language; most of the world’s engineering publications are written in English; and nearly all cooperative ventures with multinational participation choose English for their common language of communication. Unfortunately, most of the world’s engineers are not native speakers of English and thus are considerably disadvantaged in professional terms.

Orr, Thomas. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (2002). Articles>Language>Assessment

Electronic Resources and Aids for Writing, Editing, and Translation  

The popularity of online dictionaries is growing, so new criteria for evaluating these reference works should be established to help technical communicators evaluate their choices. These criteria could come from the following sources: (1) the criteria that have been used for the evaluation of printed dictionaries, (2) the criteria derived from the characteristics of the electronic form of the online dictionaries, and (3) the studies of the ways technical communicators use online dictionaries. This paper addresses all three of these issues.

Menagarishvili, Olga and William O. Coggin. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Language>Software>Assessment

Settings and the Institutional Organization of Language  

Discursive activity in any setting (classrooms, coffee bars, laboratories, greenhouses, or the virtual settings of the Internet), occurs within a semiotic system, and it is useful to think of settings in this way. And, because I've be recently integrating an Activity Theory perspective into my teaching of qualitative research en methods, I wanted to describe the socially-situated organization of talk-in- context in Minneapolis's neighborhood coffee houses. I'm very pleased that Beth Sokolowski's drawings capture the typified activities indigenous to the settings and demonstrate what an important role the setting plays.

Berkenkotter, Carol. University of Minnesota (1998). Articles>Language>Assessment>Cognitive Psychology

Using EN 15038:2006 as an Assessment Tool 

If you have struggled with a good way to assess the countless translation agencies vying for your business or looked for a way to assess your current provider, you’re not alone. Companies around the globe have longed for a standard objective means by which to carry out their assessments. Some help has arrived in the form of European Standard EN 15038:2006, “Translation Services — Service Requirements.”

Heaton, Jason. TC World (2009). Articles>Language>Translation>Assessment