Assessment of a Writing Workshop Model for First-Year Engineering Students

Abstract

This Evidence Based Practice paper will report on a multi-year project to improve the writing skills of engineering freshmen at San Jose State University (SJSU). For the last ten years, the college has offered an optional class to students who are not proficient in writing. Students can enroll in a one-unit lab class as many semesters as they wish to get practice in writing. The goal is to provide students with weekly writing activities that include: instruction in basic grammar, proofreading, and editing. In addition to study and practice exercises, students in this writing workshop have writing assignments, which provide practice in using correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and paragraph structure. Students have the opportunity to develop technical communication skills through written assignments such as memos, letters, and reports. For three years, the CoE has selected freshmen from each entering class as the pilot group and an additional 50 matched students as the comparison group. These students were selected based on their English Placement Test (EPT) scores. The EPT is designed to assess the level of reading and writing skills of entering lower-division students so that they can be placed in appropriate English composition courses. This paper will compare the achievement of the students in the writing workshops with other English-remedial students at SJSU. Introduction In Fall 2011, SJSU received a U.S. Department of Education grant, AANAPISI, to improve the writing skills of Asian-American students at SJSU. This grant has several focus areas, one of which is the improvement of writing and writing instruction in General Education (GE) classes. A significant percent of SJSU’s incoming freshmen are remedial in English or mathematics. Per CSU policy, students must clear their remedial status within one year or they are disenrolled from the CSU. A look into retention rates shows that there is a higher attrition among remedial students than their non-remedial peers. Also, the time to graduation is typically lengthened up to two years for students who need remedial classes. Many of these remedial students are high need Generation 1.5 students—U.S. educated English learners. At SJSU, they struggle to complete their English and writing requirements, requirements meant for their native English peers. Often, these struggles impact their retention and graduation rates from SJSU. The challenges presented by this complicated skill set in Generation 1.5 students can be seen most clearly in English writing, a critical competency for academic success at SJSU which encompasses retention and graduation. According to Singhal [1], high needs Generation 1.5 students have unique needs in the areas of academic writing; in particular, these students need to develop their mastery of academic literacy. Literacy is not only the ability to read and write but it also includes “the ability to use critical thinking or higher order thinking skills, communication skills, and research skills.” The content of ENGR 81W focuses on a progressive instruction and practice in the crucial areas of academic writing [2] so that our students will be prepared to apply academic English to their oral and written communication. For this work, we have built upon the Commanding English