Abstract
The Nordic Journal of English Studies was created in 2002 in order to offer a forum for Nordic scholars in English language and literature and to promote the field of English studies in the Nordic countries. It is affiliated to the Nordic Association of English Studies (NAES). Starting from 2007 the journal is open access and only published electronically.
Highlights
If the globalization of the workplace increasingly requires that students be prepared to work in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts, U.S curricula in technical communication often do not meet these new demands
Since 2007, the authors of this paper, Ann Brady, a faculty member who serves as the director of the undergraduate program of scientific and technical communication at Michigan Technological University (MTU), and Laurence José, a Ph.D. candidate from France, have conducted
We confront the local dimension of a U.S scientific and technical communication program with the new challenges globalization raises, and we show how an assignment sequence we designed and implemented in an advanced technical communication course has become a means to enact and nurture new “communities of practice” (Wenger 1998) that cross institutional borders and that favor a social orientation to learning
Summary
If the globalization of the workplace increasingly requires that students be prepared to work in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts, U.S curricula in technical communication often do not meet these new demands. In their 2005 study, Sandi Harner and Anne Rich found that only 1% of undergraduate technical communication programs in the U.S require a course explicitly in the topic of global or international communication, and only 5% of programs offer such a course as an elective. We argue that writing for and collaborating with an international audience helps students to develop a more sophisticated knowledge of their own communication practices, and to perceive the movement from local to global as a transition enabling the creation of knowledge and of new learning processes
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