Al Hilali, Tayiba Sulaiman Thani; (2020) Workplace writing: A multi-perspective study of engineer alumni’s preparedness for English L2 writing in Oman. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This explorative, interpretive, qualitative study seeks to understand and problematise college alumni’s preparedness for engineering workplace writing in English in Oman. The issue of preparing learners to write for workplace writing has been widely contested by social learning theories and previous research on university-workplace transition of novices. This is due to the situated nature of writing which makes teaching genres outside their local contexts problematic. The study has two primary objectives. First, from Social Constructionism and Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) perspectives, the study makes a theoretical contribution to conceptualising workplace English L2 writing preparedness by adopting a social view of writing to explore the contextual and situated nature of workplace writing. Second, the study makes a contribution to knowledge in the field by tackling the issue of alumni’s preparedness for workplace writing gained in college writing classes through directly investigating the views of alumni and line managers to understand the factors contributing to the perceived preparedness. To achieve these objectives, I used a multi-perspective approach. I collected qualitative data over a period of one year through 16 semi-structured interviews as the main method for data collection, with 12 Higher College of Technology (HCT) engineer alumni and four line managers at five different private sector companies in Oman. The participants included both new and experienced alumni in different fields of engineering. To better understand the workplace writing in these specific contexts, the interview data was supported with subsidiary data from textual analysis of 29 alumni’s workplace written samples. The findings revealed two levels of contextual elements at which workplace writing operates in the studied context: rhetorical and socio-contextual. The former includes audience, purpose and valued style, and the latter collaborative writing, physical environment and level of experience. Participants’ perceptions were shaped by factors such as genre awareness, deficiencies in technical writing experiences at the college, such as lack of task authenticity, lack of feedback and graduates’ attitudes. The interpretations of the findings suggest that the college role in learners’ preparedness for workplace writing is significant and perceived differently by individuals. The findings also provide theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications for research and teaching in the area of ESP/ technical/ professional writing.

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