Bridging the gap: a case study of engineering students, teachers, and practitioners

Abstract

Despite even the most extensive and diverse undergraduate training, many university students struggle once they begin writing in the workplace. As writing researchers (Katz, 1998, and Fielden, 1982) have shown, employers have difficulties training new employees to write acceptable workplace documents. The expectations of employers do not match the new employees' skills. The gap may be caused by a number of factors, with one being that the instruction content does not approximate actual workplace writing expectations. In this study, we examine the genre expectations of a group of engineering students, engineering practitioners and teachers of engineering in response to writing samples from business writing textbooks. This study explores the gap between employers' expectations and academic training.