The increasing proportion of graduate students to undergraduate students in ESL academic preparation programs in the United States suggests that more information is needed about language use in graduate courses. This article reports on the characteristics of writing assignments found in syllabuses for graduate courses in business. First, the types of writing assignments and the vocabulary used to label those assignments are analyzed and discussed. Second, the use of prompts to guide the writing of the assignments is examined. Finally, implications are suggested for ESL writing courses for nonnative speakers who are planning to enter (or already attending) U.S. graduate degree programs in business.
Technical writing required of employees in business and industry has been investigated, but the writing demands on graduate students have not been systematically surveyed. To find out what kinds of writing are required of graduate engineering students, twenty-five engineering faculty members from the Engineering College at the University of Florida listed the kinds of writing assigned to graduate classes during the academic year 1979–80. Since the faculty members were asked to rank-order the writing kinds from most frequent to least frequent, the Friedman analysis of variance and the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test were used to test for differences in the rank ordering. The tests showed that faculty assigned examinations, quantitative problems, and reports most frequently, that they assigned homework and papers (term and publication) less frequently, and that they assigned progress reports and proposals least frequently.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.