Multiple Perspectives on
University History & Engineering
Assignments
Sheena Gardner
University of Warwick
19th European Systemic Functional Linguistics
Conference & Workshop
23-25 July 2007,
Saarbrücken, Germany
An Investigation of
Genres of Assessed Writing
in British Higher Education
RES-000-23-0800
Warwick - Reading - Oxford Brookes
Researchers
Hilary Nesi, Sheena Gardner, Jasper Holmes, Sian
Alsop, Laura Powell, Richard Forsyth, Dawn Hindle
CELTE, Warwick
Paul Thompson, Alois Heuboeck
SLALS, Reading
Paul Wickens, Signe Ebeling, Maria Leedham
ICELS, Oxford Brookes
Project Aims
 Develop
a Corpus of British Academic
Written English (BAWE)
 Characterise
proficient student writing
across disciplines and years
Four Research Strands
1.
Corpus development
2.
Discourse community perspectives
3.
Multidimensional analysis of register
4.
SFL analysis of genres
1. Corpus Development
a.Collect assignments
b.Tag files and prepare for submission to Oxford
Text Archive
c. Develop Sketchengine interface for end users
d.Develop shared portal with parallel corpora
(BASE, MICASE, MICUSP)
A Collection Issue: text vs texts
corpus as text: computational analysis of forms
Random Sampling
Stratified Sampling
Cluster Sampling
Opportunistic / Convenience Sampling
Purposive / Judgemental Sampling
corpus as texts: ‘manual’ analysis of meanings
BAWE Corpus Grid (Stratified)
1
Arts & Humanities
Life Sciences
Physical Sciences
Social Sciences
2
3
4
The 28 ‘disciplines’ targeted
(Clusters then Convenience )
Arts & Humanities
Applied Linguistics/ Applied English Language
Studies, Classics, Comparative American Studies,
English, History, Philosophy, (Archaeology)
Life Sciences
Agriculture, Biochemistry, Food Science and
Technology, Health and Social Care, Plant Biosciences,
Psychology, (Medical Science)
Physical Sciences
Architecture, Chemistry, Computer Science,
Engineering, Physics, (Mathematics)
Social Sciences
Business, Economics, Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism
Management, Law, Politics, Sociology, (Publishing),
(Anthropology)
Corpus Texts targeted (Purposive)
from 24 ‘main’ disciplines
from each of 4 ‘years’
8 instances
of 4 different assignments
= 3000+ assignments,
And half that from five ‘minor’ disciplines = 3,500+
An estimated 10 million words
STRAND 2
2. Discourse Community
a. Departmental documentation
b. Tutor interviews
c. Student interviews
d. Assignment submission forms
Tutor on Engineering Projects:

In year four they have a team project with
tasks similar to what they’ll get in
employment. They work in teams with
students from a range of engineering
disciplines to tackle various complex
engineering problems. They produce a
document with costings targeted at a
Venture Capital company.
On Engineering Reports:


There is a standard structure.. They have a
layout of headings and a description of the sorts
of things that would go under each of those
headings, and they map whatever they’ve done
onto that.
Although a third-year project may be similar in
structure to a laboratory report written in the
first year, the writer will have to assimilate,
evaluate and integrate a wider range of
information.
Engineering Students:
“Basically we make a summary first the reasons
are if someone in industry wants to know what
we’re doing, they haven’t got time to read
through they just want to know what’s going on.
Then the introduction .. Contents .. Then a
theory which takes a huge chunk it’s explaining
everything…”
“It doesn’t matter how good the project is, if it isn’t
well written, it won’t get good marks”
Engineering assignments:









Laboratory reports
Project reports
Reflective journals
Posters (e.g. for transport museum)
Summaries of analysis + recommendations
Site investigation reports (both factual and
interpretative)
Funding proposals
Business plans
Essays
History Tutor:
Formative assignments are 2000-2500 word
essays in response to a question, like an
exam question. A rhetorical exercise to
persuade the reader to accept the
argument.
Summative essays are longer, 4000-5000
words. 8000 word essays require
additional organisational skills.
History Student
“I try to use different opinions. I say someone’s
opinion, then counter it with someone else’s. I
weave my own perception in but I’d never say
“this is what I think” directly. I use some arguing
and counter but I always go back to my
introduction stance.
… I put across my argument always and a. you
have to consider the popular argument at the
time. You don’t want to go against the flow
completely as you don’t have the skill to do that.
But b. I consider what the professor will think.”
History Assignments
Formative Essays (2000-2500 words)
Summative Essays (4000-5000 words)
Literature Review (2,500 words, recently
introduced in one core module)
Book Review (in one optional module)
Summative Essay (8000 words; optional)
Strand 3
3. Multidimensional Register
Analysis
Biber’s team tag the corpus for their
lexicogrammatical features; do frequency
counts, and factor analysis,
identify dimensions of variance among
Levels, Disciplines, Groups, Text types.
We interpret.
Biber’s dimensions, eg Narrative:
NARRATIVE
|Romance fiction
7+
|
[.......]
|
0+Popular lore
|
|FACE-TO-FACE CONVERSATIONS
|Religion, Editorials
-1+PUBLIC CONVERSATIONS, *classics*
|
|Press reviews, *history*
|
-2+TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS
|Professional letters
|Academic prose
|
-3+Hobbies, *anthropology*
|BROADCASTS
|
|
-4+
|*engineering*
NON-NARRATIVE
Features of Narrative/Non-narrative
dimension (Conrad and Biber
2001):
positive features

past tense verbs

third-person pronouns

perfect aspect verbs

public verbs

synthetic negation

present participial clauses
negative features

(present tense verbs)

(attributive adjectives)
BAWE dimensions (pilot data)
Factor 1: History is high; Engineering is low
 History: factual adverbs (definitely,
inevitably), likely adverbs (apparently,
predictably), and existential verbs (seem,
appear);
 Engineering: predictive modals (will,
would, shall), active verbs & total nouns.
Disciplines grouped with History
Warning: based on pilot data only
Factor History, Psychology, Anthropology,
1
Classics, English
Factor History, Psychology, Anthropology,
5
Law
Further Corpus Analysis
Descriptive statistics (TTR, word length,
sentence length, text length)
 Word frequencies (history, historians)
 Collocations (Ward 2007)
 Ngrams / lexical bundles (Eberle &
Leedham; Oakey)
 And more ….

Progression in History (WordsmithTools)
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Type/Token Ratio
42.50
41.34
39.98
22.32
24.04
27.63
standardised
mean sentence
length (in words)
Essay length (in
words)
cf Tutors’ counts
1500- 3000- 15003000 5000 5000,
12000
Progression in History (WS Freq)
Rank Raw Freq
Freq/1000wds
Texts
%Texts
‘History’ Yr 1
74
75
1.3
15
75
‘History’ Yr 2
52
151
1.8
16
73
‘History’ Yr 3
24
304
4.1
14
87
‘Historians’ Y 1
172
34 (+5) = 39 0.6 (+0.0) = 0.6
9 (2)
45 (10)
‘Historians’ Y 2
204
45(+11)= 56 0.5 (+0.1) = 0.6
13 (7) 59 (32)
‘Historians’ Y 3
139
52(+33)= 85 0.7 (+0.4) = 1.1
8 (6)
(+ ‘Historian’)
50 (37)
Strand 4
4. Systemic Functional Genres
Three school history genres (Coffin)
1. Analytical exposition:
(Background)^ Thesis^ Arguments^ Thesis Reinforcement
2.
Analytical discussion:
(Background)^ Issue^ Arguments^ Position
3.
Challenge:
(Background)^ Arguments^ Anti-Thesis
History Issue and Thesis




E.2 Issue (AD)
This essay will look at continuity and departure through
these two periods thematically, and attempt to form a
conclusion as to whether the 'Age of Braudel'
conserved or contradicted original Annales
historiography. (AD)
E.3 Thesis (AE)
I will attempt to show why I agree with scholars such
as Craig Calhoun that it was primarily artisans that
resisted the changes brought by industrialization and
who seemed to have more of a sense of unity in
comparison to the factory workers. (AE)
(DC) Types and (SFL) Genres of History
assignments
Yr
Types
1
22
essays
10
5
3
2
1
2
22
essays
10
8
1
3
-
3
15
essays
1 review
5
6
3
2
60
Analytic
Discussion
Analytic
Exposition
Factorial
Explanation
Challenge
?
1
25
19
7
7
2
Progression in History Genres
No evidence of Coffin’s progression from
Narrative to Analytical genres
 No clear evidence of Coffin’s progression
from narrative to argumentative language
 Limited evidence of addition of ‘literature
review’ stage to long essays
 No clear evidence of increase in
Challenges

Progression in History
In Field as identified by manual
Assignment Initial Sentence Subject
analysis AND by computational word
frequency comparisons
 In nature of sources: from books (1st yr), to
edited books (2nd yr) to occasional journal
articles (3rd yr)

Types and Proposed Genres in Engineering
Yr
Types
Lab
Report
Design
Proposal
1
Reports
Exercise
Case Study
8
2
Report
8
2
1
-
3
Report,
Exercise
Dissertation
1
1
5
2
2
Product
Evaluation
1
Design
Report
Exercise
Diss.
-
?
-
2
-
0
1
1
2
3
17
5
7
2
4
3
2
Proposed genres (Engineering)


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
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
Laboratory Report: to report on tests/experiments conducted;
(Summary)^Introduction^Theory^Apparatus^Methods^Observations and
results^Analysis of Results^Discussion^Conclusion^Bibliography^(Figures &
tables)^Appendices
Design Proposal: to put forward a proposal for a system or product:
(Summary)^(Background)^Introduction^ Design Feature decisions
^(Costing/Suppliers)^ Conclusions^ (Bibliography)^(Appendices)
Product Evaluation: to evaluate a piece of equipment or procedure:
Introduction ^Strengths ^Weaknesses ^(Practice/performance tests)
^Conclusions^(References)
Design Report: to design and test a system:
Summary^Introduction^Theory^Analysis^Comparisons^Conclusions^Refere
nces
Exercise: to practice a number of isolated generic stages or reflect on
method
Task 1^Task 2^..Task n
Dissertation: to develop a design proposal for a system or product in the
context of the literature
Abstract^Self-assesssment^Introduction^Literature
Review^(Theory)^Methodology^Analysis and
Results^(Discussion)^Conclusion^Costing^References^(Appendices)
Self assessment in Engineering
“the engineering data obtained ... was very
limited .... The work is important as it showed ....
The work should be continued to determine ....
The work was a success in that ... The extent of
the experimental work completed is not as great
as originally expected ... The author found
obtaining information on ... very difficult ... There
was no scope in the available time to consider
alternative .... Whilst efforts were made to
minimise variations in ... these could not be
eliminated completely during the project phase.”
(Diss)
Summary (LR, DP, DR)

“A compact gearbox design is required to
use in an electric drill to produce a 25:1
speed reduction from a motor developing
36W at 9000rpm. ... analysis ... costs
...comparisons ... Therefore it is believed
that the gearbox is a cost effective design
which makes economic use of available
space” (DR)
Progression in Engineering
Building block
 Early genres aim to test, design, evaluate,
propose costings - separately
 Final dissertation puts these together, plus
‘literature review’ and ‘self-assessment’

Integrating Four Strands

Corpus
Random sampling vs Purposive sampling
in future: technology is promising …

Discourse Community
Number and nature of genres not predictable from
department labels for assignment types

Computational Analysis
Even ‘simple’ descriptive statistics need other strands
Findings may be unclear, or bring significant insights

Genre Analysis
Prompts need for further texts in the corpus
Needs to be checked with Discourse Community
Can be reinforced by computational analysis
…Shunting ……Two-prongs …..
……...Echo-chambers …. Strands



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Shunting [MAKH] – carriages being pushed along rail
tracks – 1961 ref to moving up and down rank scale;
adapted by Miller 2006. But ‘tracks’ not at all clear from
computational to manual analyses
Two-prongs [CMIM] – only two?
Echo-chambers [T&H] – works from small text to large
corpus, but one-directional? some ‘sounds’ get lost?
Strands? Here FOUR strands, not two: the corpus
development and discourse context are also variable
and responsive to the computational and manual
analyses; each strand is autonomous and separable, but
they mutually reinforce for a rich description
www.warwick.ac.uk/go/bawe