Undergraduate Discipline-Specific Writing: Expectations, Demands, & Development

This study examines the expectations and linguistic demands of discipline specific college writing, and the writing development of 87 students majoring in business administration, computer science, and information systems at an American university in Qatar. Previous work on writing development among college students has been largely qualitative without providing analysis of student writing, or largely text-based failing to address the context in which development occurs. Partially drawing data from a 3-year longitudinal study of student literacy development, this project proposes to advance knowledge in this area by using corpus linguistics software to analyze student writing and qualitative research methods to better understand teacher expectations and contextual factors influencing development. Specifically, we explore the following questions: 1. What are the expectations and demands of discipline-specific college writing? 2. What are the linguistic and rhetorical features of student writing in business administration, computer science, and information systems? 3. To what extent does student writing develop and what are indicators of such development? 4. What are the factors that contribute to discipline-specific writing development? Documenting the linguistic demands of college writing and the writing development of university students in Qatar is pivotal as Qatar continues to invest in English-medium education to build its human capital.