Academic writing for international graduate students

The high percentage of international students enrolled in many graduate engineering programs in North America presents an additional pedagogical challenge for faculty. Many professors find that they are spending an inordinate amount of their time doing something that is not explicitly stated in their job descriptions-correcting the writing of their international students. This paper describes how one graduate engineering program developed a discipline-specific academic writing course for international students, taught by an in-house communications specialist in collaboration with the students´ advisers. The course is designed to help students report on their research by instructing them on writing a publishable journal article, conference paper, or thesis proposal, the choice of genre depending on adviser input. In addition, the course addresses many of the relevant grammatical and mechanical issues that arise in the process of learning the discourse of engineering by writers for whom English is not the first language.