| This descriptive exploratory study investigates the transfer of rhetorical knowledge between contexts. In particular, it examines which rhetorical strategies students in an upper-level engineering course rely on to complete writing assignments. Most engineering students, by the time they are upper-level, have taken a university technical communication course. Through various methods of data collection, I examine what students learned in that course and whether or not they rely on that knowledge as they complete writing assignments in an engineering class. I also discover the other academic and workplace experiences that have shaped students' rhetorical knowledge. I examine processes employed by students to produce written products, investigate the ways in which students' learned these processes, and identify the ways in which students articulate rhetorical concepts.This study is important because we know very little about how the content we teach students in technical communication courses is being transferred, or whether it is transferred at all. Only a few researchers have examined the ways in which rhetorical skills and strategies are transferred from one course to another. These studies devoted to learning transfer indicate that often students are unable to make connections between different courses or different contexts, even when those situations require similar rhetorical strategies.This study is timely because engineering as a discipline is currently engaged with issues of how to prepare students for the communicative demands of the profession, in part because of accreditation concerns raised by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). This study should be of interest to all of us who wonder what happens to the knowledge, skills, and practice of rhetoric as it leaves our classrooms and enters new spheres of learning and professional practice. |
