Patterns of thought in scientific writing: A course in information structuring for engineering students

English for S@ci/ic Pu@oses, Vol. 5. No. 2, pp. 147- 160, 1966 Pergamon Journals Ltd. F’rinted in the USA.

O&39-4906/66 $3.00 + .OO Copyright 0 1987 The American University

Patterns of Thought in Scientific Writing: A Course in Information Structuring for Engineering Students David Hall, Roger Hawkey, Brian Kenny, and Graeme Storer Abstract-This paper argues that many difbculties in dealing with written text are in fact difficulties with the organization of ideas. The course discussed here, starting with this premise, presents certain concepts, patterns, hypotheses, and procedures for discussion, on the basis that their consideration can contribute to an unproved appreciation of what may be involved in organizing ideas, in producing a text, and ultimately, in having a text adequately interpreted by a reader. The underpinnings of the course are related to arguments in the philosophy of science, educational theory, cognitive psychology, and liiguistic-pragmatics. An indication is given of the course content and methodology, and the claim is made that the ideas go beyond the confines of TEFL into the field of education in the widest sense.

Background The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) is an international English-medium postgraduate institute situated some 45 kilometres north of Bangkok, Thailand. More than 100 students from some 25 countries enter AIT each term. They face their first crisis with the realization that they have to cope with a welter of social, administrative, and academic demands in spoken English (orientation, lectures, lab sessions, seminars, etc.) all in a bewildering variety of registers and accents. The English Language Centre runs courses to deal with these problems; and given the exposure and pressure, students come to various accommodations with listening and speaking. Some become fluent and confident; others find a pragmatic sufficiency. Whichever way of coping is preferred, it is true that very few experienced AIT students say their main problem with English is “speaking” or “listening.” The most frequent and heartfelt answer is: “writing.” This is also the most common reply when you ask their lecturers and advisors. The evolvers of the course that is the subject of this paper thus started with “writing” as an agreed problem. Or did they? Many of the lecturers and some of the students seemed to imply “writing” problems were about “weak English,” “lacking the basics,” or “grammar and vocabulary mistakes.” Other faculty members and many of the students, however, were saying something different. Statements like: “1 have problems expressing what I really want to write,” or “It’s difficult to organise my ideas.” From the academic advisors, comments on “muddled thinking, ” “getting things together,” and even “lack of the Cartesian logic,” suggested problems at a different level. Some parts of this paper were originally included in a talk presented to the Thai-TESOL Annual Convention in 1986 and subsequently published by Thai-TESOL as “A Two-Tier Approach to Writing.”

147

This excerpt from the work of a relatively fluent student encapsulates some of what was felt to be a problem of the coherent organization of ideas. Much emphasis is given to efficient transport system. It is important to understand how the interaction of land use can be used to achieve desired development and transportation objectives. There is a greater flow of traffic between the city and the place of work. It is necessary to see what sort of travelling pattern exists between the two. It has long been recognised that there exists a strong relationship between transportation and land uses. The decline in financial resources available for transportation had increased the emphasis for the efficient management of the existing facilities to overcome the distances between the residence and place of work.

The connections between the seemingly unrelated sentences at the beginning of the extract here only begin to become apparent from the mainly lexical clues later. The writer fails to reveal the thread of his own thoughts. This kind of difficulty where individual sentences, and even whole paragraphs, seem all right, but the text as a whole lacks coherence, was encountered again and again as we saw more examples of student work. We also began to see that it was a problem of interpretation as well as production of text. To us, this suggested difhculties at a broader level, with the overall patterns of organisation of whole research papers, theses or articles indeed with the process of scientific inquiry and patterns of thought. So, when our engineering students and lecturers said the main problem was “writing,” were they not talking about the whole business of research, from initial impetus via a problem to the establishment of a purpose and topic; from a research proposal right through all the processes of collecting and analysing data, identifying and weighing evidence and presenting the investigation as a coherently argued research study or master’s thesis? This all-embracing interpretation of a “writing” problem, (including among many other activities, listening, thinking, speaking, and reading, became the issue we decided to address. As is the case in other centres of this type, AIT handbooks and handouts discuss writing up research; however, they emphasize format and conventions rather than ideas, their generation, or their coherent expression. The AIT shop has booklets called How to Write a Rese~yc~ R~~~r~and How to Write a Thesis, but these are prescriptive and strategic rather than about the development of independent, critical, and self-monitoring approaches to inquiry. More surprising was the fact that published materials from our own field seemed equally prescriptive and anchored firmly to narrow, mainly sentence-based, accuracy. Typically, courses organized along notional/functional lines tell the student a number of alternative ways of saying the same small things. Here are two examples: 1. The fact that . . can be explained by . . . 2. . . . This helps to explain . . 3. There are several explanations for . . . These include . . . 4. There is no simple explanation for . . . However, one factor may be . . . (British Council 1980, p. 23)

Patterns

of Thought in Scientific Writing

149

Look carefully at the connectives or markers of cause-effect relationships shown below. Notice particularly how they are used in sentence construction. (Then follows a list of 8 basic structures which add up to some 70 alternative ways of saying the same thing.) (Jordan 1980, p. 56)

From our point of view, books like these were no nearer helping than ones like The Most Common Mistakes in English (also in the AIT bookshop). C)ur analysis of the problem implied that we needed to help our learners tackle the whole process of negotiation of meaning, not just something disparate called “writing.”

General Theoretical Considerations Our aim in developing this information-structuring course became the promotion of a willingness to apply critical analysis to the way that ideas can be related to each other, both within a text and beyond the text to the wider body of scientific knowledge and development. The course springs from a perceived need within the particular learning situation and is not the product of the application of some meta-theoretical construct to the production of “materials.” Nevertheless, it will be seen that it is informed by developments and concerns in other fields. In the field of the philosophy of science, both Popper and Kuhn, the two major reference figures underlying debate in the last two decades, can be seen, despite their differences (see in particular, Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970) as being centrally concerned with the relationship between the work of the individual scientist and the dynamic process in the wider body of scientific knowledge as a whole. Our course might almost be seen as an answer to Popper’s plea that “all teaching on the university level (and if possible below) should be training and encouragement in critical thinking” (Popper, 1970, p. 53). Similarly, Jerome Bruner, a giant in another field, that of educational philosophy, says: “I have often thought that I would do more for my students by teaching them to write and think in English than teaching them my own subject” (Bruner, 1966, p. 102). Stenhouse talks about “facts so structured . . . that they acquire meaning,” and says that “assumptions about the structure of knowledge are implicit in the . . . curriculum” (Stenhouse, 1975, pp. 17 and 15). Joseph Schwab confirms the dynamic nature of the relationship between the individual piece of work and its field when he says that the “knowledge which develops from a given concept usually discloses new complexities of the subject matter which call forth new concepts” (Schwab, 1964, p. 13). Although the remark was made in a different context, Stenhouse’s statement (1975, p. 157) that “we are concerned with the development of a sensitive and self-critical subjective perspective and not with an aspiration towards an unattainable objectivity” might almost stand as a subtitle to the course. Empirical classroom research, particularly in the domain of cognitive psychology, has also pointed out the success of those who focus on “the text, its topic and its logic rather than what anyone else supposedly wants done with it” (Hawkey, 1982, p. 351). Many other analyses of student work have pointed to a lack of awareness of discourse structure (e.g., Greenall, 1980; Hall, 1982; Houghton, 1980), but most of these have remained within the rather narrow syntactic framework of Halliday and Hasan (1976).

150

ENGLISHFOR~PEC~IC~~S~

The field of psycholinguistics, too, shows parallel developments, for instance in accounts of discourse production and perception: “A word does not have a small number of determinate meanings, but a whole family of potential meanings. . . . A sense is instantiated from among the infinitely many meanings that the term can have” (Johnson-Laird, 1981, p. 123). Most striking of all are the parallels between our concerns and developments in linguistics, particularly the increasing interest in linguistic dynamics, text linguistics, and pragmatics. Marschak (1974, pp. 145 - 178) devotes an article to the link between pragmatics and decision making in science. In addition, the distinction we make between microcohesion and macro~ohesion, although extra-~eoretical and developed as a purely pra~atic response to the problems of curriculum organisation, bears a close resemblance to the distinctions made by van Dijk (1985) between “local coherence” and “global coherence” in reference to his work on “macrostructures” (1980). Work dealing with pragmatics (e.g., Levinson, 1983; Cole, 1981) strongly suggests that what we suggest might well be named “applied pragmatics,” as this definition by Fillmore shows: “Pragmatics,” says Fillmore, is about “how formal properties of texts can be related both to what the participants (the producers and interpreters of the texts) are doing and what they are mentally experiencing” (Fillmore, 1981, p. 149). The various components of the course described in as follows might be seen as aiming to provide our students with a series of conceptual filters to handle precisely these relationships. The connection between the aims of the course and the purposes of text linguistics is clear in a statement such as the following from de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981): “whereas the conventional linguistic question might be: ‘What structures can analysis uncover in language?,’ our question would be rather: ‘How are discoverable structures built through operations of decisions and selection, and what are the implications of those operations for communicative interaction?’ ” (de Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981, p. 15). These last two authors have an interesting section on the parentage of text linguistics (1981, pp. 14-29) which points in particular to what they call a “current resurgence in classical rhetoric” (1981, p. 15). The assumptions ascribed by them to “rhetoric” and based in Spillner (1977) include: “judgments of texts can be made in terms of their effects upon the audience of receivers” and “texts are vehicles of purposeful interaction,” assumptions which we would certainly share. Sperber and Wilson’s contention (1981, p. 297) that “a general theory of rhetoric should be concerned with basic psychological and interpretative mechanisms which remain invariant from culture to culture” is particularly relevant to our situation where representatives of well over 30 countries come together in the same working environment. The Information Structuring Course: Introduction The course requires students to handle quantities of selected text with a particular purpose in mind. This may be stated as the consideration of the degree to which an author is making what appears to be his rne~~g clear. Texts are chosen in content areas known to be relevant to students’ specific interests.

Patterns of Thought in scientific Writing

151

Even with high interest, the procedure of coming to terms with a text in the manner indicated remains complex because of the variables involved, Two major hazards faced in the process of negotiating meaning in a text are: (a) the author and the degree to which what he or she puts into the text is coherent; and (b) the readers, and the degree to which they are able to draw out the meanings, in the context of their own previous knowledge and experience, and make sense of them. Meanings are problematic. They can be intended and unintended; implicit and explicit; transparent or confused; evasive; ironic; or anywhere on a sliding scale between chaos and clarity. Meanings also have different but simultaneous dimensions. They are both objective and subjective, in~cat~g not only the field being addressed, but the author-speaker’s attitude to that field as well. We should not be surprised if sometimes they come acrass as garbled. One of the dilhculties that many of us stier from when we write-and even when we talk-is to establish the topic and its related concepts. This is what Swales (1981,1984) calls “establishing the field.” In establishing the field, we fix our attention on a topic but we also must define our own relationship toward this topic and indicate why we are interested in it. The difficulty that writers have in establishing their fields can be seen in texts in science and technology. And when we pinpoint the place where an author establishes his or her field, we often find that it is accomplish~ at the same moment at which the author declares his or her interest, because of something problematical within the field that has captured his or her attention. The objective and the subjective have, in these circumstances, arrived on the paper together. At a moment like this, what we are presented with in the text is the writer’s objectivised motivation. Here is an example from an article in Elavironmental Research (No. 31, 1983): ‘“Only in a few papers has the cadmium-mercury interaction been considered, and only with single doses.” The sentence is short and confident. The message is clear. The author knows what his field is, but he also knows, in usable shape, what previous work has been done in the field, what its shortcomings were, and how this relates to the validity of his own intentions. In this sentence we are not in the presence of an author still in the process of clarifying himself: he is already clear. The sentence is an autonomous communication. Apart from the explicit meaning, there is also implicit the author’s motivation and intent: his own research will be in the field of the cadmiummercury interaction-which incidentally he is surprised to find only a few people have considered-but with “multiple doses.” The writer’s intellectual commitment here matches the defined topic, and we as readers know what he means. Here is another example, taken from Urban Analysis (Vol. 7 1982): “The ideal MRIO model was conceptualised nearly three decades ago. However, it has remained an empirical lame duck due to the enormity of the data required to operation&se it.” The striking phrase in this is empirical lame duck, which is humorously dismissive of a model dreamed up 30 years ago, but at the same time suggests an unbounded confidence on the side of the writer that he can come up with a solution. In these two sentences the writer reveals (a) that he knows the field he’s interested in, but that fb> this interest goes hand in hand with the knowledge that his efforts can do something for the field that needs to be done,

152

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PuRPOsss

that is, dispose of and replace the “lame duck.” In other words, the writer establishes the field by establishing his commitment and motivation. However, if we glance back at the student writing sample presented in the first part of this paper, we find that one of the things missing from these sentences is any convincing indication from the writer about his intentions toward whatever it is that he hasn’t clearly established. Description of the Component Parts of the Course The course makes a distinction between macro-cohesion, by which is meant the way in which topics are linked in discourse both with each other and with the world outside the discourse, and micro-cohesion, where we look at the discourse connections between sentences. Although we originally assumed that there was a qualitative difference between the two, we are now convinced that similar problems arise with both, and that the differences are only quantitative. The syllabus, therefore, is the same for both strands, and within each course component the macro-cohesion sessions are followed by a micro-cohesion session (see Figure 1). (A fuller account of the earlier versions of the course can be seen in our earlier paper (Hall et al., 1986). In the description given here, we shall first of all recount the major assumptions and classroom procedures for each component under the heading “macro-cohesion,” and follow this with a short account of the sort of work done in the micro-cohesion sessions. Macro-Cohesion The Four-Move Pattern. The four-move pattern was delineated by Swales (1981, 1984) and refers to the discourse structure of introductions to scientific and technical articles (see Figure 2). Kenny (1985), in discussing some implications of this four-move pattern, proposes that it has a wider relevance than its role in the introductions to scientific and technical articles might suggest. He claims it as a pattern of thought fundamental to many aspects of human communication and of significance to i~ormation structuring in general. With particular regard to student writing, it is true that a we&written scientific intr~uction will be in the pattern given. But in addition, the pattern is also

The Four-Move Pattern Implicit and Explicit Assumptions Using the Literature for Citations Developing a Methodology Graphically Presented Information Discussing Results Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations The Abstract

Figure

1. Macro-cohesion.

153

Patterns of Thought in Scientific Writing

1

Move Move Move Move

1. Estyblish the,fkld,., 2. Describe previous research. 3. Indicate the gap III previous research. 4. Announce the present research.

1

Figure 2. The Four-Move Pattern.

apparent in the whole of a thesis at a macro-level, for an introduction is a sort of micro-thesis. In the context of our course, the four-move pattern is helpful in getting students to consider the fact that information can be consciously structured. Implicit and Explicit. At the macro-level, students need also to understand the way that authors make assumptions in scientific writing. In implicit assumptions, an author states what he or she does not expect the reader to challenge. The author may not be aware of the assumptions that have been made; the reader may not detect them. For example, a researcher who plans to develop a low-cost solar energy rice drier has assumed that such technology is required or even wanted in rural areas. On the other hand, explicit assumptions are stated, thereby allowing them to be challenged. There is also a relationship between making assumptions and forming hypotheses; the researcher can set out to test the hypotheses in order to validate the assumptions on which they are based. Implicit assumptions are more difficult to identify as the learner is required to infer information from the text. The learner’s ability to do this depends on his or her critical ability and previous knowledge and experience. This critical ability is needed not only at the level of indentifying and making implicit assumptions, but also in research within the wider body of knowledge. Identifying and producing assumptions provide a clear link to the four-move pattern, with questions such as “Is there a genuine ‘gap’ to be filled?“; ‘ “Is this ‘gap’ worth filling?“: and “IS the link between the present research and the ‘gap’ established?” Using the Literature for Citations. In a course on information structuring, the function of the literature as a body of knowledge and source of learning in a specific content area is not what concerns us. What matters is that we consider the questions: how do authors use the literature to make citations in their own writings? Failure to consider this can result in students producing alienated or incoherent literature reviews, unrelated to their own work, there only to meet formal requirements. So what do authors do with the literature? A main use is in the identification of a field, and the author’s own particular place in it, through referencing the work of other writers in the field. This way bearings are fixed for both writer and reader. Authors also use the literature to pinpoint the gap in the field to which they will attend. A further function is to quote the literature to gain authoritative support for statements or claims that might otherwise be interpreted by a reader as mere

154

ENGL~SHFORS~~C~IC~~SES

uncorroborated opinion. In class, examples are presented and students are invited to consider and discuss what function they can see for the literature citation in the specimen of text presented. Developing a Methodology. Whereas identifying and employing explicit and implicit assumptions and using the literature to make citations can be subsumed under the four-move pattern and are most applicable to the introduction of a paper, the development of the methodology is a more global consideration. It is im~rtant that the methodology employed be the best available to solve the problem identified in the intr~uction. Ex~~rnen~l meth~ologies produce data and results that can be analyzed. These are “clean hands” approaches. On the other hand, model development research may produce an adaptation of a mathematical model or a computer program with no immediate results or application, We call model development the *‘dirty hands” approach. After presenting these two approaches to research, we move to a discussion of abstracts of professional papers; for these encapsulate the whole research pattern and enable students to examine where the writer is discussing his or her methodology. This gets students thinking about what methodology is and does, and puts them in a better position later to think through and present, in a critical way, their own methodologies. Gyap~ica~~ presented I~~y~at~o~. Once students understand the different methodologies available, we move to a discussion of how data can be presented graphically in a scientific paper. This section is based on an assumption to the effect that when an author chooses to present information graphically, the selection and organization of such information is likely to be of particular significance to his or her argument. Using graphics removed from their setting in a published text, students do an exercise in which the task is to reassemble the jumbled graphics into an order that makes sense on the basis of an argument worked out by the student from his or her perusal of the graphics. The task of making explicit something that is only implicit involves a degree of inference and intuition not customa~ly demanded overtly from engineering students. Nevertheless, the students respond well and grasp the concept readily. What they usually discover-and it is the aim of the lesson that they should discover this for themselves-is that graphics organised into different orders posit a variety of different write-ups, some of which may be “better,” that is to say more logical and smoother flowing, easier to execute, than others. Discussing Results. The emphasis in this section is on the functions and characteristics of “discussion” in connection with results. It seems important to help our students distinguish between (a) collection, selection, and presentation; (b) analysis and interpretation; and (c) inference and generalization. Professional texts are brought in, with learners asked to identify what the authors are doing (e.g., are they presenting or analysing or generalizing?) and to think about whether they are doing it at an appropriate stage in the overall logic (e.g., “Is this

Patterns

of Thought in Scientific Writing

155

researcher confusing anafysis with inference?” “ Isn’t this one generalizing before he has fuily interpreted his data?“) Drawing Conclusions and Making Recommendations. The learners are first asked to clarify for themselves what they understand by drawing conclusions and to contrast this with discussing results. Second, they are asked to think about making recommendations and the relationship of the recommendations to the rest of the research. To do this, they look at different examples of conclusions and recommendations from journals and theses. We consider the link that should exist between the assumptions made and the conclusions. In academic articles, the scope of the conclusions is often explicitly constrained by the assumptions, as in this example: The equations are based on many assumptions and simplications as have been highlighted but they have been found to be applicable within the range of data variables obtained in each case. (Heng, 1984)

Students have to realize that the concept of evaluation is inseparable from the process of drawing any conclusions at all or making any recommendations. The experience of this study proved that the village area is a viable unit for an&sing rural economics in order to identify their problems and potentials for development. (Chandrasena, 1981)

By the end of this section, the learners reach a point where they begin to look at examples of conclusions and recommendations critically, that is, they decide for themselves: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

If the information is well/poorly organized; Which information is relevant/irrelevant; Whether the author has evaluated the research or not; Where the recommendations are implicit; and Where the recommendations don’t relate to the body of the research.

Abstract. In “Developing a ~eth~oio~,”

students look at professional abstracts. At this stage, they produce their own abstracts because this provides a crystallisation and an evaluation of what has been done, incorporating intended and, sometimes, unintended outcomes. It also encapsulates the four-move pattern already described. When necessary, we continue to provide students with professional examples such as the following: Abstract (1) A simulation model was set up to study the cutting and harvesting performance of a water hyacinth harvester. (2) A water tank was constructed to simulate a waterway and two carriages were manufactured to simulate harvester boats. (3) A slatter conveyor combined with a pick-up reel was tested for the efficient pickingup of hyacinth. (4) The harvesting machine offered a good capacity and considerable efficiency: however, there were some constraints in the modet. (Kaewprakaisaengkul, 1984)

156

ENGLISHFOR SPECINC PURPOSES

INTRODUCTION (I-Part Structure) 1. 2. 3. 4.

Establish the field Describe previous research Indicate the “gap” in previous research ---+ Announce the present research

ABSTRACT 1. Re-establish the field/gap 2. Refer to the methodology 3. Evaluate the findings/Draw conclusions

4. Define the limitations of the study] Make reco~endations I ) = New info~L!ation gap Figure 3. Patterns of Writing.

In this example there is reference to: 1. The field and the gap; 2. The methodology: 3 The solution; * ( An evaluation; and 4. Reconlmendations. This reference to the recommendations is interesting because it suggests a new information gap. The relationship between the Abstract and the rest of the thesis is exemplified in Figure 3. As is the case in other sections, learners arrive at this pattern themselves by examining texts. Micro-Cohesion

The micro-cohesion part of the course is not a separate section, but is parallel to the macro-cohesion part and uses the same syllabus. The focus is the examination of relationships between ideas and the potential of language for making the relationships explicit. We attempt to develop an awareness that a progression of sentences represents a progression of ideas and that such a progression needs to be consciously organized and linguistically marked. Failure to do this results in ideas gaping vacantly at each other, as in the example given earlier in this paper (Background). A very simple example -one that might stand as an introduction to the whole micro-cohesion section- is to look at these two sentences: it was cold. They opened the window. There are many ways in which these two sentences might be connected, including leaving them as they are, simply juxtaposed. Other possibilities include:

Patterns

It It It It It It It

was was was was was was was

of Thought in Scientific Writing

157

cold. Therefore they opened the window. cold. Nevertheless they opened the window. cold when they opened the window. cold. Then they opened the window. cold. Furthermore, they opened the window. cold. That is to say, they opened the window. cold. In the end, they opened the window.

The point is that the truth values contained in the original two statements survive all these changes intact; what changes is our pragmatic interpretation of their significance-our ideas about such things as the author’s attitude toward the relationship between the statements and the context in which they are made, Even those students who are convinced that English is not terribly important to them because their work is heavily mathematical begin to see the point about discourse organization when confronted with examples like: (1) i, = lo-‘, a, = 3.0 m, u0 = 1.0 m/s, S, = 2.2: 10e3 m/s* and C, = 57.7 mi’a/s. Therefore, s = m: u nwith m = 2.2 : 10m3m(2-n)/s(1-n) and tt = 5. (2) i, = 10w4, a, = 3.0 m, u, = 1.0 m/s, s,, = 2.2: 10-a m/s” and C, = 57.7 mi’ajs. Moreover, s = m : u ” with m = 2.2 : 10e3 m(a-~/s~‘-“) and n = 5. (3) i0 = lOV, o, = 3.0 m, q, = 1.0 m/s, S, = 2.2: 1O-3 m/s* and C, = 57.7 rn”r$. However, s = m: U” with m = 2.2: 10m3m(2--n)/s(1-n)and n = 5. (Example, with (2) as correct relationship, from 23(3), 1985, p. 280)

jmrnaf

o~~ydyauiic Research,

The classroom methodology involves working back from examples of text and a critical evaluation of the way ideas are juxtaposed in the examples (i.e., what is the connection the author is making and is it justified?) toward a general consideration of the different categories within each semantic area and the way these differences might be realised in language. An example of a short text used in class is this one, worked on with students of industrial engineering: In achieving favorable performance it is striking how important industry characteristics can be. The two efficient clusters had the highest industry return and growth levels. The cluster with the highest level of risk (cluster tl) had the highest level of industry risk. (From Bettis & Mahajan, 1985, p. 796)

Now, how do these three statements fit together? Students can generally see that the first sentence seems to be making a general point, while the other two depend on it in some way. Further probing normally gets the response that both are examples of the importance of industry characteristics. What, then, is the relationship between the last two statements? Are they independent of each other, related only by their relationship to the general statement? If there is a relationship, is it one of contrast, of complementation, or what? Whatever the students finally decide, they must then turn again to the text to see if they need to make the relationships more explicit. This sort of analysis, at what is really a very simple level, is enough to enabie students to judge the ciarity of a given piece of writing and to examine their own abstracts in the same way.

158

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFICPURPOSES

Final Comments It will be seen that each of the sections describing the course components reflects, implicitly or explicitly, a number of hypotheses. Our examination of these hypotheses is one means whereby changes occur in the course; the details, therefore, are unlikely to be exactly the same from one course to the next. The hypotheses themselves may be rejected or disproved or modified without invalidating the underlying methodology of the course. The aim is to engage students in critical examination of ideas and the presentation of ideas; “models” presented or developed in class are certainly not intended to be prescriptive or generative, and even as descriptive tools they are always open to student discussion. The course described in this paper is not compulsory for our students, carries no credit grades and involves no formal testing. The fact that students continue to attend, despite the rival pressures of a heavy programme of credit courses, is one indication that we are helping. We do have a formal feedback session at the end of each course and this has always been positive. More important is the quality of student thinking when they consult us on their own writing in subsequent terms, and the reports we have had from faculty on the coherence of the questions asked by students. Through such observations we know that we are beginning to have some effect on the quality of students’ written work. Although we have talked about “the course,” we actually give nine different “information-structuring” courses at AIT, corresponding to the nine academic disciplines taught here; they are different both in regard to the texts chosen and in regard to the student response to those texts (this also being a major factor in the continuing development of the course). It is worth bearing in mind also that our classes contain students with a wide variety of different educational and philosophical backgrounds as well as different linguistic abilities, many having native-speaker-level proficiency. To us, this points to a more universal applicability of a course of this kind than simply to situations paralleling that at AIT. As we have already hinted by our references to the philosophy of science and the classical study of rhetoric in the section on General Theoretical Considerations, we see a wider significance and would specifically make two claims: (a) the course could be given with equal effectiveness to native speaker students and thus tie in with current interest in the “common ground” between English as a Foreign Language and English as Ll (see Williams et al., 1984); and (b) the course cannot exist in isolation from the rest of the student’s academic programme and indeed is an integral part, as is the academic programme, of the educational process and the student’s personal development. (Received September 1986) REFERENCES Berry, T. E. (1971). The most common mistakes in English usage. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bettis, R. A. & Mahajan, V. (1985). Risk/return performance of diversified firms. Management

Science, 31(7), 785 - 799.

British Council. (1980). Readingand thinking in English:Discourse Oxford: Oxford University Press.

in action.

Patterns of Thought in ScientificWriting

159

Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press. Chandrasena, L. A. (1981). An analysis of inter-area transaction and income flow of village economies: A case study from Sri Lanka. Unpublished master’s thesis, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. Cole, P. (Ed.). (1981). Radical pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. de Beaugrande, R., Dressler, W. (1981). Introduction to text linguistics. New York: Longman. Fillmore, C. J. (1981). Pragmatics and the description of discourse. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 143 - 166). New York: Academic Press. Greenall, G. (1980). Code features of examination scripts. In G. Greenall & J. Price (Eds.), Study modes and academic development of overseas students (ELT Documents 109). London: The British Council. Hall, D. (1982). The developmental theory of language learning: Evidencefrom what learners fail to say. Paper presented at the International Congress of Linguistics, Tokyo. Hall, D., Hawkey, R., K., B., & Storer, G. (1986). A two-tier approach to writing. In K. Prapphal, S. Wongbisaj, & K. Maurice (Eds.), Methods and techniques that work (pp. 197 - 217). Bangkok: Thai-TESOL. Halliday, M., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. New York: Longman. Hawkey, R. (1982). An investigation of interrelationships between congitivel affective factors and social factors and language learning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of London. Heng, R. B. W. (1984). Engineering Journal of Singapore, Z(2). Houghton, D. (1980). Writing problems of Iranian students. In G. Greenall &J. Price (Eds.), Study modes and academic development of overseas students (ELT Documents 109). London: The British Council. Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1981). Mental models of meaning. In A. K. Joshi, B. L. Webber, & I. A. Sag (Eds.), Elements of discourse understanding(pp. 106126). New York: Cambridge University Press. Jordan, R. R. (1980). Academic writing course. London: Collins. Kaewprakaisaengkul, C. (1984). Harvesting of water hyacinth. Unpublished master’s thesis, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. Kenny, B. (1985). Pattern of writing orpattern of thought?Paper presented at the International Conference on ESP, Colombo. Lakatos, I. & Musgrave, A. (Eds.). (1970). Criticism and thegrowth of knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Marschak, J. (1974). Information, decision and the scientist. In C. Cherry (Ed.), Pragmatic aspects of human communication (pp. 145 - 178). Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel. Popper, K. R. (1970). Normal science and its dangers. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and thegrowth of knowledge (pp. 51- 58). New York: Cambridge University Press. Schwab, J. J. (1964). Structure of the disciplines: Meanings and significances. In G. W. Ford & L. Pugno (Eds.), The structure of knowledge and the curriculum. Chicago: Rand McNally.

160

ENGLISH FORSPECIFIC PURPOSES

Sperber, D. & Wilson, D. (1981). Irony and the use-mention distinction. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 295 - 318). New York: Academic Press. Spillner, B. (1977). Das interesse der linguistik an rhetorik. In H. Plett (Ed.), Rhetorik: Kritische positionen zum stand (pp. 93 - 108). Munich: Fink. Stenhouse, L. (1975). An introduction to curriculum research and development. London: Heinemann. Swales, J. (1981). Aspects of article introductions (Aston ESP Research Reports No. 1). Astoil: The Language Studies Unit. Swales, J. (1984). Research into the structure of introductions to journal articles and its application to the teaching of academic writing. In R. Williams, J. Swales, & J. Kirkman (Eds.), Common ground, share irlterests in ESP and communication studies (ELT Documents 117). Oxford: Pergamon Press. van Dijk, T. A. (1980). Macrostructures. Hillside, NJ: Erlbaum. van Dijk, T. A. (1985). Strategic discourse comprehension. In T. T. Ballmer (Ed.), Linguistic dynamics (pp. 29- 61). New York: de Gruyter. Williams, R., Swales, J., & Kirkman, J. (Eds.). (1984). Common ground, shared interests in ESP and communication studies (ELT Documents 117). Oxford: Pergamon Press. David Hall has been involved in teaching and materials-writing at the tertiary level for 15 years. After working at the Universities of Tabriz (Iran), Newcastle (UK), Aston (UK), and Malaya (Malaysia), he joined the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in 1983. After a career as an English Language Officer in the British Council, Roger Hawkey is now at AIT pursuing his professional and research interests on course design and language learner factors. After experience as a music teacher and TV director, Brian Kenny obtained an MA in Curriculum Development and went to King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia as video-producer in ESP. Following this, he took a TESOL Diploma in London and now works at AIT. Following a period in educational drama and work with on-arrival migrants in Australia, Graeme Storer is now at AIT, where he concentrates on EST and computer-assisted language learning. DAVIDHALL ROGERHAWKEY BRIANKENNY GRAEMESTORER

English Language Centre Asian Institute of Technology G. P. 0. Box 2754 Bangkok 10501 Thailand