Genre Analysis: Undergraduate Engineering Laboratory Report (UELR)

Recent developments in the field of genre analysis have led to a renewed interest in not only academic writing across disciplines but also academic writing as professional practice. The undergraduate engineering laboratory report (UELR) represents an example of such a genre. However, despite the fact that the laboratory report is to play a key role in the academic work of many engineering, so far little attention has been paid to the UELR genre. This study discusses textual situation and linguistically recurring features of the UELR using 99 authentic UELR exemplars within British Higher Education (HE). Overall results indicate that many UELRs have similar conventional features. For example the textual situations were very similar since the UELRs are formal standardized assessments produced during Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) degree courses. Their structure, more specifically linguistic moves and steps in the reports, seem to have a certain pattern. However some recurring non-linguistic features such as scientific symbols and units of measurement were often very specific depending on their particular degree titles. It is apparent from these results that undergraduate engineering students deal with similar topics and write similar reports in their earlier years but they become discipline specific progressively as they upgrade their studies.