Developing disciplinary discourse in a first- year engineering course: The DELNA initiative

First-year students in higher education settings tend to face ongoing challenges with variations in discursive practices and genres within their discipline. Within this context, a Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA) was administered to first-year engineering students to assess the strengths and needs of their ability to navigate academic language. The purpose of this paper is to report on our initiative to support student’s development of academic literacy, specifically their disciplinary language proficiency through the implementation of pedagogical support activities.   

required to take advantage of instructional support. The screening is administered via computer, and results are immediately available: Students receive notification of their results and information on the appropriate resources available to them within 48 hours. The results classify students into three bands: • Band 1 indicates that a student will require additional academic language support • Band 2 indicates that a student has a good foundation but will likely require some level of support • Band 3 indicates that the student has a solid foundation and is prepared to handle academic work As seen in Table 1, 30% of the 2018 cohort placed into Bands 1 and 2. There was a substantial increase in the number of students in Bands 1 and 2 in 2019, and 2020 saw 44% of the class place into Bands 1 and 2, the highest we have encountered in comparison to previous years. The diagnostic, which follows the screening, offers a fine-grained analysis of language abilities that need development. "It appears to identify clusters of students with particular needs, including some who need support with lexico-grammatical issues and word choice while others need support with the more complex elements of argumentation, concision, and inferencing" (Kinnear et. al., 2016 p.16). In order to keep it domain-specific, the first individual assignment in the aforementioned engineering design course was employed as the diagnostic and an analytic rubric exclusively designed with academic language dimensions was used to assess the results of Band 1 and 2 students. Fox and Artemeva (2017) found that using criteria specific to engineering "increased the usefulness and meaningfulness of feedback from the diagnosis in moving toward individual academic support" (p.166).

Rationale for providing academic and professional language support
By using the DELNA to assess first-year engineering student's academic language proficiency, our goal is to support them in this foundational year and enhance their overall success in the program.
The individual diagnostic revealed discrete elements of linguistic competence that "demand different instructional materials and strategies" needed for students to succeed (Kinnear et. al., 2016 p.5). In order to positively impact their university experience, Band 1 students require consistent academic language support. We recognized that some students may not require as much support in interpreting and comprehending the assignments or utilizing their professional language with confidence due to having more linguistic resources at their immediate disposal. Their cognitive load may not need to be dedicated to understanding the language and the concepts but instead focus more on using the language to make sense of and develop the concepts. Consequently, more focused pedagogical supports would assist students with learning the pragmatics of academic and professional language use, thereby affording them opportunities to use the language to understand and use engineering concepts. The study by Kinnear et. al., (2016) found that contrary to popular belief, lexico-grammatical issues were not the only deterrent to student success in the program. They recommend "more specific interventions and support activities, ideally, in collaboration with course instructors" (p.15), which is what we attempted to do in our program.

Workshops as a form of pedagogical support
To address the academic language needs of first-year engineering students placed in Bands 1 and 2, a course-based support was initiated in the form of workshops. The workshops were designed to be assignment-specific and skill-based and were framed from a "visible pedagogy" approach in which "what is to be learned and assessed is made clear to the students" (Hyland, 2003 p.26). These workshops were held outside of the scheduled class times and presented to students as a resource through email. Over the years, the one-hour workshops have evolved to reflect changes in the assignments and the needs of students.

Evaluation of outcomes
Early intervention in first-year programs has been shown to improve overall academic success (Read & Randow, 2013), and by providing pedagogical support to first-year engineering students who placed into DELNA Bands 1 and 2, we have been able to intervene in a timely manner to assist the development of students' skills in disciplinary discourse. Through sharing the responsibility to address their academic and professional language needs, the students will hopefully develop the confidence to participate more successfully in their programs. However, because participation in support activities is not mandatory and engineering undergraduates are constrained by busy schedules, some students will miss out on these post-diagnostic supports. While personal motivation is a key factor in taking that first step to access resources, some pressure might be needed (Read & Randow, 2013), which could come in the form of mandating participation in followup activities and working consistently with DEs to improve proficiency.
One of our future goals is to increase genre instruction in the first-year engineering design course. Scale and organizational complexity have created some roadblocks in an efficient implementation of some of our interventions, however as the structure of the course continues to evolve, there has been a more deliberate effort to collaborate with and integrate the Discourse Experts. Another goal is to roll out the DELNA screening in the summer instead of the fall to facilitate the logistics of team formation in the first-year design course. This will allow us to better support students who place into Bands 1 and 2 by organizing resources within the course well in advance. Currently, support workshops modelled on those offered in the first year are being introduced into second-and third-year engineering courses with the aim of developing students' understanding of the nuances of their professional language. Our next step is to further integrate other stakeholders, such as librarians and the Engineering Career Centre, in the process of recognizing the role of the DELNA assessment and document its positive impact on enhancing the academic and professional language needs of engineering students.