Based on 55 semi-structured in-depth interviews, this book investigates 15 high-tech engineering co-op professionals’ writing experience in the workplace. It shows how the digital age has had a marked impact on the engineers’ methods of communication at work, and how on-the -job writing has affected engineers’ technical competence, shaped their professional identities, challenged their views on Chinese and English writing, and hindered their success in the workplace. The book identifies three aspects of writing practice: engineers’ linguistic and literacy challenges, the reasons behind these challenges, and coping strategies, which suggest that engineers are underprepared and lack necessary support in the workplace. Lastly, the study shows that engineers need to engage in technical literacy through on-the-job writing so that they can fully deal with workplace discourse and socialize with diverse professional groups. Since the sample group interviewed in this book is engineers who studied at universities in the United States and have a foot in the world of school and work as well as knowledge of both Eastern and Western cultures, the book appeals to teachers, students, engineers and scientists who are interested in scientific and technological writing. It is also valuable for educators who prepare scientists, engineers, and technical communicators for professional roles, as well as for communication practitioners who work with engineers. /div

This scholarly research Handbook aggregates the broad-ranging, interdisciplinary, multidimensional strands of writing research from scholars worldwide and brings them together into a common intellectual space. This is the first such international compilation. Now in its second edition, the Handbook inaugurates a wide scope of international research advancement, with attention to writing at all levels of schooling and in all life situations. It provides advanced surveys of scholarship on the histories of world and child writing and literacy; interconnections between writing, reading, and speech; digital writing; writing in communities; writing in the sciences and engineering; writing instruction and assessment; and writing and disability. A section on international measures for assessment of writing is a new addition to this compendium of research. This Handbook serves as a comprehensive resource for scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in writing studies and rhetoric, composition, creative expression, education, and literacy studies.

As culture and society has become more digitalized, especially when computer science and digital technologies have entered a new era in the twenty-first century, translation studies began to utilize a wide range of tools to enhance its reading of texts and contexts, without which translation both as a practice and as a theorization could barely persist. It has become more apparent that two extreme poles between macro and micro visions have formed the diversified terrains of translation studies. On the one hand, technologies like NLP, topic modeling, network analysis and data visualization make distant reading become possible, thus allowing us to have a paradigmatic view of how human’s ideas, beliefs, values, knowledge and even emotions have spread in some patterns across cultural, geographical and language divides in world history. On the other hand, corpus methods, such as the use of keywords, collocates and concordance lines changed the way by which texts were closely read from linear to vertical. With microscope like corpus tools, we could go deeper into the texture for perception of nuanced meaning. While considering a fact that translation is seldom mono modal in conveying meaning, we have to reconceptualize context as a multimodal environment where audio, visual and other resources interact to convey and make meaning. With regard to the fast development of digital technology, translation studies take an active role in gaining an enhanced capability in promoting transformation. Complexity has been favored in terms of theoretical framework and methodology. New questions are asked; old ones revisited with novel tools; but more areas wait to be cultivated and more questions to be approached by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. We could ask if digital technologies would bring new innovation to study of translation history, a heavily-walled land for traditional humanists who tend to repeat “so-what” to question the less significance of data-driven studies. The idea of high-quality machine translation has become so realistic in today’s market that translation educators have to face the shock wave it brought to translation learners and practitioners and rethink the relation between human translators and algorithms. Machine-translation-assisted communication could help remove boundaries for better communication; but at the same time, it also creates conflicts and leads to confrontation. Thus understood, it is imperative to give a concerned attention to digital translation studies, that is, to study translation by resorting to and drawing on the digital technologies. This Research Topic is intended to promote current directions and new developments in cross-disciplinary critical discourse research. We welcome papers which, from a critical-analytical perspective, deal with contemporary social, scientific, political, economic, or professional discourses and genres. Papers addressing the highlighted topics are especially welcome. In giving weight to these topics, we wish to call to attention some of the most pressing problems currently facing the world.

Provides comprehensive, in-depth coverage of all issues related to knowledge management, including conceptual, methodological, technical, and managerial issues. Presents the opportunities, future challenges, and emerging trends related to this subject.

This book presents the generative rules for formal written communication, in an engineering context, through the lens of mathematics. Aimed at engineering students headed for careers in industry and professionals needing a “just in time” writing resource, this pragmatic text covers all that engineers need to become successful workplace writers, and leaves out all pedagogical piffle they do not. Organized into three levels of skill-specific instruction, A Math-Based Writing System for Engineers: Sentence Algebra & Document Algorithms guides readers through the process of building accurate, precise sentences to structuring efficient, effective reports. The book’s indexed design provides convenient access for both selective and comprehensive readers, and is ideal for university students; professionals seeking a thorough, “left -brained” treatment of English grammar and “go to” document structures; and ESL engineers at all levels.

"Immigrant Chinese women scientists and engineers who study and work in the United States constitute a rapidly growing yet understudied group. These women’s lived experiences and reflections can tell us a great deal about the current state of immigrant women scientists in the United States, how universities can help these women succeed, and about China’s emergence as a global scientific and technological superpower. Chinese Dreams American Dreams is the first ethnographic study to document migrating Chinese-born women scientists’ and engineers’ educational experiences and careers in the U.S. It historically situates these women in current political, economic, and cultural contexts and examines the successful strategies they employ to survive discrimination, advance careers, establish networks, and promote transnational research collaborations during their educational and career journeys in the U.S. This study makes a valuable text for students, researchers, and policy makers in higher education, women’s studies, science and engineering studies, as well as for faculty who teach future scientists and engineers. It also introduces new multicultural, intersectional, and feminist perspectives on these crucial issues of gender, ethnicity, nationality, and class, as they impact women’s professional lives."

Knowledge Management has evolved into one of the most important streams of management research, affecting organizations of all types at many different levels. The Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management, Second Edition provides a compendium of terms, definitions and explanations of concepts, processes and acronyms addressing the challenges of knowledge management. This two-volume collection covers all aspects of this critical discipline, which range from knowledge identification and representation, to the impact of Knowledge Management Systems on organizational culture, to the significant integration and cost issues being faced by Human Resources, MIS/IT, and production departments.

This book explores the experiences of men and women who train to teach ESL as a second career. Drawing from in-depth interviews and observations of 30 students (aged 45 to 73) in a TESOL graduate program, this book provides portraits of these individuals as they develop as teachers. It describes the processes they go through to launch their teaching careers, the successes and challenges they face, and the evolving significance of their work in their overall life goals and achievements. A welcome addition to the growing literature on teacher development, this book will be an important resource for teacher trainers and anyone working in TESOL.