his brief experience in corporate culture prior to his master’s degree, John felt that he would be happier starting his own company “where it’s more free, and I have associates in that company who agree with what I think” (September 4, 2002). During the first four months of my study, however, John modified these long-term goals. At the end of WCGS, and after submitting applications to five doctoral programs in bioMEMS, John began leaning more toward an academic career, feeling that it would allow him more time for family and other interests.
In our first interview, John told me that he enjoyed writing and that, from elementary school on, it had come fairly naturally to him:
A lot of my friends suffered through writing, like don’t know what to write, but- I don’t know about my form or anything, but usually I just [gestures a whirlwind] go through it, and after recomposing what I wrote, pretty satisfied with what I wrote. (September 4, 2002)
Despite his relative confidence in his writing, John felt that he was somewhat limited to only one “tone of voice,” making it difficult to change the style of his writing for different contexts or genres. John, like Paul, felt that his writing style was rooted in his very early writing experiences:
I think it was the people who influenced my writing, who developed my style of writing. Because it was developed when I was young, and it’s more due to my reading and the guidance of other people, so I think it was a lot of the English teachers from first through fourth or fifth grade, because they did a lot of creative writing classes, so I think it’s different how you learn writing. I mean, your style differs. (May 3, 2003)
While he felt that his early English teachers had influenced his writing in general, John believed that his formal writing had also been influenced by his father, who had taught him how to think like a scientist from very early on.
As a native speaker of both English and Korean, John experienced many differences when writing in the two languages. He felt he was able to write faster in English, but found it difficult to “switch modes” when writing in one language and having a thought in another language. When he first learned to write in Korean—after having already become literate in English—it was initially awkward for him. Over time, however, John felt that “in Korean it started following my English style” (May 3, 2003). John explained that now it was easier for him to write about something in the language through which he had learned the content. He thus tended to use Korean more often for expressing personal experiences, but English for engineering-related work. Because he had chosen the non-thesis track in his master’s program, John did not have a close advisor and did not conduct any independent research outside of his disciplinary courses. All of his writing during my study was tied either to coursework or to his applications for doctoral study.
WCGS was John’s first writing class in English (beyond his early school years), though he had had some writing instruction in Korean. Despite his very strong English language skills, John was required to take the course because of his score on the Test of Writing English (TWE). Before enrolling in WCGS, John had hoped to improve his English grammar through the course; however, during the summer before WCGS, he reviewed grammar on his own. When WCGS began in the fall, John’s new goal was to link the assignments to the writing he would already be doing during the semester, such as his graduate school applications. He also told me that, while he was fairly comfortable with writing in English already, “there will probably be some topics that I’m not familiar with” (September 4, 2002). Despite his high level of English proficiency—much higher than most of the other course participants—John approached the course requirement positively and with clear goals.
Chatri
Chatri, a native of Thailand and in his early 30s, showed an enthusiasm for and positive attitude toward work that seemed to carry over into much that he did. With his straight hair falling in front of his glasses, Chatri spoke quickly and excitedly in our meetings, often laughing as he disparaged his writing and research. As a participant in my study, he eagerly provided me with a great deal of his written work, completed both before and during the time of my research.
A second-year doctoral student in ECE, Chatri was working toward a degree in computer engineering. He had begun studying computer engineering during his master’s program in Thailand, though he was unable to pinpoint any particular influences that led him to the field. After completing his master’s degree, Chatri worked for four years as a research assistant at a research center in Thailand. He described this work as having different goals than the academic work he was currently involved in:
At here, the research is about the academic research. I mean, academic research is we don’t want our research to be the product, to be the patent. But the job that I worked in Thailand, in that research, we want the product, we want something that people can use, people can see. Not the paper. (September 13, 2002)
In our first meeting, Chatri was beginning his fourth semester of doctoral work. At that time, he joked about not being able to pass his qualifier exam the first time he had taken it, and he was studying to re-take the exam in a few months. As a condition of his scholarship for graduate study, Chatri was required to return to Thailand as a professor after completing his doctoral degree.
At Midwest University, Chatri worked in a lab with a group of nine others, including a professor, two postdoctoral researchers, and several other graduate students. In the year before my study, Chatri worked on an interdisciplinary project related to American Sign Language (ASL), in which his role was to develop computer vision for ASL. When the project’s funding was not renewed, Chatri joined the others in his lab working on a project funded by a car manufacturing company. Chatri’s work in this project focused specifically on the use of robot vision in assembly lines. As an RA, Chatri was required to submit monthly reports to the project supervisor, a postdoctoral student in his lab. Reports from each research team member were then integrated into a monthly report by the project supervisor and sent to the sponsor. During the fifth month of my study, Chatri began looking for a dissertation topic in his lab work. Much of his time during his fifth semester was spent reading research reports and looking for possible approaches to apply to the research problem that he was working on.
Prior to enrolling in WCGS, Chatri had taken only one writing course—an academic writing course that was a component of an English intensive course taken just before coming to the U.S. In this course, he had learned to make rather detailed outlines before writing a complete draft, and he utilized this writing process for several of the writing tasks he engaged in during my study, both in and out of the WCGS classroom. Chatri had also had many professional writing experiences as part of his work in Thailand, co-authoring three papers in English and two in Thai. As he wrote in his first writing assignment for WCGS:
I started to use writing in the real world when I worked as a research assistant in a national research center in Thailand. I had to write electronic mail to contact many foreigners. I also wrote three publications in English submitted to international conferences. At that time, I realized that how important of English for my job. At the same time, I also realized how weak my English skill were especially the writing that I felt uncomfortably when I wrote the publication. (Writer’s Autobiography, September 2002)
Perhaps because he had had experience writing professional papers in his native language, Chatri was able to speak quite specifically about differences that he experienced. Though Thai was his first language, he explained that “somehow I think it’s more difficult to write in Thai than in English, because sometimes in English, there is only one word or one sentence to explain that idea. But in Thai, there are many” (September 13, 2002). He also felt that Thai tended to be more informal than English. He said he found it easier to write more formally in English, because “you can use another vocabulary to make it more formal” (September 13, 2002).
At the start of the study, he described grammar as posing the most difficulty for him when writing. He felt that he tended to use simple sentences and had
