A situational analysis of graduate student coursework writing in two applied sciences disciplines

Abstract Research on graduate student writing (GSW) has typically focused on theses and dissertations, with less attention paid to coursework assignments (e.g., recounts, exercises, etc.), which are prioritized by students and professors as assessments and are graduate students’ first ventures into disciplinary writing. This study details the situational exploration of a corpus of academic writing assignments from graduate students in two applied sciences disciplines (applied linguistics and engineering) at a major Midwestern American university. The Corpus of Graduate Student Papers (CorGrad) represents 12 sub-registers, over 1,000 texts, and 2 million words. The study highlights key contextual features of the course papers, noting the influence of both textual purpose and discipline. Findings highlight the significance to disciplinary writing research and representativeness of student writing corpora. Knowledge of the register-specific patterns of GSW can help to refine curricula, programmatic design, and graduate student support during the pre-thesis/dissertation phase of their matriculation.