The literature review as classroom genre for teaching ESL postgraduate engineers critical analysis and writing skills

ESL postgraduate engineering students at the University of Melbourne enrol in a discipline specific EAP (English for Academic Purposes) program intended to develop their linguistic and academic skills for successful postgraduate study (Melles, 2002). While simultaneously attending to language issues in writing, a key concept of the curriculum is the development among students of critical analysis abilities (Melles, 2003). A series of writing and speaking tasks, including a three thousand word literature review, are used to progressively develop such skills and provide an appropriate assessment framework. The literature review, in the course is used as a 'classroom genre' (Johns, 1995) to initiate students into the academic culture and discourses. In this paper, I define the nature of critical analysis in the program, features of the literature review in the curriculum, and student responses to this framework. I conclude with a discussion on the relevance of applied linguistic contributions to academic literacy in engineering.