Work in progress - the Five Paragraph Essay in Junior/Senior Electrical Engineering courses

To strengthen the writing of junior and senior electrical and computer engineering students, we are adding several writing assignments based upon the five paragraph essay format to our junior and senior courses. The five paragraph essay format, almost universally taught in middle and high schools, requires the student to clearly and concisely analyze and communicate a single idea, beginning with a single paragraph that states the overall point, three supporting paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. During the Spring 2008 semester, these essays will be used in electromagnetic field theory, engineering practice, and capstone design project courses. In each course, the students will be asked to describe concept or argue why a specific design choice must be made without presenting just a mathematical calculation. The paper will include a discussion of the format, and graphic organizers used to help students write the essays, as well as the rubric used for grading the essay. Since a sizable fraction of our students are non-native speakers of English our evaluation on their performance will be compared to the performance of students writing these essays in English as a second language courses as reported in education literature.