Pedagogizing International Students' Technical Knowledge Consumption

Abstract

Although most Canadian university and college professors assume that international testing credentials such as IELTS, TOEFL, and CELPIP are suitable yardsticks to measure international students' language skills, the study presented in this chapter that adopted critical discourse analysis of international students' technical assignments suggests otherwise. Technical communication is different from cultural English, whereby the former measures students' technical skills in communicating highly scientific materials and cultural English may be used for interpersonal skills. The study used secondary data for data analysis and employed Bernstein's theoretical lens of elaborated code and restricted code. Findings revealed that 21st-century knowledge production, distribution, and its adequate reproduction are in the hands of well-rounded knowledge consumers in knowledge societies, and if the knowledge consumers are not well cognizant of their instrumental role in the knowledge economy owing to weak English language constructions, social inequalities will increase exponentially.