Writing like a builder: Acquiring a professional genre in a pedagogical setting

Vocational students' writing has received little scholarly attention. This article investigates a key written genre produced by carpentry trainees: the Builders' Diary. This is a professional genre that has been adapted for pedagogical purposes. Both quantitative corpus methods and qualitative methods (interviews and textual analysis) were employed. Our corpus included Builders' Diaries written by students during an initial on-campus year, and ones written during employment in later years. A range of grammatical features was investigated including use of: personal pronouns, passives, imperatives/bare infinitives and obligation modals. Findings indicate a developmental trend from personal narrative writing in the first year reflecting how trainees' identify as carpenters and situate themselves in the profession, to concise impersonal writing in later years as trainees mature into carpentry professionals.