Styling your thesis in the STEM sciences: Negotiating conventions in multilingual writing groups

The so-called style of scientific texts can encompass aspects as different as word choice, grammatical complexity, how to give references or how to mark a text as belonging to a particular genre. While scientific writers are, to varying degrees, free to choose how to style their texts, many writer’s handbooks for students and style sheets from university teachers prescribe strict rules. Students of the STEM sciences do not have much opportunity to learn about or navigate these style conventions until they start writing their thesis, and thus they tend to prefer clear, normative instructions over non-directive guidance through a system of conventions of varying degrees of rigidity. In addition, their writing processes involve more than one language, as they may use at least both English and German (or another language) in their reading, writing, note-taking and conversations about their thesis – a fact which many are wary of and therefore do not use to their advantage. The task of writing their thesis is an enormous challenge for many of these students. Writing centers can support them not only through one-to-one peer tutoring with a process-oriented approach, fostering their self-efficacy as well as writing strategies. We see another opportunity in writing groups, as these have considerable potential to provide a space for reflections on scientific style – quite apart from reflections on writing strategies or a productive atmosphere for writing flow, both well-documented in the literature. We will present the new interdisciplinary and multilingual writing groups for students of the STEM sciences at TU Darmstadt who are writing their bachelor or master thesis (set to begin in the fall of 2022), focusing on how the groups can be a platform for style discussions and how they can empower students to make stylistic choices