GE2410 English for Engineering – Course Introduction
This page contains an outline of the course intended learning outcomes (CILOs) of GE2410, along with some information on its implementation, activieties, assessment, methodology, etc. The basic idea is that most learning activities and assessment revolve around one common theme in the form of a project that links the activities together. The topics for this project will be distributed in the first session, where you will also form groups that jointly develop the project, with each team member being assigned responsibilities for investigating and reporting on one or more sub-topics.
Reading, Referencing & Summarising Skills (2 wks; weight. 1.5)
Aim: Identify various reading skills and apply them in reading, summarising and referencing literature on engineering and other related disciplines.
Associated activities:
- Developing a basic understanding of academic writing practice and such notions such as appropriate citing & referencing in order to avoid plagiarism. This includes learning about and practising different referencing types and methods.
- Developing general library and online research skills, with one or two students working on a particular topic, so that ideas can be exchanged among them and they can bring them into the group discussions (see CILO 3 below) later.
- Exploring definitions and summarising/paraphrasing techniques, and practising them in order to develop associated skills.
Background materials: Topics for reading and summarising activities are – as far as possible – provided by the parent departments to provide realistic scenarios.
Technical Presentation Skills (2 wks; weight. 1.5)
Aim: Identify various skills of technical presentation and apply them in conducting short technical presentations, based on information extracted from readings.
Associated activities:
- Students are taught & practise the basic notions behind and elements of creating PowerPoint presentations, including presentation techniques, elements of structuring, sensible layouting, and appropriate use of graphics & animation features.
- Each student applies the reading techniques learnt earlier to working with technical texts, choosing and evaluating suitable sources critically, selecting the most appropriate ones, and identifying the main points to be incorporated into a presentation.
Assessment will take the form of a 5-10 minute presentation on one of the sub-topics of the project that also demonstrates an appropriate use of the acquired referencing skills by including both in-text references and a list of end-text references.
Technical Discussion Skills (4 wks; weight. 3)
Aim: Identify technical discussion skills and apply these in planning and conducting simulated technical discussions characteristic of those that may go on in engineering firms.
Associated activities:
- Students work in groups to identify technical discussion skills through consciousness-raising activities.
- They then apply these skills in planning and conducting a simulated technical team discussion according to the roles assigned to them and drawing on the materials produced for the earlier presentations.
- Planning and discussion will include the design of Gantt charts in order to simulate the planning of a project centred around the given topics.
For assessment of the acquired skills, students will be evaluated on their group participation, as well as a short summary of the project to be submitted individually. This summary should also include the Gantt chart and a suitable discussion thereof.
Understanding & Writing Reports (3 wks; weight. 2)
Aim: Identify and compare the structures and language characteristics of various types of reports, focussing mainly on incident reports, and applying this knowledge in writing one of the latter.
Associated activities:
- Through various corpus-based guided activities and discussions (see an example here), students identify the structure and language characteristics of a number of different types of reports.
- One of the main points of emphasis here will also be to develop an understanding of the similarities and differences between different reports, and how these relate to their individual purposes or stages of a project.
- Students also apply the knowledge gained in this way in producing a standard written incident report.
Assessment: Each student produces an incident report by applying the knowledge gained in the related TLAs. The report will be assessed in terms of its content, structure, coherence and language use.
Understanding & Writing Business Correspondence (2 wks; weight. 1)
Aim: Identify the text structures and language features characteristic of business correspondence, and apply them in producing a business letter.
Associated activities:
- Students will work alone or in groups to identify the text structures and language features characteristic of business correspondence (emails and letters) typical of a technical setting through inquiry and corpus-based self-discovery.
- They then apply these in producing simulated business correspondence on technical matters.
Assessment: Students will produce a business letter, based on the results of the previous activities, and by applying the textual features learnt.
Participation in TLAs (ongoing; weight. 1)
Students need to participate actively in all TLAs. Their attendance, punctuality, and participation in TLAs, using English, are assessed.