The goal of the English program at the School of Engineering and Environment is to provide you with the language skills to help you become and remain competitive.
In every country and culture, English is acknowledged as being the leading language of science and technology. As an engineer, your ability to communicate successfully in English can help you synthesize the latest research, connect with colleagues, and advance your engineering career.
Program
Our English program is designed with Engineers’ communication needs in mind. The program focusses on the key communication skills that engineers need to succeed: listening, speaking, reading and writing. During our program, students learn technical language and terminology and learn how to implement this by describing various processes, products, problems and solutions.
Goal
Our goal is to promote collaboration within teams, develop writing skills to enable students to share research results and new ideas with colleagues, as well as to strengthen their presentation and oral communication skills and build confidence.
Modules
Our English modules are divided into Core modules (Den1, Den2, Ten1, Ten2) and Elective modules:
The core modules develop the communication skills and specialist English language knowledge of engineering professionals, enabling them to communicate more confidently and effectively. The courses are based on levels B1-B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CERF).
Students must reach a score of at least 40 points to enter the English program. Students who do not reach this level must complete a Bridging Course.
The elective modules, based on CEFR levels B2-C2, are designed to improve the communication skills and specialist language knowledge of engineers, enabling them to work more confidently and effectively. They are also designed to give students a strong footing in a broader spectrum of multi-disciplinary subjects in English, bridging Engineering, Business and the Arts.
Develop communicative language skills as well as extend the students' lexical and grammatical knowledge required to enter ecpe2; Cambridge Proficiency course 2.
Develop communicative language skills as well as extend the students' lexical and grammatical knowledge required to enter ecae2; Cambridge Advanced course 2.
Using topical news articles, podcasts and video clips students will activate and develop language skills through reading, listening, discussion and vocab development.
Activate English through reading and discussion of early English science fiction short stories (1929-1964). Present stories within the anthology in addition to vocabulary activation.
Increase language accuracy, fluency and clarity through a review of the English tense system. Focus on improving skills in additional areas such as verb patterns, prepositions, relative clauses, etc.
Use the fundamentals of film studies, such as the history of film, the analysis and theory of film, and the study of film genres, to improve students' English skills through listening, reading, writing, and discussion.
The module From Page to Podcast gives students the opportunity to not only learn about news media but also gain experience writing articles and recording podcasts.
TED Talks feature remarkable people communicating passionately and persuasively. Explore these life-changing stories and develop a deeper understanding of our world.
Documentaries exploring a wide range of themes are used as a springboard to initiate and develop discussions. This elective course focus-es on speaking skills and extending vocabulary knowledge enabling more effective communication with confidence.
How Stuff Workswill help students transform their instructional ideas into engaging online content, which is becoming a must-have skill in our digitized and globalized world. Not only will students explore the essentials of describing a process in writing, but transforming that process to video by using a large toolkit for effective meaning-making:linguistic, visual, aural, and kinesthetic.The module will thus enable students to write for a digital audience and use that to compose an effective instructional video.
The module Read critically,Think Critically gives students the opportunity to not only learn about how to approach reading scientific texts, but also to delve deeper into subject matters of their own and related disciplines in English, such as self-driving cars or renewable energies.
Placement test
Students entering the college are required to do an online placement test, the results of which are used to place them either in the core or elective modules and are required to complete a total of 8 credits (4 courses) in English during the course of their studies.
