Universidad de Concepcin

Facultad de Ingeniera
Depto. Ingeniera Civil Metalrgica

A TECHNICAL ENGLISH COURSE

IN THE AREA OF METALLURGY
Prof. Miguel A. Alarcn
2015

READING
COMPREHENSION

GENERAL OBJECTIVES:
1.- In general, the course focuses on
reinforcing already learnt reading
skills in a foreign language.
But this time, the main focus will be
on reading in the area of metallurgy.

2.- Also, it helps students:

a) improve the students mastery of
grammatical structures, and
b) increase the technical vocabulary of
their specific field.

The program includes:

1. Activities to help students develop their
reading skills in a meaningful rather than in a
mechanical way, enabling them to
successfully understand other academic texts .
2. Activities designed to teach grammar
through content.

3. Activities designed to take students

through a step-by-step process to writing
about known topics and then about subjects
related to their future current coursework

4. Activities designed to improve

students pronunciation putting
emphasis on the way technical terms are
pronounced.

Developing
reading skills:

STRATEGIES:
- Recognizing main ideas
- Identifying general and specific statements
- Separating fact from opinion
- Recognizing contrasting ideas
- Recognizing supporting ideas
- Finding support for main ideas
- Recognizing intra- and inter-text ideas
- Scanning for facts
- Recognizing inferences and conclusions

- Inferring the authors purpose

- Recognizing specific information
- Identifying organizational clues
- Outlining as you read
- Anticipating the contents
- Predicting the action
- Guessing word meaning from context
- Finding synonyms
- Using context to explain terms

Grammar focus

1. Verb phrase
- Recognizing verb tenses
- Manipulating verb tenses

2. Noun phrase
- Identifying noun modifiers
- Creating noun phrases

3. Function words
- Identifying structural words
- Identifying structural phrases

PRONUNCIATION

ACTIVITIES:

- listening discrimination
- distiguishing similar
sounds
- articulatory description of
sounds
- reading aloud
- sentence intonation

EVALUATION
It will mainly measure the
following:
-

reading comprehension level

pronunciation skills
writing skills
technical terms

ASSESSING STUDENTS
LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE
WILL BE DONE USING
DIFFERENT TYPES OF TESTS:

- individual or group tests

(10%)
- pronunciation evaluation
(5%)
- written tests on technical
terms (10%)
- a main test (35%)

NOTE:
STUDENTS SHOULD
ATTEND CLASSES IN A
PERCENTAGE NO
LOWER THAN 80%.

ANY QUESTION OR
COMMENT WITH RESPECT
TO THIS
INTRODUCTORY NOTES TO
THE COURSE?

SOME ADVICE ON
LEARNING A
FOREIGN
LANGUAGE

1. Use the language! Take advantage of every

opportunity to speak, hear, and read the language;
watch TV, listen to radio and music, talk with English
speakers, even talk to yourself and think in English.
You are learning a skill and you need to practice it.
Sometimes that means goofing, but you learn through
your mistakes, and it is better to make them in practice
than on tests. Remember that tests examine not only
what you know, but how well you know it and can put it
to use.

2. Develop good study habits! Study with full

concentration, but for brief periods. Put tricky points
or vocabulary on cards to carry with you and take
advantage of idle moments in your day to practice
English.

3. Avoid translation! Although it may seem safer to

translate, it becomes a trap: you develop no real skill in
English, and it doubles your processing time (which
becomes a problem on timed tests). Try to speak, hear,
read, and write English without resort to Spanish
and it will seem increasingly natural (and quicker) for
you.

4. Keep up with vocabulary. There is a lot of it; after

all, one needs thousands of words to communicate.
There are many tricks and memory aids (e.g.
vocabulary cards); the important things are (1) to
relate (associate) the new to the old, (2) to use new
words (e.g. by making sentences with them that
takes them out of a book and registers them in your
own brain), and (3) to review previous vocabulary
constantly, especially words you had trouble with.

5. Attendance is vital: when you are absent, you have

missed the opportunity to develop skills that will be
tested on exams.

6. Ask questions whenever you have one! Never fear to

ask for help; often the same thing that is puzzling you
is confusing others too, and it is better to ask about
little problems before they snowball into big ones. For
help, ask the teacher or the teaching assistants (that is
why we are here).

7. If you have a learning disability that affects your

performance in this class and requires special attention
such as additional time for tests, you must consult with
your teacher privately, presenting professional
documentation and recommendations for the situation,
and arrange special accommodations with him well
before any test that is affected.

8. During class, we do a lot of group-work

and pair-work to practice intercommunication. Outside class-room, you
may use tutors, friends, online
translators, spell/grammar checkers, and
other resources in order to practice your
English to be better prepared for classwork.

9. DO YOUR OWN WORK ! Any work

handed in for evaluation, including
homeworks, must be your own individual
work, and any detected collaboration or
other unauthorized assistance will be
regarded as cheating.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR

ATTENTION, AND I WISH
YOU ALL GOOD LUCK!!