Hello, welcome to the first lecture for Technical English for Engineers. This is your introduction.

I am your faculty here, Aysha Iqbal Viswamohan. I work in the department of Humanity and social

sciences. So, this course is a 20-hour course where you will learn the four skills of L

S R W.

L S R W that is listening, speaking, reading and writing. Along with plenty of grammar

and vocabulary; as the title of the course suggest, this is a course essentially meant

for those studying or working in the area of science and technology. Let me reiterate

here, this is an under graduate course. So, it is not really meant for those who are pursuing,

let us say PhD's in English this is not a theoretical course. The course gives you sort

of an entry point into a learning the new answers of communications. Let me also tell

you this is not a soft skills course. The course is what it exactly what it appears

here, it is going to focus on the 4 communicative skills and the course is basically gear towards

in proving, the communicative skills of those working and is studying in the area of science

and technology. Having said that, those who want to improve

their overall communication skills may also find it useful I am sure. People who are not

necessarily teaching or working in the area science and technology in those kinds of domain,

they may also find it useful because the course will definitely tell you something about the

essentials of the skills along with grammar. What are the common pitfalls areas of pitfalls

and also plenty of vocabulary? Those of you who are watching this lecture if you are interested

in this kind of area, and if you are interested in this domain then the course is definitely

meant for you. Let me give you a very brief overview of the

course contents. Now, the course content include listening, that is your L. Now you will be

given plenty of listening exercises, listening exercises include description of people, anecdotes,

short stories and processes. You will be exposed to listening for gist, listening for details

and inferring meaning from contexts. It is important that while listening to the text

that I will be reading out and most of these texts please note would be in the area of

science and technology. Even the short stories that I am going to discuss or do as part of

your activities they too are based on science and technology. This is what the course is

all about. So, please make no mistakes about the content of the course and I would suggest

that while listening it is important that you make notes and also listen for keywords.

Now, this is a short term course 20 hours only. So, I may not be able to repeat it that

make notes listen for the keywords. So, remember this is not just an introductory class for

you. Please take it as some of the useful tips that are going to be of great advantage,

great benefit as you do the exercises. Remember, always to make notes, take down notes and

certain keywords while listening to exercises and passages.

Now moving on to Speaking, you will be given tips on making formal presentations. Of course,

this being an online course I cannot actually make you practice in a speaking, but I will

always give you certain topics that you can discuss between friends. If you are doing

this course along with a group of students, a group of friends please sit with them and

discuss and practices speaking. I will always give you some relevant topics. So, you will

be given tips on making formal presentations. Also, you will be given tips on correct pronunciation

including elements of stress, rhythm, phase and the importance of pause. We will also

include some information about group discussion. That will come at a slightly later stage.

We will be having plenty of Reading, we know that as technologist, scientists. You need

to read various kinds of texts, compositions, books etcetera. So, it is very important that

you familiarise yourself with a wide range of reading text and you know how to read and

how to look for information. Reading will include the skills of skimming these are the

sub skills of reading. So, skimming, scanning, predicting and I am going to tell you and

work on these things in details as we go deep into the course. Right now please make a note

what are the things we are going to do we will be doing skimming, scanning, predicting,

identifying key words and main ideas, making inferences also note taking etcetera. With

all those are part of your reading skills, reading passages themselves are designed to

develop these skills and are adopted from various authentic sources. I will always give

the link, the source from where I have taken a particular passage these are all authentic

sources. Coming to this major skill Writing, we will

be starting with definitions; definitions of what? Scientific concepts; concept that

you may need on a day-to-day basis. We will be talking about describing processes, describing

experiments; we will start with short paragraphs we will move on to longer essays. Will also

talk about informal as well as formal letters, emails and very importantly there will be

discussion on report writing. At some stage we will also talk about writing a statement

of purpose that is your SOP and also your resume or curriculum vitae, that is your CV.

Some attention will also be given to writing business letters. Writing always involves

efficient use of connectors and adequate cohesive devices. This course will give immense attention

to that aspect as well. Coming to grammar, so the course covers the

essentials of grammar, including verb tenses particularly, simple past, simple present

and present perfect also voice active and passive articles prepositions clauses types

of sentences including simple, compound and complex sentences. There is some attention

paid to nouns and noun phrases, that is because I am aware that it is very basic kind of a

lecture; however, it is essential for building up the rest of the classes. So, it is the

rest of the lecture. So, please observe or please watch that lecture very carefully,

it is important that you know the distinction between various parts of speech therefore,

it is important that some attention is paid to noun.

We will also do a little bit of comparatives it is a short lecture on comparatives that

is comparing the degrees of that in words. There is going to be plenty of exercises involving

vocabulary. Vocabulary activities will develop your word power through a variety of interesting

task as well as interesting activities and passages. We will include word formation using

suffixes and prefixes. We will do changing the category of a particular word. For example,

changing the (class from noun to adjective and verb and vice verse, these are things

that you require in good writing. We will do phrasal verbs as well as collocation

and some amounts of idioms, but not too much of it. Idioms, proverbs are not really a part

of what we are striving to achieve here but, however once you develop interest in improving

your English, once develop an interest in learning more about vocabulary, I am sure

you will do lot of reading and practice lot of exercises that will also familiarise you

with proverbs and idioms of the English language. There will be some discussion on developing

dictionary skills. I will be a referring to oxford advance learners dictionary. It is

an immensely useful tool for all those who are interested in developing their vocabulary

and grammar also I would suggest that you look at another very essential dictionary

that is Cambridge advanced learners dictionary, so Oxford ALD and Cambridge ALD.

Here is Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary.

And this is another book please take a look at it Advanced Grammar in Use.

So, what is this book? Advanced English Grammar is Martin Hewings book, which is intended

for advanced students of English, that is for people like you. It is very useful resource

for people who want to do self learning. So, it is basically written as a self study book

with plenty of explanations, plenty of exercises and answers given at the back at the end of

the book. This book can also be used in class room situation along with the other students

with the help of your teacher. The book is extremely accessible; it has a wide range

of topics and activities.

Here is another book, very useful book. Please take a look Essential Grammars in Use by Raymond

Murphy. You can always supplement the first book with this one.

Here is the title of book that may help you in learning spoken English, Better Spoken

English. Better Spoken English is a very practical document it demonstrates how to improve the

spoken English of Indian students, it gives an in-depth understanding about the rate of

speech, rhythm, stress, intonation etcetera. The core philosophy here is to make non native

speakers more intelligible and understandable. So, you will learn when we use the writer

right stress and intonation on words and in also while speaking in sentences and paragraphs

we make ourselves more intelligible to the listeners. So, that is the purpose of better

spoken English. Again look at this book.

Better English Pronunciation by J. D. O Connor. Book provides a thorough introduction to the

pronunciation of English to help intermediate and more advanced students to improve pronunciation.

It has lots of things such as Phonetic symbols etcetera, some of you who have already done

a little bit of Phonetic and you understand the symbols you will enjoy the book immensely.

Here is a book which is a text book. Essentially, English for Technical Communication and this

book contains material basically to meet the needs of undergraduate students of technical

institutes. It comes along with a CD for developing your listening comprehension. The plenty of

web resources also as we move deeper into the course, as we go deeper into the course

I will be giving you some a very essential web resources also, periodically. So, it would

do you well, it would serve you well, if you please keep looking and see remember entire

purpose of the course is to make you more interested in developing your communication

skills, please remember that. This course aspires to give you and entry point; it also

aspires to give you and over view of certain skills; how to developed certain skills. However,

it is you who should be able to help yourself in the longer run.

So, coming to the evaluation part of the course, there will be assignments. We will be uploading

assignment periodically based on the week's lecturers. Every week you may expect two and

half and three hours of lectures and after that there will be assignments. If not immediately,

then may be at a later stage based on those particular weeks. So, the aim is to test you

on practically every module of this course and finally, we will have an end semester

exam essentially you can expect MCQ types of questions. So, there won’t/will not be

essay type questions there. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the

course and you learn a lot from the course. Tags

Reading English, English for Engineers, English words, English Exercise, Exercises in English,

Grammar usage, English Grammar, vocabulary, words and phrases, spoken communication, written

communication, Verbs, Noun, adverb, adjective, suffix, prefix, English writing, English speaking,

scientific English, report writing, CV, formal letter,

Essay writing, word categories, word formation, formal tone, paragraph writing, tone in writing,

speaking tone, signal words, Letter writing, understanding essays, Mechanics of Essays,

publishable essays