Higher Technical English

GENERAL OBJECTIVES:

At the end of this course students should be able to:

1. write good English paying particular attention to correct punctuation and grammar.

2. write, by using accepted conventions, References and Bibliographies for reports and papers

3. write a short scientific paper by using the third person passive tense.

4. write concise self-contained abstracts for scientific papers

5. write a newspaper article for the general public based upon the scientific paper in objective 3.

6. deliver a 30 minute lecture on a scientific topic

7. perform proficiently in a viva voce exam on a scientific topic.

1.1 Students know and are able to use: full stops, capital letters, commas and apostrophes.

1.2 Students know the variety of uses of the punctuation marks in 1.1 and deploy them correctly.

1.3 Students know and are able to use: colons, semi-colons, hyphens, brackets and parentheses.

1.4 Students understand and are able to deploy good grammar (sentence structure, prepositions, pronouns, relation between verb and subject, ending sentences, plural and collective nouns, nouns used as adjectives, unattached participles, double negatives, split infinitives)

1.5 Students recognise and are able to select the correct word to use from a set of confusing words (e.g. affect and effect, who and whom, less, fewer)

1.6 Students understand how to write references and bibliographies by using the "Harvard" references style

1.7 Students understand how to write numerically based references

1.8 Students know and are able to construct references in the correct styles for the following journals: Nature, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Chemical Communications, and Global Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences.

3.1 Students understand the use of, and are able to write in, the third person passive tense.

4.1 Understand the need for selfcontained (i.e. free standing) abstracts

4.2 Be able to write free standing abstracts

5.1 Students should understand the different requirements, and be able to move between writing for scientists and writing for the general public.

6.1 Understand how to prepare a lecture and speak in public

7.1 Understand the procedure of a viva voce and know what makes for a good viva and a poor one

7.2 Know how to prepare for a viva voce exam

7.8 Be able to participate well in a formal viva on a scientific topic