Course Catalogue

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This course develops key language and communication skills for engineers to allow them to convey information clearly and concisely both orally and in writing. Students will develop skills in the critical analysis of technical documents to extract key engineering facts and arguments. The course addresses the needs of a graduate engineer by focussing on key employability skills.

This course also aims to develop students' academic English language skills to meet the requirement for progression from Year 2 to Year 3 (equivalent of at least 6.0 in each subset of IELTS). For this reason, students must achieve a minimum D3 grade in certain elements of assessment individually.

This course will include blocked lectures and weekly follow-up seminars

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Written exam: writing, reading 40%

Written assignment: 20%

Oral assessment & presentation: 30% (20%presentation and 10% interview)

Set exercise: portfolio of tasks 10%

Note:

Because this course can be used to meet the English language requirement for progression from Year 2 to Year 3, students must achieve a minimum D3 grade in each of the following components:

■ Written exam;

■ Written assignment; and

■ Oral assessment & presentation.

If the minimum grades of D3 are not achieved separately in each component, the overall grade for the course will be capped at E1.

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification. For non-Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt. This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students. Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade. Any such exceptions for this course are described below. 

Due to the nature of the coursework and sequencing of courses, it is not possible to reassess the interview or coursework performed in the set exercise. The initial grade for the interview and set exercise will be used when calculating the resit grade.

This course aims to:

■ develop key language and communication skills for prospective engineers 

■ develop students' critical analytical skills when reading scientific and engineering documents

■ develop the skills to present information of a technical nature in written and oral communication clearly and concisely

■ develop academic research skills for engineers

■ develop employability skills for engineers (CV, cover letter, interview)

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ search for, evaluate and select relevant information from printed and online resources

■ produce clear and concise technical documents/reports using appropriate, discipline-specific language, style and referencing conventions

■ deliver oral presentations of a technical nature, incorporating effective visual aids

■ produce relevant and appropriate written information for job seeking

■ interact effectively in an interview context

■ work effectively in a team on a literature-based research task

■ analyse issues related to the Grand Challenges in engineering.

Students must submit or attend all the scheduled summative assessment components (set exercise, interview, written assignment, oral presentation, and written exam) to ensure that all language skills are assessed.

Due to the interactive nature of this course students must be present at 90% of timetabled lectures, seminars and tutorials, at which attendance is recorded.