LSP127 Professional English LP3 VT23 (1.5 hp)

The course is offered by the department of Communication and Learning in Science.

Contact details

• Carina Sjöberg Hawke, examiner and instructor: carsjobe@chalmers.se  
• Charlie Keeling, instructor: keeling@chalmers.se 

We request that you include the course number (LSP127) when you email us so that we can more quickly recognize what course you are in because we teach several courses with similar names.

Course purpose

The purpose of the course is to prepare the students to use English as a working language by focusing on a number of professional situations that the students are likely to meet in their future working life and that are likely to demand a high level of English proficiency and good communicative skills in speech and writing. The course focuses on enabling students to write professional texts in English.

Course design

This course relies primarily on workshops, with material also supplied through lectures. The course includes both written and oral exercises. Written exercises include for example writing a popular science text and a CV. Oral exercises include an oral presentation of a group text and also include class discussions. Additional "flipped" material will be provided for out-of class viewing; some of these materials will be videos or screencasts, while others will be written text (such as websites or PowerPoint slides).

The course is organized in lectures and workshops of two hours over the course of study period 3.

Schedule

While you are welcome to access TimeEdit, see the Canvas calendar for the most up-to-date information about locations and/or schedule changes; the schedule overview below will also be useful to you.

TimeEditLinks to an external site.

The course schedule provides a brief overview. For more thorough information, see each session's page in the course information module.

Assignment deadlines fall on the following dates: CV 10 Feb; Pop sci draft for peer review 14-15 Feb; pop sci draft for teacher review 20 Feb; pop sci final version 10 Mar.

Course literature

All course literature can be found on the page for each course meeting in the course information module (coming soon).

Learning objectives and syllabus

After completion of this course, the student should be able to:

• • Prepare relevant documents for professional purposes, e.g. a popular science text.
  • Adapt and present information for oral communication contexts.
  • Structure information in a CV to make a strong impression.

Link to the syllabus on Studieportalen. Study planLinks to an external site.

Changes made since the last occasion

Some minor changes have been made:

• Classes have been moved to Johanneberg Campus instead of Lindholmen because it was observed that some courses that followed this one were at Johanneberg and would have caused commuting and late arrival issues, or perhaps no attendance on this course at all.
• One session instead of half a session is devoted to the CV workshop. This aims to help the students be as finished with their assignment as possible by the end of the workshop.
• Presentations have been moved back to being in person after online/recorded presentations during the pandemic years.
• The examiner is aware of a number of course clashes and has tried to make the course as available as possible, including creating three potential dates for presentation sessions that can be chosen.

Examination form

Compulsory written and peer review assignments as well as an oral presentation should be passed. The course is graded Pass/Fail, and all individual elements listed below are graded Pass/Fail. If you miss a session in which an assignment is completed in class, you will be contacted to compensate for the missed assignment. Compensation activities will be completed individually, not in groups. For more information about each assignment, please see the module devoted to that assignment.