Course-PM

LSP127 Professional English lp3 VT20 (1.5 hp)

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

Contact details

• Kathy Strong Hansen, examiner: strong@chalmers.se 
• Carina Sjöberg Hawke, instructor: carsjobe@chalmers.se 

It is best to contact the instruction team via email, and we request that you include the course number (LSP127) so that we can more quickly recognize what course you are in (as 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 which 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

Schedule

See TimeEdit for the most up-to date information about locations and/or schedule changes. Note that some sessions will begin in one room and move to another. For the schedule of reading and assignment due dates, see this document.

Course literature

All course literature can be found under "modules," which is arranged around each course assignment. The course schedule gives details about when to read assignments.

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, an abstract analysis, and material for a job application. Oral exercises include an oral presentation of, for example, a group text, and class discussions.

The course is organised in lectures and seminars of two, three, or four hours over the course of study period 3.

Changes made since the last occasion

A number of minor changes have been made to the course in relation to a programme decision to connect more closely to the thesis project that occurs in parallel. There is a summary below.

Popular science text: replaces a project brief task based on students’ thesis work, which did not fit well in the timeline of many students’ thesis schedule. Additionally, this kind of writing task allows the opportunity for students to try to publish their work, earning them an additional line on their CV as well as establishing/extending their professional reputation.

Groups: to allow for more collaborative learning, as well as to minimize the amount of peer feedback that students needed to give to each other in the presentations, group size has been increased from pairs to groups of three.

Final oral presentation: this task has been changed so as to be a presentation of the popular science text.

Learning objectives and syllabus

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

• prepare relevant documents for a project, e.g. a communicative text for a general audience, an abstract;
• adapt and present information for oral communication contexts; and
• make a good impression in job applications.

Study plan

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. For more information about each assignment, please see the module devoted to that assignment.

*If you miss an obligatory in-class activity, you must compensate for it in order to pass the course.