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ENGINEERING TRIPOS PART IIA -2012/2013

Project SL4 - Advanced German

Leader for German Projects: Mr M Kantus email: mgk34

Project Type: Standard
Project Category: Language
Prerequisites: 'Advanced' projects are intended primarily for students who have studied German to A-level standard at school, and who have also attended 'Advanced' level classes during Part I of the Engineering Tripos, and for bi-lingual students.

Timing: Wednesdays am, plus Tuesday or Friday pm

NB first introductory session of 2 hours on Wednesday 8th May

SUMMARY

Two project headings will be offered:

A long oral presentation with a short written report.
A long written report with a short oral presentation.

Students may choose from the following topics:

European Tunnels
Airbus
The car of the future

Any topic which has very small numbers may not be offered.

AIMS

To teach German within the framework of the Council of Europe guidelines contained in the theme of 'languages for work and life' by including specific engineering tasks which require significant technical input and knowledge.
To encourage students to adopt the mode of 'learning languages for life' by taking responsibility for their own learning.
To extend linguistic competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, with particular emphasis on the latter, to enable operation at an appropriate level in Europe.
To extend technological knowledge and understanding of German industry.
To learn to handle authentic materials, in any medium, in German.

FORMAT

To achieve this European ambition, the tasks will be anchored on four principles:

task based- to reflect the realities of current language use.
skill integration - to operate efficiently in real life.
language integration - to achieve the greatest degree of realism and authenticity.
cultural awareness - to operate successfully in a linguistic and social sense.

4 hours contact teaching + 4 hours supported self-study + 12 hours untimetabled / week.

Group teaching, group work, pair work and individual work will be employed.

The projects will be run from the Language Unit to enable full use of the resources therein.

Assessment will be based on current and technical language (70%) and engineering (30%) content.

ACTIVITIES

listening: understanding spoken discourse of a technical nature, without prior preparation, and summarising effectively in spoken or written form.
speaking: initiating technical discussions or responding to them fluently and accurately.
reading: reading, understanding, interpreting, extracting data from technical sources.
writing: writing text using the appropriate structure, vocabulary and registers.

External lecturers from German industry will be invited to speak and to work with the groups.

ASSESSMENT

Format: Submission Date - Marks

Interim report : Friday 24 May 2013 - 20 marks

Final report: 4pm Friday 7 June 2013 - 60 marks

PRIZES

Shell Language Project Prizes to be shared by the best students undertaking a Foreign Language Project.

FURTHER INFORMATION

A talk on Foreign Language Projects will be given on Tuesday 29 January from 1-2pm in the Language Unit seminar room.

Last updated: December 2012

teaching-office@eng.cam.ac.uk