Course Syllabus 2011/2012

Ingls Empresarial para Entornos Industriales (3 credits)

1. Writing for business 1.1. Determining audiences and purposes in business communication. 1.2. Style in business writing 1.2.1. Conciseness: strong/weak style, wordy expressions, informality. 1.2.2. Clarity: Parallel structure, false friends, order of information in English sentences (passive/active voice, ergatives), adequate general and technical vocabulary, formality. 1.3. Information referencing conventions: Vancouver style and IEEE style. 1.4. Structuring documents and selection of information. 2. Listening for business 2.1. Listening for vocabulary (terms, numerical expressions, linking expressions). 2.2. Listening for ideas (detecting the communication structure, summarizing, paraphrasing). 2.3. Basic understanding British, Australian, US, and some non-native accents. 3. Speaking for business 3.1. Adapting the presentation content and style to the audiences and purposes. 3.2. Tools for presenting (PowerPoint, Prezi, others): advantages and disadvantages, ways to expand the information delivered in presentations. 3.3. Formal aspects in presentations: use of fonts, graphs, colors, and text. 4. Reading for business 4.1. Business documents and engineers: annual reports, patents, financial articles, journal papers 4.2. Structure of business documents: what information can be found in each part? Who reads each part? What differences in style can be found in different sections? 4.3. Understanding business and engineering wording in specialized texts. 5. Course Assessment 5.1. Group exercises (30% of the final grade): group presentations (videotaped for assessment and student reference) and group reports (informative / descriptive texts) expanding the presentation. 5.2. Individual final paper (10% of the final grade): evaluation of other groups presentations (argumentative text). 5.3. Final individual exam (60% of the final grade): listening comprehension exercises (25%); writing exercises (30%); vocabulary exercises (15%); reading comprehension exercises (20%); and concept review questions (10%)