Course Purpose and Objectives
LCE 113 is a three-hour per week course, particularly designed to support Electrical Engineering Computer engineering and Informatics students’ studies. Its general objective is to enable students to communicate competently at a B1-B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for Languages on issues related to students’ social and student life (university, curriculum, field of study), as well as on issues related to their future professional careers (occupations, short CV, etc.). Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and culture awareness development are done through communicative situations deriving from authentic-like communication situations students may experience in their lives, during their studies and professional careers. Language competence is acquired through the use of text types, scenarios, and roles which promote the production and understanding of spoken and written language related to the topics covered.The course is based on post communicative era method, a student-centered, blended learning approach, and aims to familiarize students with authentic reading material related (a) to general topics such as university student life, learning styles and language learning, (b) to academic topics such as how to study effectively, take notes and use the appropriate reference style and (c) to specific topics related to the field of Electrical Engineering Computer engineering and Informatics. This material is used to develop students’ skills in text comprehension and analysis, note taking and processing as well as acquaint students with writing styles, such as process, description and argumentation. It also develops students’ listening and speaking skills. Learners are expected in this way to develop their speaking and listening abilities by taking an active part in tasks such as dialogues, conversations, and oral presentations based on real life situations related to their academic and professional environments. The course is based on current learning theories, such as constructivism and social constructivism, and it aims at developing students’ language skills, as well as transferrable 21st century skills, such as communication, digital literacy, collaboration, creativity, innovation, critical thinking, intercultural awareness, autonomy and lifelong learning.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will develop their language skills through communicative circumstances, scenarios and roles based on authentic situations of their social and student life (university, directions for access to university premises/buildings, field of study), as well as issues related to their future professional careers (workplace, potential professions, duties, and Electrical Engineer’s CV. Furthermore, students will also be able to communicate competently at a B1-B2 CEFR level (production and understanding of spoken and written language) on the aforementioned topics, through relevant and related text types, scenarios, and roles and for specific purposes
- Students will use grammatical structures i.e. tenses, syntax, relevant to topics and communication tasks in order to ddemonstrate awareness of the writing process and be able to produce coherent and grammatically correct language at various levels (from paragraph to more extended texts)
- Students will write texts of different types (reports, summaries) and rhetoric styles (description, process) at an academic level,
- develop the ability to paraphrase, summarise, quote and avoid plagiarism.
- Students will demonstrate their ability to listen and comprehend conversations, interviews, lectures and public speeches in order to identify the main points and respond appropriately by collecting and evaluating information from various sources (e.g. internet) before using it to support an argument in various forms of communication such as report writing, presentations etc.
- Students will communicate effectively with the use of information and communication technologies. Students will also be able to demonstrate creativity, critical thinking and intercultural awareness though language use by applying 21st century skills, such as communication, digital literacy, collaboration, creativity, innovation, critical thinking, intercultural and global awareness and active citizenship, autonomy and lifelong learning.
Course Content
- Studying Electrical Εngineering- skills and competencies
- The Cyprus University of Technology – Identity/ Profile
- University student digital profile
- Careers in Electrical and Computer engineering
- How do we study best? Academic skills development
- Digital literacy
- The Information age
- Computer users
- Graphical User Interfaces
- Multimedia
- Networks
- The World Wide Web
- Communications systems
- Robotics
- Software Engineering
- Academic Articles in Electrical and Computer engineering
- Bibliographic references, paraphrasing and avoiding plagiarism
- Academic Skills: learning styles, text types, rhetorical modes, title types, introduction, paragraph and conclusion writing, cohesion, coherence & clarity,
- Library skills: bibliographical references, paraphrasing, summary, avoiding plagiarism
- Dictionary (monolingual, bilingual) skills
