English for Science and Technology

Instructor: Prof. B T Yang楊丙邨  bingtyang@gmail.com

2011 Summer Camp Over, Hurray! Job well-done and Godspeed, Guys!

This site is designed to provide classroom information for students to download materials. Specific requirements for each class vary so you do need to pay attention to lectures in the classroom as well.

Press the "About the Course" button above to get an overview of the course. The "Class Handouts" are the basic lecture materials, which are to be supplemented with two "Required Readings" that you will peruse. For those who would like find some enjoyments out of English readings, click on the "Materials of Interest" button.

I would like to put down few words on the philosophy of this course. Learning English has been, for most students in Taiwan, an arduous process that they would rather soon forget. Fret not, this course is not conducted as a traditional English class in which students are expected to regurgitate by rote whatever handed down to them; instead, students are expected to be accustomed to daily readings on current issues and/or commentaries from major news providers. Students are to be "weaned away" from the "designed English reading materials" and to learn about the world directly from authoritative English media. In this case, I choose the New York Times.

Since the course is supposed to be an "applied English", I will not drill on the mechanics of English; instead, I will concentrate on discussing the contents of the reading materials. The students are expected to be familiar with basic grammars and to know how to find answers should they arise.

It goes without saying that the course is offered exclusively to science and engineering majors who are expected to reach out to the world in none other than English after they complete their degrees. The "reaching out" is embodied in both oral and written presentations, and neither is  easy for those who have had little exposure in practicing such "arts". Here we will try to remedy the oral presentation skill by having each student make at least one English presentation during the course. Written skill is an entirely different matter since it is by definition a solitary task that has lots to do with the writer's personal style and skill. In skill, we mean the resources he can withdraw from himself, i.e. the extent of his vocabulary and  his knowledge on English expressions. The minimum we will do is to learn  how to organize a typical technical paper, how to avoid typical grammatical mistakes, how to construct phrases in parallelism, and in the end, how one would  coordinate a large writing effort--functioning as a "systems engineer".

I will at times introduce some basic western cultures and histories to supplement students' daily readings. This is because many non-native English speakers cannot comprehend the stories they read simply-- not because they do not know the words--because they lack the  basic cultural and historical backgrounds to comprehend the stories, and this is particularly true for science and engineering majors.

So can we accomplish all these in a limited time? Yes, we can and we will, because we will work hard to make it happen, and we will work very hard to make it happen. And finally, in life, all formal schooling must come to an end, so you may consider this your "last English" course before you finish your degree and step into the real world. Can you be "transformed" into a person  at ease with daily English readings after this course?  The answer is: it's entirely up to you!

It goes without saying that the course is conducted in English. How many hours are you supposed to spend on the course outside of the classroom? Well, if you are very good at English already, I say you need to spend one hour per day; for those who are not very good at English language, you may figure three hours' reading everyday at the beginning; when you reach the end of the course, hopefully, two hours a day or even down to one.