The course aims to enable students to acquire advanced English for the workplace and develop the skills needed to communicate clearly and appropriately in professional contexts.
The course covers:
- Advanced English for professional communication, both spoken and written: style, text cohesion, sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary
- Genres and conventions in professional contexts
- Some text types commonly encountered by engineers in the job application process, such as CVs, cover letters and self-presentations
- Topics relating to communication in international workplaces, such as cultural and linguistic diversity, inclusive language, accessibility and English as a lingua franca.
Upon completion of the course, students should be able to:
- identify and analyse different types of communication in English-language professional contexts, with a particular focus on the characteristics of formal and technical communication and intercultural communication
- adapt language to the audience and purpose, and explain and justify their choices, in various types of work-related communication in English, including via digital channels
- write clear and effective texts with technical content in English
- with a particular focus on the job application process, describe one’s academic background, professional experience, strengths, values and future plans, and capture the recipient’s interest
- apply some basic negotiation techniques to effectively reach consensus in negotiations and other meetings.
