Aims

The aims of the course are to:

• To teach Japanese in the perspective of learning ﾑlanguages for work and lifeﾒ by including specific engineering tasks which require significant technical input and knowledge.
• To encourage students to adopt the mode of ﾑlearning languages for lifeﾒ 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 Japan.
• To extend technological knowledge and understanding of Japanese industry.
• To learn to handle authentic materials, in any medium, in Japanese.

Content

NB first introductory session of 2 hours on Wednesday 9th May

TOPICS (past years)

• Energy Harvesting
• New Version of AIBO
• Eco House

All students will have to submit a report (up to 8 pages) and do a 10 minute oral presentation.

Students will choose a topic in agreement with the project leader and/or the PhD student that will support them throughout the project.

FORMAT

A minimum of 2 hours (and up to 4 hours) contact teaching + 1 hour supervision + 12 hours untimetabled each 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 (60%) and engineering (40%) content.

ACTIVITIES

• listening: understanding the essential points of spoken discourse of a general or more technical nature, and summarising effectively in either the target language or English.
• speaking: responding accurately and effectively to work-related situations, and using the target language to enquire about/express opinions on general or work-related topics.
• reading: skimming, interpreting, extracting data from specialist/non-specialist sources.
• writing: writing memos, letters, specialised articles using the appropriate structure and registers.

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 Wednesday 1 November from 1-2pm in the Language Unit seminar room.