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Professional Communicative Competencies for Engineers

Professional Communicative Competencies for Engineers. Topics. Computer-mediated methodologies to study language use in a range of professional engineering contexts of situation Variation in language and textual organisation across a range of professional engineering text-types.

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Professional Communicative Competencies for Engineers

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  1. Professional Communicative Competencies for Engineers

  2. Topics • Computer-mediated methodologies to study language use in a range of professional engineering contexts of situation • Variation in language and textual organisation across a range of professional engineering text-types

  3. Corpus-based inquiries • “a corpus is a collection of naturally-occurring language text, chosen to characterize a state or variety of a language” (Sinclair, 1991: 171) • General and specialised corpora • Computer-mediated programmes for text analysis and manipulation, e.g. ConcGram, WordSmith Tools • Wordlists and concordances • The importance of surrounding language • The strong recurrent patterns of language

  4. Impact of corpus linguistics • Since the 1980s, linguists have been studying large collections of naturally-occurring spoken and written texts (corpora) using computers to better describe language use. • Examples of the impact of corpus linguistics: • COBUILD, Cambridge, Longman dictionaries, grammars etc. • better understanding of patterns of word association and meaning • tracking changes in the English language

  5. General English language corpora The world’s two largest corpora are in the UK: • British National Corpus (BNC) (100 m words) (http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html) • Bank of English (approx. 500 m words) (http://www.collins.co.uk/corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx)

  6. Examples of specialised corpora • Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (prosodic) (academic, business, conversational and public texts), 2007 • Hong Kong Financial Services Corpus (HKFSC), 2007 • Hong Kong Engineering Corpus (HKEC) to be compiled: A small corpus of symposium papers from website of HKIE Electrical Division

  7. HKIE Electrical Division Annual Symposium papers (2002-2006)

  8. Determining KEY words in a specialised corpus The weirdness ratio: The asymmetry in the distribution of a word in a special language corpus and a general language corpus If weirdness >1, a specialist term; If weirdness <1, not a specialist term.

  9. Sample of key words in symposium papers autotransformer arresters anisotropic arc-fault broadband ballast-driven combustor chillers criticality dimmable diode double-busbar energized epoxy electrorheology electrolytic feeders gratings hydrogen-cooled inverter impedance

  10. Corpus-based inquiries Not sure what word or words to say or write? • Consult a corpus and study the frequenciesand contexts of use of the words or words. • A corpus can be more reliable than relying on one’s intuition or the intuition of somebody else

  11. Symposium papers Wordlist 1 the 9104 7.2172 % 2 of 4770 3.7814 % 3 and 4103 3.2527 % 39 electrical 257 0.2037 % 44 electricity 245 0.1942 % 66 turbine 184 0.1459 % 79 wind 162 0.1284 % 149 electric 97 0.0769 %

  12. 2-word concgrams: electrical electrical the 52 electrical of 48 electrical and 24 electrical engineering 23 electrical installation 23 electrical equipment 19 electrical system 16 electrical power 14 electrical for 13 electrical installations 13

  13. 2-word concgrams: electrical electrical in 12 electrical an 11 electrical main 11 electrical data 10 electrical distribution 9 electrical supply 9 electrical infrastructure 8 electrical parameters 7 electrical systems 6 electrical energy 6

  14. 2-word concgrams: electrical electrical engineers 5 electrical engineer 4 electrical forces 4 electrical industry 3 electrical information 3 electrical signals 3 electrical to 3 electrical on 3 electrical from 2 electrical general 2

  15. 3-word concgrams: wind turbine wind turbine + the 69 wind turbine + a 52 wind turbine + of 48 wind turbine + and 32 wind turbine + is 30 wind turbine + to 29 wind turbine + for 22 wind turbine + site 17 wind turbine + was 14 wind turbine + in 13 wind turbine + on 12

  16. 3-word concgrams: wind turbine wind turbine + Lamma 13 wind turbine + capacity 8 wind turbine + construction 8 wind turbine + Island 8 wind turbine + wider 7 wind turbine + yawed 5 wind turbine + sensor 5 wind turbine + farms 5 wind turbine + located 5 wind turbine + connected 5

  17. Wind turbine e 6 Automatic Slope Irrigation System 2.3 WINDTURBINE PROJECTS Wind turbines a full EIA was required to ascertain that the WindTurbine Project on Lamma Island or research purpose. Currently, the largest windturbine is a single 2.5kW machine grid connected hybrid RE system. Figure 7 WindTurbine at Shek Kwu Chau There are cablecar.com FIRST GRID-CONNECTED WINDTURBINE FOR POWER onmentally acceptable to install one 800kW windturbine as a demonstration er of 50m and a rated power of 800kW. The windturbine is of stall-regulated, “horizontal generation at Tai Ling on Lamma Island. The windturbine system with built-in safety

  18. wind turbine

  19. wind turbine

  20. wind turbine

  21. wind turbine

  22. wind turbine

  23. wind turbine

  24. 2-word concgrams: electrical electrical SERVICES 2 electrical sensor 2 electrical Contractors 2 electrical Chief 2 electrical conduction 2 electrical conventional 2 electrical circuits 2 electrical fixed 2 electrical field 2

  25. 2-word concgrams: electrical electrical historical 2 electrical kV 2 electrical enhancing 2 electrical RMS 2 electrical safety 2 electrical large 2 electrical monitoring 2 electrical Office 2 electrical quality 2 electrical Responses 2

  26. 2-word concgrams: electricity electricity of 43 electricity NATIONAL 40 electricity THE 33 electricity MARKET 33 electricity supply 31 electricity to 15 electricity industry 12 electricity generation 12 electricity Rules 10 electricity demand 9

  27. 2-word concgrams: electricity electricity Law 8 electricity for 7 electricity in 7 electricity SINGAPORE 7 electricity Code 6 electricity wholesale 6 electricity reliable 5 electricity transmission 5 electricity WIRING 4 electricity generated 4 electricity system 4

  28. 2-word concgrams: electricity electricity is 3 electricity new 3 electricity grid 3 electricity on 3 electricity prices 3 electricity retail 3 electricity supplies 3 electricity effective 3 electricity from 3 electricity Finnish 3

  29. 2-word concgrams: electricity electricity CLASS 2 electricity secondary 2 electricity Ordinance 2 electricity sold 2 electricity sector 2 electricity integrated 2 electricity produce 2 electricity Power 2 electricity total 2 electricity existing 2

  30. 2-word concgrams: electric electric Hongkong 34 electric power 18 electric Co 17 electric The 15 electric Company 10 electric field 9 electric XIAN 8 electric vehicle 7 electric machine 5 electric hybrid 4 electric Manufacturing 4

  31. 2-word concgrams: electric electric Mitsubishi 4 electric Ir 3 electric Import 3 electric high 2 electric lEE 2 electric of 2 electric Proceedings 2 electric through 2 electric China 2 electric General 2 electric GE 2

  32. 3-word concgrams: gas turbine gas turbine + the 110 gas turbine + and 48 gas turbine + to 46 gas turbine + is 43 gas turbine + a 42 gas turbine + of 40 gas turbine + by 19 gas turbine + steam 36 gas turbine + class 24 gas turbine + generator 21 gas turbine + with 15

  33. 3-word concgrams: gas turbine gas turbine + at 14 gas turbine + for 12 gas turbine + on 12 gas turbine + efficiency 12 gas turbine + exhaust 12 gas turbine + temperature 12 gas turbine + coupled 11 gas turbine + single 10 gas turbine + consists 10 gas turbine + system 9 gas turbine + located 8

  34. References Ahmad, K. Terminology in Text. Tuscan Word Centre Workshop. Siena, Italy. June, 2005. Bhatia, V.K. 2004. Worlds of Written Discourse. London and New York: Continuum. Byram, M. 1997. Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Capucho, F. and Oliveira, A.M. 2005. Eu & I: On the notion of intercomprehension. In Martins, A. (ed.) Building bridges: EU&I. European Awareness and Intercomprehension (pp. 11-18). Viseu: Universidade Cato´ lica Portuguesa, Centro Regional das Beiras. Cheng, W. 2004. //  did you TOOK //  from the miniBAR //: What is the practical relevance of a corpus-driven language study to practitioners in Hong Kong’s hotel industry? In U. Connor & T. Upton (Eds.), Discourse in the Professions. (pp. 141-166). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Crismore, A., Markkanen, R., Steffensen, M. 1993. Metadiscourse in persuasive writing: A study of texts written by American and Finnish university students. Written Communication, 10/1: 39-71.

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