Scientific and professional communication in English

Teacher(s)

Wesselingh Renate ;

Language

Français

Main themes

Training in scientific presentation skills, focusing on biology issues (taught by an English language teacher of the Institut des Langues Vivantes, UCL), and a public presentation in English of the state of progress of the student's master thesis.

Aims

After this module students should feel fairly confident when giving a scientific presentation in English, focusing mainly on the academic field of biology.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

Content

The course consists in three parts : 1. Training sessions (18h) on effective oral presentation techniques in science (at the ILV Language Institute) : facts and figures (graphs, comparisons, likelihood etc.), visual aids (OHP, Power Point), systematic pronunciation of recurrent terms in science and biology. 2. In the course of the second term, students can rehearse their presentation individually with the help of the language teacher (10h in all). 3. Final presentation at the end of term : public talk about the state of progress of the student's master thesis in presence of the thesis supervisor, followed by a question time.

Other information

The assessment takes place right after the final presentation and focuses on the quality of the talk rather than scientific content. As to the English language command, assessment will focus on the student's progress throughout the language sessions, with specific attention to the pronunciation of recurrent terms, overall fluency and the way the student has actually applied the presentation techniques developed in class.

Faculty or entity<

> BIOL