a Site for Teachers of English ( as a Foreign Language) for Engineering
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a Site for Teachers of English ( as a Foreign Language) for Engineering
|
An Interactive Javascript Activity
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Page 2 - Comprehension 1 ( next
page)
Page 3 - Comprehension 2
Page 4 - Grammar
Page 5 -Writing
1 – Read the first sentence of § 1, 2 and 3 ( you need not read the whole text now) and then test yourself
When you have completed the test push the reset button to clear the radio buttons. You can then repeat the test until you get all the answers correct first time every time.3 - Before you go to Comprehension questions, you can now read the whole text.
Note to teachers : you will notice that this text, written by a German, does not always use standard English and is not totally devoid of what we might call ‘grammar mistakes’ ( see, for instance, line 1 ‘the technological progress’). It can be your choice to correct the language and give your students an ‘improved’ version or to give them the text as it is. If your class has a fairly good level, it might be a good exercise to ask the students do the correction themselves. (In this case, it is possible to underline the sentences to be altered before the text is handed to the students. ) This certainly would be a good opportunity to make them aware of the kind of English they are likely to meet, produce and communicate with later, i.e. ‘European’ or 'airport English’.Since the middle of the last century, the technological progress has been dominated essentially by the unique strategy of miniaturization and integration of functional elements in technical systems. The most outstanding development took evidently place in microelectronics. During the past decade however, also microtechnology which covers disciplines like micromechanics, microoptics, microacoustics and microfluidics has achieved an equivalent importance for innovation in nearly all fields of modern technologies. A modern automobile is equipped with some ten to thirty microdevices for motor management, safety and comfort and, as a matter of fact, neither the air bag nor the ESP (*) system would work without microtechnology.
The progress in information and communication technology is connected with scores of microproducts like flat panel displays, read-write heads for hard disk memories, CDs and DVDs as well as accessory laser heads, micro-devices for optical networks like couplers, fiber connectors, matrix switches, wave length division multiplexers, and many more components for ultra fast data transfer.
Microtechnology makes people more mobile by miniaturized
"palm" power systems based on fuel cells for mobile phones and note books
as well as by micromechatronic devices ranging from mini disk
drives to instruments of minimum invasive surgery. The lab on a chip
is beginning to start a new era for medical diagnosis and drug development
in molecular biotechnology which will completely change
our life.
Since novel fields of application, powerful design and manufacturing are opened up in rapid succession,, extremely high growth rates will continue to exist for the market of microtechnology which will reach a global volume of 80 billion US $ this year.
(*) : ESP: electronic stability programW. Ehrfeld, in 2002 PCIM Conference program
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[Back to Contents of the Databank - frameless version]
EFL Tech - France at
http://membres.lycos.fr/jcviel/efl.htm