The Importance of English Language to Engineering Students

English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As , a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century, it has become the communication language between people not sharing a mother tongue in many parts of the world. Therefore, it is used in various activities in life, from trade to media and even research and development. That is the reason why I think that English language competence is a significant aspect of an engineering student’s academic life and prospective career.
English language competence is important to engineering students as they need to cooperate with engineering students of different nationalities in certain projects especially during their final year. The importance of English language becomes more significant when students further their studies up to Phd level where they need to work under a professor who most probably of different nationality from the students. Engineers often have to present their work to their clients and those clients might not share the same mother tongue as the engineers. If the engineers do not have a certain level of efficiency in English language, they might not able to present their ideas to their clients properly and might cause their companies to lose the clients.
Engineers will also involve in research and development where scientists and engineers from all around the world will work together. Since they are of different nationalities, English language is a important tool to communicate. In short, the main purpose of mastering English language is to overcome the language barrier of different nationalities where people have different language as their first language.

By: Sara Liew Kar Mun

On the primacy of the English language in the hard sciences

Today, as the globalization continues, English plays an increasing important role in our lives. And nowadays English language competence also somewhat determines a student’s academic life and prospective career. Therefore, as for us engineering students, it seems to be essential and beneficial to crack this universal language.

Firstly, an opportunity for peer communications would be offered if engineering workers obtain good English language skills. It is generally acknowledged that academic exchanges have greatly motivated the process of scientific and technical innovations. As a potential engineer, if we study alone and seldom communicate with others, we will unavoidable narrow down our creativity and repeat the work already done by others. Moreover, it would be frustrated when we try to acquire the experiences of our predecessors, which may waste us a multitude of time and energy. However, when a potential engineer excellent In English meet questions, he can make a consultation to the pros in other countries; when he try to work out a problem or make a project, he can team up with his peers in other countries and communicate well with his teammates; and more importantly, thanks to English, an academic platform for intellectuals who care the some issues can be gathered together, so that they can be understood and progress the technology forward together.

Secondly, Academic integrity in the Anglo-English culture is often misunderstood by non-native English users because of varying cultural beliefs or differing academic and cultural backgrounds, but good English can eliminate this gap as much as possible. Compared with western education systems, textbook knowledge is more commonly emphasized and exams are more commonly used to gauge what students have learnt in the semester in the Mandarin-based education system. And since the cultural difference, oriental students are less encouraged to express their own thoughts and discuss or doubt the knowledge they get from books. As a result, students from different educational backgrounds tend to perform in different way in the upcoming work, which will influence their prospection in their future work, especially to those individuals who prefer to work in the foreign country. But a good language skill may offer you some cultural background, which may help you adjust quickly; and also a good foreign language makes you easier to be admitted by an foreign college, which may bring you devising culture and education backgrounds.

Thirdly, Plagiarism, collusion, and similar practices are shaped by a student’s educational background and cultural beliefs, and organizational ethics. But an uniform language environment may minimize these side-effects. Suppose that if every scholar uses the same language to write their research paper, once someone plagiarize others ideas, he will be found soon and become notorious; if every researchers of social science knows some Anglo-English language and background culture, the collisions and academic assaults will become fewer so that researchers can put more energy onto their studies; and if every workers know more about English, colleagues can be respected by each other, a more tied relationship will be formed and less misunderstood will be caused.

To conclude, learning English well would be the prior for us potential engineer of hard science in the current society. So it is better for us to make more efforts on it.

Is English Important for Engineering Students?

In this last blog entry, I am going to comment on the issue of whether English language competence is a significant aspect of an engineering student’s academic life and prospective career. I find the discussion of this issue is of great relevance to me as it allows me to see the importance of this course EG1471 in preparing me for my future engineering career.

English language is an important language during my undergraduate study in NUS because it is the main mode of communication used and most of the teaching contents are presented in English. Hence, I would face great difficulty in understanding certain concepts explained in English if I do not possess the necessary English proficiency level. This is probably the reason why NUS makes it compulsory for those engineering students who do not possess the necessary English proficiency level to undergo the module EG1471 so as to prepare them better for their engineering curriculum.

After graduation, English language is also an important language because it is the official language used in the workplace. For instance, when we apply a job through job interview, it is essential that in the job interview, we can express ourselves properly and efficiently in English within the very limited amount of time available in front of the interviewer so as to secure the job. It is also important to note that even if we possess the necessary technical knowledge for the job but cannot convey our ideas clearly to our higher management, our ideas might not be understood clearly by other people.

In addition, the criteria to be a successful engineer do not only depend on the ability to perform calculations or experiments, but also the ability to present an idea convincingly. An engineer may perform the most miraculous experiment in the laboratory but if he fails to present his discoveries in a language that can be easily understood by other people, it would be very difficult for the discoveries to be materialized for practical usage. Hence, it would be desirable if an engineer who has the technical background is able to interpret the technical facts upon which modern civilization is based (i.e. English Language) into language which everyone can understand.

Lastly, engineers always need to surf the Internet for ideas and information. In spite of the growth of Internet in various languages, English is still the mainstay of the Internet users. It is the language where most of the information and websites are available. It is also very difficult for each and every relevant web page to be translated into the language of various countries. Even if translation is possible, the accuracy of the content may not be guaranteed too.

In conclusion, I find that English language competence is a significant aspect in my academic life and prospective career. While some may argue that we should focus on learning and be competent in Chinese language so as to tap on the plethora of potential economic benefits that may come along with the rise of China in recent years, we should realize that English language is still likely to be the universal language for the next few years and hence maintaining competence in English language is still as important. Being bilingual and competent in both English and Chinese should be what we should be striving for if we were to become successful engineers.

Written by Teo Kian Siong

English language competence is a significant aspect of an engineering student’s academic life and prospective career

After Mandarin, English is spoken by more people than any other language in this world and it is widely known as the international language of business, diplomacy, science, technology and many more. Therefore the importance of English cannot be ever neglected especially for engineering students like us. We have to master this art and not only we do have to know how to write and read it, but as well speak it fluently. This is because I believe English language competence is a significant aspect of an engineering student’s life and prospective career.

English proficiency is essential for an engineering student because nowadays lectures are all conducted in English. Therefore inadequate English language competency will cause student to suffer understanding lecturer’s explanation especially in certain technical subjects such as physics and mechanics. In addition, assignments are all passed on in English and because of this if we do not posses good English we will have to take longer time to finish the woks as we have to waste our time finding the meaning of all the words from dictionary where others do not have to. Moreover as an engineering student, we have to conduct many experiments and eventually we have to write it down in report format. Therefore if we do not learn English how can we expect tutor to assess our experiment report?

English language is as important when we go out for work after graduation. Boss does not want workers with poor communication skill. English skill is essential for workers to deal with external and internal customers. Also at times we have to do presentation and fluent English skill is crucial to convince people about the works we have done. Even if our work is good, but our presentation is bad, people will eventually doubt your ability after all.

In conclusion, I think that as engineering student we have to master English language if we want to success, whether we like it or not.

Nuclear power and its background economics

By Desmond Wen Yida

In the roundtable discussion, a spirited debate has been spirited upon which generation ⅵ reactor is the best one. From this discussion, I have not only expanded my knowledge but broaden my horizon. And I can also realize an energy revolution is being happened in near future.

However, when we check out the background economics of nuclear power, we may find sometimes it is not rational to construct nuclear power plants extensively and overdepend on nuclear energy.

In order to meet increasing demands of energy and estimate side effects to the environments, recently many countries accelerate the pace of developing nuclear energy. From the green energy infrastructure report from World Economic Forum 2009, the 2008 global net investment of clean energy has peaked 155 billion U.S. dollars, while in 2004 this figure was only 30 billion U.S. dollars, which means that from 2005 to the end of 2008, the global clean energy investment within four years turned five times.

So the future would be predicted. The nuclear power would be developed and invested dramatically. However, same as all non-renewable energy sources, the prerequisite for the development of nuclear power - uranium mining, is scarce and unevenly distributed, which means that, if there is a global short supply of uranium, the prices would rise up sufficiently just like the soaring of oil price in 2008.

The uranium sources are highly concentrated. The world's major uranium producing countries are Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan, which accounts for 23.0%, 20.9% and 16.1%, together accounted for 60.0% of the world uranium output. However, the production of uranium fuel for nuclear reactors can only meet the world's demand by 60%. In 2007 the uranium produced was 41,279 tons, growing 4.7% compared with 2006. And by 2007, there are only 18 countries mining the uranium resources in total.

Uranium prices have already staged a new peak. From the end of 2006, the global uranium price was going up sustainably, from December 2006 72.00 U.S. dollars / lb to June 2007 138 U.S. dollars / lb. a monthly average increase even reached 10 U.S. dollars / lb and over.

So the hunting for the nuclear fuel will become a tough job for most countries. At present, a million-kilowatt-class nuclear power generating units required every year 27 tons of uranium fuel, which means 160 tons of natural uranium ore. As for China, annual uranium production of uranium is about 700 million tons, which means about 50% of fuel need to be imported. By 2020, with the completion of new mega nuclear plants, this figure will become 90%. So once the imports disrupted, the nuclear security would be challenged and even the national economy would be dampened in a devastating way.

The cost of nuclear waste treatments is also likely to affect the competitiveness of nuclear power. Since the treatment of nuclear waste require advanced technologies, a lot of money need to be consumed to ensure the environmental safety. And it is also a universal formidable problem of how to prevent the nuclear leak from violent earthquake or some exogenic actions.

To summarize, the nuclear energy may not have distinct advantage of price. The constructions of nuclear plants are advised to be carefully considered and calculated instead of following the trend of new energy blindly by governments. And it is also wisely for the governments to invest in more Uranium when it is at low prices and make a shortage in case of being controlled by others. On the other hand, the technical improvements of nuclear waste treatments and thermal efficiency may also cost a multitude of capital, which requires governments to tradeoff carefully and act according to the nation’s capability.

Generation 4 Nuclear Reactor: Safety Feature

Last 2 weeks ago, under the guidance of Miss Souk Yee, we had our round-table discussion held during her tutorial class. The aim of the discussion is to find out the most suitable generation 4 nuclear reactor concept for funding of further research and development. There are actually 6 new nuclear reactor concepts in total but for that discussion purpose we only discussed 2 of them, which are super-critical water cooled reactor and very high temperature reactor. During the discussion, we argued on some areas, mostly on safety factors as it is inevitably the most influential factor to think of before deciding the outcome of the discussion.
Safety factor is heavily considered because if accident occurs at nuclear reactor sites, it can result in massive releases of radioactivity. So, scientists have made a good job to introduce those nuclear reactors by accounting the possibility of occurrence of accidents. For example, the VHTR has passive heat removal systems, low power density and easily cool-able geometry, which are vital to prevent reactor from over-heating. Helium is used in the heat removal system as a coolant because it is an inert gas and it will not react chemically with any other material. The VHTR will also be equipped with graphite-moderated core which has tiny pellets of uranium fuel encased in it and they will absorb heat without failing and will not release radioactive elements as its waste. This is important because if radioactive waste is produced, extra facility has to be built to eliminate these wastes and cost of the nuclear reactor will eventually become even higher.
With the safety feature developed in VHTR and other reactor concepts, I believe that nuclear reactor will soon replace conventional fuels as our main supply of electricity energy.

Written by,
Chin Kah Fai