ESP Seminar Work – Language Analysis of Mathematical Text

Collecting ESP Seminar Works (= ESP SW) is supposed to be the first stage of developing the project called 'English-Czech / Czech-English Mathematical Dictionary'. The project has been prepared by the Language Department of  Mathematics and Physics Faculty, Charles University.

ESP SW are prerequisites for 2nd (resp.3rd) year students and students of a specialized course “English for Mathematicians” to receive credits in English. 2nd (resp.3rd) year students can gain maximum 20 points doing the ESP SW.

Important Dates - Summer Semester 2011/2012:

ESP SW will be done in the following steps:

• By March 19, 2012 teachers will give students the original texts.
• By April 30, 2012 students will enter data from analysing their pages into a computer program https://astra.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/caacslovnik/index.php and give their original texts (signed and underlined by them!) to their teacher. 

• By May 11, 2012 teachers will lock students' "accounts";

• By May 18, 2012 teachers will evaluate students' works and send their vocabulary into a category of "checked" ones.

You should:

1. analyse the texts from the point of view of mathematical terms, phrases/word structures and sentence structures they include;
2. underline in the original text two kinds of specialised vocabulary - the vocabulary which is already included in the computer program, and the vocabulary, which is newly included; including old terms without including new structures is forbidden and means losing points;
3. specify parts of speech, using abbreviations generally used in English-English dictionaries:  - n (= noun), adj (adjective), adv (= adverb), v (=verb), prep (preposition) etc.; write down the irregular plural of the noun if it exists,
4. translate terms, phrases and sentence structures into the Czech language.

 Evaluation:

There are the following criteria for evaluation of ESP SW: 1) carefulness (students should write all the information they were asked for without spelling mistakes: his/her surname; name; group; (language) level; teacher; time of course; semester and academic year; choose the correct name of the book; write the correct pages; all terms and phrases are underlined in the original text; 2) nouns are always given in singular form, plurals are mentioned only when irregular ones are possible; 3) verbs are always in infinitive form (without “to”); 4) depth of the analysis – e.g. if the student finds and translates only new terms or phrases included in his/her original text. 

 Minus Points for:

Spelling mistakes;  missing information in the introduction (your surname, name, group, language level, teacher, time of course, semester and academic year, the name of the book, pages); not underlining terms in the original text; wrong specification of parts of speech; missing irregular plural; missing translation; incorrect translation; missing sentences; missing diacritical marks; verbs not in infinitives (without “to”); terms without phrases; the original text not signed (name + № of group); losing the original text; submitting ESP SW after deadline to the end of the semester.

Every ESP SW should contain at least 10 word structures and 5 sentences .