Unit 8a Book

1. Introduction

Perhaps the machine which is most associated with electrical engineering is an electric motor. With their function of converting electrical energy to mechanical energy, electric motors have changed our lives and jobs, making them less laborious. They come in various sizes, types and applications and we can hardly imagine our lives without them. This unit is going to look at them in more detail, especially in the context of dimensions and troubleshooting.

Contents:

• Numbers and dimensions:

Length in metres, weight in kilogrammes….

• Present Perfect Simple in troubleshooting:

Have you fixed the machine? Have you checked the bolts? Have you replaced the battery?

• Present Perfect Simple vs. Past Simple; the Passive voice to make texts more formal:

Yes, the machine has been fixed. The bolts were checked yesterday and the battery was exchanged five days ago. 

2. Warm-up: Forum

Electric motors seem to be an integral part of our lives. List as many items as you can in your home which use electric motors. Which room has the most items? Answer these questions in this forum and respond to at least one contribution of a fellow student.

It is highly probable that in the forum, you not only used nouns, but also the adjective “electric”. Why not electrical? Why do you say “an electric motor”, but the Faculty of  Electrical Engineering? Read the explanation here.

3. Listening: A Simple DC Motor and Its Technical Principle

The simplest one from the huge family of electric motors seems to be a simple DC motor that often serves as a demonstration of a DC motor principle. Watch the video and complete this listening comprehension task.  

Now that you know some basic principle of a DC motor, it should not be so difficult to describe it. First, look at the diagram in your coursebook (Bonamy, D. (2011). Technical English Level 3 Coursebook. Pearson Longman, p. 65). Then complete the description of the motor technical principle here.

4. Grammar: How to Write out and Read out Numbers

Have you ever wondered which is the largest electric motor in the world? Well, while searching the internet, you will find out that there are various websites giving a variety of information on this topic. This exercise will give you one possible answer to this question. Your task is to read a text with all numbers written out and then complete gaps with corresponding digits. While doing so, you should get a basic idea on how big numbers, digital numbers and currencies are read. Then complete this overview and finally practise writing out numbers here.

5. Grammar: The Present Perfect Passive vs. The Past Simple Passive

As a student of electrical engineering, you probably understand how and why electricity is so important for us. Without electricity, our lives would certainly be different and perhaps even more difficult. Electricity powers lots of machines that make our lives easier. What are the most important discoveries and inventions in the field of electrical engineering? Read about some of them, shortlisted by the server interestingengineering.com. As you read the text in this task, put the deleted subheadings in their original places in the text. After you finish, leave the task window open because you will need the information from the text to complete a follow-up task.

Now let´s change the subject for a while. What do you think: are we alone in the Universe? Or are we just one of the many species, which means that we are likely to meet some extra-terrestrials? If so, the question is why they haven´t contacted us before. Maybe it is because they are more technologically developed than us. This is the idea some Hollywood movies try to persuade us to believe. And in fact, this is quite logical: even we, humans, would not be very interested in having a chat with someone less developed, for example, ants. Now imagine these extra-terrestrials are planning to contact us. To be a hundred percent sure it is the right time to do that, they have a special check list. Now, they are judging our technological development by discussing some individual key discoveries and inventions to see whether or not they have been made on Earth. One of the questions may be, for example, as follows:

Have the humans discovered electricity?

And the answer would be:

Yes, they have. Electricity was known to Ancient Greeks and Romans, but they were not able to use it. But it has been studied scientifically since the 1700s.

The key discoveries/inventions are listed in the previous task and in this follow-up task. Complete all the gaps in this task, and as you do so, pay special attention to the use of two verb tenses: the Past Simple (active and passive) and the Present Perfect (active and passive).

How successful were you at completing the task? While doing the task, you may have noticed that basically you use the Present Perfect Tense if you want to talk about actions that started at an unspecified past time and are still continuing. When using the Present Perfect Tense, you usually give some general kind of information, without going into details:

Yes, they have discovered DC current. (has/have + past participle)

You can also convert the active voice into the passive voice especially if you wish to sound more formal and do not want to mention the agent (i.e. the one that does the action). The object of the active sentence then becomes a subject of the passive sentence:

Yes, DC current has been discovered. (has/have been + past participle)

If you add some details, especially about the time of the discovery, you need to use the Past Simple tense:

Direct current was first produced artificially by Alessandro Volta in the early 1800s.

(was/were + past participle)

The reason why you need to use the Past Simple tense is quite obvious: the action is finished. There is no longer the year 1800 or the 1800s.

Both the tenses, the Past Simple tense and the Present Perfect tense have already been covered (the Past Simple tense in the AEL3 course in Unit 1a and the Present Perfect tense in Unit 3a). The passive voice was covered in the same course in Unit 2bc. However, if you feel you need to revise them in detail, click the links in this paragraph. After brushing off your knowledge, practise the Past Simple passive and the Present Perfect passive here and here.

6. Speaking: Manufacturing Process

In the previous tasks, you drilled the Present Perfect passive and the Past Simple passive forms, so now it´s high time to use these forms freely. Here, you can see stages of a typical manufacturing process:

1)     Optimize a prototype

2)     Prepare concept and design

3)     Write specification

4)     Test a prototype for bugs

5)     Ship a finished product to distributors

6)     Approve a prototype

7)     Test a product for high standards of quality

8)     Elicit customer‘s needs and ideas

9)     Manufacture a product

10) Create the first prototype

First, put the stages of the manufacturing process in the correct order. Then imagine that you are a member of a team of designers involved in the manufacturing process. Although the project started many months ago, it has not been completed yet. As a result, your boss is pretty angry with you. He is now trying to find out what the problem is and what the current stage of the production process is. What has been done? When? What hasn´t been done yet? Why? (Come up with some excuses). How much extra time will be necessary? Work in pairs with one of you being the CEO and the other one being the designer. Role-play the dialogue and record yourself. You can either use a simple recording application that comes with your smart phone, or you can use a video-conferencing software, for example, Zoom or Meet. Your recording should not be longer than three minutes and exceed 10MB. Submit your recording using this portlet.

7. Writing: Describing a Manufacturing Process

Think of the same manufacturing process that you were discussing in the dialogue in Section 6 above. If you cannot recall it, here it is, but you need to put the stages of the manufacturing process in the correct order first:

1)     Optimize a prototype

2)     Prepare concept and design

3)     Write specification

4)     Test a prototype for bugs

5)     Ship a finished product to distributors

6)     Approve a prototype

7)     Test a product for high standards of quality

8)     Elicit customer‘s needs and ideas

9)     Manufacture a product

10) Create first prototype

Once you have put the stages in the correct order, describe the process in at least eight sentences. In your paragraph, use the passive voice (four times the minimum) and the expressions of sequence: first, next, after that, then, finally. Submit the finished text as a Word or Open Office document via this Moodle portlet.

8. Key to Exercises

A printer-friendly version of Unit 8a exercises and the keys to these exercises can be found here.