Unit 10a Book

1. Introduction

What is important in technical fields is definitely safety. Companies usually take the issue of occupational health and safety (OHS) very seriously because it is much easier and less expensive to take safety precautions than to deal with accidents resulting in severe injuries or even fatalities. However, although safety officers try to do their best to prevent these incidents, electrical accidents occur very often. Most of them happen during routine maintenance or troubleshooting and are caused by human errors and carelessness. Some workers simply seem to forget that although electricity is a great convenience, it can also be dangerous and must be treated respectfully.

Even the authors of your textbook pay great attention to the topic of safety. Unit 10a will give you an opportunity to revise grammatical structures used to describe an accident. You will also revise question forms because questions are an integral part of incident investigation.

Contents:

• Revision: Past Continuous tense for describing actions in progress:

At 7 o´clock, the worker was doing regular maintenance work.

• Revision: Past Continuous tense for talking about actions occurring simultaneously:

As he was digging a hole using a pneumatic breaker, his co-workers were standing nearby.

As he was digging a hole using a pneumatic breaker, he hit an underground cable.

• Revision: Past Simple tense for past events that did not take time:

As he was digging a hole using a pneumatic breaker, he hit an underground cable.

• Revision: Past Simple tense for consequent actions:

When his co-workers saw the accident, they called for an ambulance.

2. Warm-up: Forum

Have you had or witnessed a job-related accident? If you can, describe briefly what happened. If you find it difficult to recall it, just list some of the potential dangers in electrical engineering in general. In this forum, explain the following expressions: insulator, conductor, amperage, electric shock, short circuit, maintenance.

3. Listening: Job-Related Accidents

In this section, you are going to hear part of a radio programme on accidents in electrical engineering. To make the listening a bit easier for you, complete this pre-listening task first. Then listen to the radio programme and match the general descriptions to the individual accidents. Finally, listen again, this time focusing on details. While listening, complete all the gaps with the correct forms of the verbs in brackets.

4. Grammar Revision: Past Simple vs. Past Progressive/Continuous

Have you had any problems completing the gaps in the listening task in the previous section? It is highly probable that you completed the exercise successfully because this grammar point had been covered before: in Unit 7bc. Still, if you think you need to brush off this knowledge, complete the overview in this task. Alternatively, you can study this grammar overview, where this grammar point is explained in the context of famous inventions. Finally, practise the Past Simple and Past Progressive/Continuous tenses by completing this exercise.

5. Grammar: Past Passive to Talk about Actions Taken

Each accident reported to authorities should be investigated. In this exercise, you will find a list of actions taken after accidents. Your task will be to complete the sentences with the past passive form of the verbs in brackets. Make sure you are able to distinguish between the past passive form and the past progressive/continuous form of verbs. You can practise this grammar forms in this follow-up exercise.

6. Questions: Investigation

Once a job-related accident happens, investigation usually follows. The inspection official usually asks the witnesses many questions. Try to be in the shoes of this official and ask the questions yourself. Read the story in this task and then complete the questions by asking about the fact in CAPITALS. If you think you need to revise question forms before you do the task, read the grammar overview here.

7. Writing: An Incident Report

So far in this Unit, you have had an opportunity to read about several job-related accidents. Now read the accident report form in this task and try to write a complete story detailing the accident. Pay attention to the correct past tense use. Upload the completed text to Moodle as a Word or Open Office document. Write a minimum of five and a maximum of nine sentences.

8. What Caused the Accidents?

Now you have a chance to re-read all accidents presented in this Unit again. Your task is to decide what the accident were caused by. Tick all correct answers in this quiz. It is intended to both revise this unit and introduce the topic of the follow-up unit. In other words, Unit 10bc will deal with possible causes of accident in more detail. It will speculate about the past events and give some recommendations in the form of conditional sentences.

9. Word List

The key terms related to the topic of Unit 10abc can be found:

• in the Excel format here.
• in the interactive flash card format here. This format is particularly good for drilling the new vocabulary.
• in a zip file here. This file is downloadable, so that after unpacking it, you can drill the new vocabulary on your desktop, laptop or any other portable device where you have a browser installed. The recommended one is Mozilla Firefox. Important: after unzipping the zip file, make sure to keep all the related files in the same directory at all times. Do not change any file names and do not transfer or delete anything.

Recommendation: Remember that the best way to learn new vocabulary is to see each new word in a context; that is, seeing it in the contexts provided in the tasks you complete in the unit.

10. A printer-friendly version of Unit 10a

A printer-friendly version of Unit 10a exercises and the keys to these exercises can be found here.