28415 - Scientific English for Veterinary Science
5 and 4 and 3 and 2
Optional
3. Syllabus
Contents are divided into 20 units that are distributed as follows:
1.Describing qualifications in Higher Education. Identifying and defining the different sciences and subjects composing the veterinary degree. Naming and describing activities and jobs related to the veterinary profession. Assignment: essay on veterinary studies and profession based on reading available texts. Lexical exercises. Translation sentences.
2. Describing physical features. External characteristics of animals. Rhetorical functions: physical description and classifying techniques. Linguistic content: degrees of generalization, comparative structures, shortened relative clauses. Assignment:
Reading comprehension and vocabulary exercises. Practice with relative clauses.
3. Naming statements. Identifying and recognizing common terms used for animals. Defining common terms used to denote sex and age of animals. Defining common terms used to denote birthing and grouping of animals. Primary data in clinical histories. Rhetorical functions: definition. Assignment: lexical exercises.
4. Describing shapes, properties, size, dimension and colour. Assignment: translation exercise. Using prefixes, suffixes and roots in deducing meaning.
5. Expressing similarities and differences. Rhetorical functions: comparing and contrasting. Linguistic content: comparison and contrast. Introducing physical examination, surgical wear and basic clinical material terminology. Assignment:
Comparison and contrast exercises. Summarizing texts. Common suffixes in medical contexts.
6. Formal vs Informal definitions. Basic components of a formal definition. Assignment: defining exercises. Basic laboratory material.
7. Learning anatomical terminology: general directional terms, directional terms for limbs. Plans of section. Rhetorical functions: definition and description Linguistic content: basic anatomical terminology, adjectives and nouns. Use of prefixes, suffixes and roots in anatomical terminology. Assignment: Exercises applying formal anatomical terminology.
8. Describing structures. Verbs associated with structures: composition, location and direction. Relationship between elements. Assignment: using verbs in descriptions of anatomical structures and location. Translation exercises.
9. The musculoskeletal system terminology. Describing bone anatomy terms. Common diseases and disorders affecting the musculoskeletal system. Frequent traumatological problems. Assignment: Lexical and translation exercises.
10. Practicing description of structure, location and relationship between parts. Describing function. Different types of digestive systems: components and function description. Assignment: reading comprehension exercise. Common verbs and
adjectives used in function description. Assignment: lexical exercises. Description of organ functions.
11. Describing process. Sequencing the steps in the process description. Internal anatomy and physiology: The heart cycle and the digestion process. Linguistic content: Markers of time sequence. Time clauses. Causality and result. Assignment: Description of process: life cycle.
12. Practicing physical, function and process description. The respiratory and nervous system components, location and function. Common signs of respiratory and neurological disease. Irregular plurals. Common acronyms and abbreviations.
Assignment: reading comprehension exercises based on Case studies.
13. Applying previous knowledge and context in text comprehension. The urinary and reproductive systems in mammals. Assignment: reading comprehension exercises based on case studies.
14. Deducing the meaning of words through context. Feeding farm animals. The constituents of foods. Food requirements. Linguistic content: Passive sentences. Use of defective verbs (may, might, should).Assignment: Understanding authentic written material. Paragraph writing. Oral summary of written texts. Causality and result relationships. Assignment: matching causes and effects.
15. Describing symptoms. The causes of ill health. Linguistic contents: common abbreviations, prefixes, suffixes and roots used in clinical contexts. Common terms used in signs and symptoms description. Assignment: understanding and summarizing written texts. Translation exercise.
16- Livestock health: describing pests and diseases. Rhetorical functions: Classification. Instructions. Linguistic content: Statements of frequency. Statements of probability and tendency. Using text information in answering questions.
17- Veterinary tools and techniques. Small versus large animals veterinary clinics. Review of formal clinical terminology. Lexical exercise on veterinary clinical material and techniques.
18- Presenting Veterinary Case Studies. Use of texts information in answering questions. Linguistic content: Making deductions.
19- General review of basic laboratory, surgical and medical material used by veterinary practitioners. Practicing with common acronyms and abbreviations used in the veterinary profession. Describing terms and equipment for the basic physical examination. Recognizing and defining terms associated with pharmacology and drugs used in various treatments, pathological procedures and processes, and with different types of surgery and the instruments used. Recognizing and defining terms associated with laboratory analysis, radiographic and imaging procedures. Lexical exercise on laboratory, surgical and medical equipment.
20- ANNEXES: Suffixes, prefixes and roots. Linking words and phrases.
4. Academic activities
60 hours of practical classroom teaching in 30 sessions of 2 hours each.
The subject has a fundamentally practical orientation, through activities based on the concepts learned in the classroom sessions, which require constant active participation of the students. To this end, prior to each session, participants will be provided with the subject materials (through the Moodle platform) to optimize teacher-student contact time.
During each session, the contents corresponding to the topic will be presented through practical examples using authentic material taken from oral and written texts related to topics of interest in the field of veterinary sciences, dedicating approximately 30-40 minutes to their development. The rest of the session will be dedicated to oral practice and the solving of doubts.
Students must also invest a reasonable number of hours of self-study and carry out written exercises related to the topics developed in the classroom, in which all the knowledge acquired will be put into practice. Weekly monitoring of these assignments will allow for ongoing assessment of learning progress.
5. Assessment system
Learning progress will be assessed through attendance and active participation in the classroom sessions and will take into account the fulfilment of the assigned individual tasks, adaptation to generic conventions, structure, variety, grammatical correctness and use of technical vocabulary and progress in oral communication through classroom activities.
Overall test
All students will be evaluated by a global test at the end of the face-to-face sessions period. Previously, the student will be provided with a test of identical characteristics, so that they is aware of the type of test and the level of demand. The test will consist of the following parts:
- Use of specialized lexicon and ability to deduce the meaning of technical words used in veterinary studies and profession (25%).
- Writing paragraphs of scientific/biomedical content from the information provided, applying the morphosyntactic, semantic and discursive structures characteristic of scientific language (30%).
- Reformulation of the information applying the acquired knowledge of synonymy, use of connectors, abbreviations and different formulas to express the characteristic functions of scientific language (15%).
- Comprehension of authentic texts in the veterinary field, applying techniques of deduction of meaning through context, comprehension of complex nominal compounds, knowledge of compound word formation (prefixes, suffixes, roots) and knowledge of the textual structure depending on the communicative function of the selected text (20%).
- Use of key words in English when searching for information online. (10%).
In order to pass the subject, the student must obtain a minimum of 60% of the maximum grade in each of the sections.
Oral test
Students who have not demonstrated this skill in the practical classes will be required to take an oral exam, consisting of a 10-15 minute interview in which topics related to the academic and professional veterinary activity will be discussed.