For The Faculty of Liberal Arts and Media Studies of JC Bose University of Science and Technology, Faridabad, Haryana and Literature students world-wide.
English and Foreign Languages
Journalism and Mass Communication
Animation
Winners in the digital age do much more than complete a technology checklist. They know their success hinges on people. Understanding changing customer needs and behaviors is, of course, hugely important. But the real deciding factor in the digital era will be the ability to evolve corporate culture. That means not simply taking advantage of emerging technologies but, critically, embracing the new business strategies that those technologies drive.
You can’t solve this challenge just by consuming more and more technology. Nor, as some fear, by replacing humans with machines. Instead, enterprises must focus on enabling people – consumers, employees and ecosystem partners – to do more with technology. That demands a digital corporate culture enabling people to continuously adapt, learn, create new solutions, drive relentless change, and disrupt the status quo. In an age where tech is grabbing the limelight, true leaders will, in fact, put people first.
SUBJECT
NAME: Interactive English
for Engineers (IEE)
NO. OF
CREDITS: 4
SESSIONAL
: 40
L T P THEORY
EXAM : 60
4 0 0 TOTAL : 100
NOTE: Question paper has two parts. Part-1 has 10 questions each of 2
marks. It covers the entire syllabus. Attempt any four questions out of six
from Part-2.
Objective:
It aims to inculcate interest towards literary pursuits and creative
writing in students. Their imaginative faculties will be harnessed for the
purpose of originality and ability to think independently. Furthermore, the aim
is to enhance their critical thinking and develop aptitude for formal writing
and oral discussions. They are guided and given exercises to improve their
vocabulary during the course, simultaneously through classroom and lab
exercises the students gain confidence in their own ability to express their
thoughts and articulate ideas.
Unit –I- COMPREHENSION
& COMPOSITION
Excerpt
from John Updike’s Cosmic Gall;
Paragraphs/Essays; Unseen Passage & Comprehension exercises derived from
features, articles and editorials; exercises in creative writing and
impromptu/extempore speech; Anecdotes/stories; Deconstructing & Re-framing
Quotes; Verse composition;Dialogue-writing; Story-building and storyboards;
travelogue
Unit-II-TECHNICAL
WRITING
Format
of Long Reports, Interoffice Memorandum, Format and layout of a typical
business letter; Covering letter and Resume; Analytical and Descriptive
writing.
Presentations; drafting
and creating effective presentations; drafting speeches ; taking interviews;
preparing for interviews; brainstorming for Group Discussions, declamations and
debates; , Corporate Dialogue: Conflict-Resolution exercises; Role Play.
COURSE OUTCOMES:
Students are equipped with a better
vocabulary, confidence to express themselves and must show remarkable
interest in conveying their ideas by the end of the course.
Students will learn creative writing.
Students will learn basic formal writing.
‘Student-centric’ exercises with the emphasis on interpersonnel communication
skills will give the students greater confidence in their ability to
communicate and persuade.
References:
National dailies like Hindu, HT, TOI, Tribune (e-versions
available)
Magazines like NatGeo, Outlook, India Today
Raman, Meenakshi and
Sangeeta Sharma. Technical Communication. Oxford: 2011
Ghosh, BN. Managing
Soft Skills for Personality Development.Tata McGraw-Hill 2012
Rizvi, M Ashraf. Effective Technical Communication.
Tata Mc Graw-Hill.2005
Bretag, Crossman and
Bordia.Communication Skills. Tata Mc Graw-Hill.2009
Blogs:
Eng_lessons_dj.blogspot.com
Renaissanceymcaust.blogspot.com
Language Lab (HAS 112)
Credit
course
Internal: 30 Marks
L T P Total
External: 20 Marks
0 0 2 2
Total : 50 Marks
CORPORATE INTERACTION & COMMUNICATION
I.Presentations
II. Listening Skills & Language Lab (Practical) Interviews of Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, Steve Jobs and other scientists and technocrats. Other inspiring speeches on diverse issues; Audio/Video Lessons and Observation
III.Group Discussions, Corporate Dialogue: Conflict-Resolution exercises; Role Play; Mock-interviews.
IV.Internal Assessment: based on participation, short presentation & performance in interactive exercises: competence gauged through participation in various events organized in the classroom and at university level throughout the semester.
“The language I speak, Becomes mine, Its distortions, its queerness All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, ... —Kamla Das INDIANISMS displaying the local flavour sneak into English as we use it for functional and literary purposes. They surface as variations made to the core variety, Standard British English (SBE). Though these variants are not viewed as superior or inferior to SBE, they are certainly recognised as different. They have earned the local variety its popular label, Indian English. Broadly speaking, Indianisms are evident as pronunciation, word/sentence structure, meaning and style. Not all Indian variants in reference to sentence structure are acceptable, as seen below: 1. Prof. Reddy has given the cheque yesterday. Within SBE rules, the sentence above shows inappropriate use of present perfect tense “has given” in the context of the adverb “yesterday”. The correct sentence will read as “Prof. Reddy gave the cheque yesterday”, the adverb “yesterday” is used with the simple past tense. 2. I am having two brothers. A common usage among Indians, the present progressive form of verb “am having” is not permitted in SBE to show possession. Though the sense the sentence wants to convey is clear, the use of present progressive tense in the given situation has to be avoided. The amended version will read as “I have two brothers” by making use of present simple. 3. The polling booth for the residents is here only. The user’s intention in the sentence above is to draw the interlocutor’s attention to “here” by using the adverb “only”. The location “here” is to be contrasted with “not anywhere else”, implied by the use of “only”. Many users tend to place “only” at the end of sentences excessively since they don’t make use of intonation or pitch variation to show the intended contrast. In SBE, too, “only” is used to show emphasis and contrast but its position within sentences keeps varying, depending upon the word that needs emphasis. For instance, “Only Capt. Kahlon could have rescued so many people.” Here, “only” implies “no other person”. 4. “Like a gossamer- this web brushed aside by a careless hand, the fragile balance of relations in South Asia has dissolved with frightening suddenness ...” (from a news magazine) The writer has condensed a lot of information in the phrases of the yet incomplete sentence. Packing too much in the phrases and clauses or piling up images makes the text difficult to understand. Such texts defy good, clear communication, a recommended feature of writing these days. Once completed, this long winding text can be rewritten in two or three sentences. The acculturation of English in Indian soil is not the only instance of its kind. In the medieval times, Persian had evolved as Indian Persian (Sabk-e-Hind) through a similar process. But amending Indian variants of grammar in English, if they distort the meaning or fail to serve any purpose, is mandatory for pan-Indian communication and international intelligibility.
Disappointed Vivek Oberoi shot in "48 to 50 degrees" in Rajasthan for Sher, but now the action thriller's release has been blocked by "legal" issues. The actor says it is very disappointing.
Take two Rajeev Khandelwal says the team of Samrat & Co has already thought of a possibility of a sequel to the film, and the actor has expressed a keen interest to be part of it.
Tie up Nigeria, is keen to collaborate with the over $2-billion Indian film industry to promote better understanding between the two countries and provide competition to Hollywood.
The World of Business as Reflected in English Language Buzzwords, Second Edition
Austin, Texas, June 17, 2015– The Global Language Monitor has announced the Top Business Buzzwords of the Year, for Global English, the world’s pre-eminent language of commerce.
“It is often noted that the world of business includes its own specialized vocabularly, and this can certainly be found in the English language, the business language of the planet,” said Paul JJ Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “The Top Trending Business Buzzwords of 2015 represent some six continents, which continues to confirm the ever-expanding nature of the English language. This is the second annual ranking,”
GLM’s Word of the Year and Business Buzzwords of the Year rankings are based upon actual word usage throughout the English-speaking world, which now numbers more than 1.83 billion people. To qualify for these lists, the words, names, and phrases must be found globally, have a minimum of 25,000 citations. and the requisite ‘depth’ and ‘breadth’ of usage. Depth is here defined as appearing in various forms of media; breadth that they must appear world-over, not limited to a particular profession or social group or geography.
Top 50 Business Buzzwords
Rank, Previous Rank, Change, Business Buzzword, Comment
2015 2013 Change Business Buzzword Comment
1 1 0 Content — Far and away the No. 1 Business Buzzword leader
2 37 35 Net-Net – Consider a sportswriter for the Brooklyn Nets basketball team: “The net-net for the Nets was the netting of the final shot.”
3 10 7 Big Data — Soon Human Knowledge will be doubling every second. ’Big’ does not begin to describe what’s coming at us.
4 19 15 At-the-end-of-the-day — More likely the end of the quarter or fiscal year
5 2 -3 Social Media — Reality: Social media impacts less than 15% of the Web
6 15 9 Offline — ‘I’ll be offline’. The statement is meaningless unless one includes cell phones, tablets, smarty TVs, not to mention all atomic clocks.
7 41 34 Face time– Before it was a product, it was a meeting with a C-Level executive.
8 9 1 Ping — High tech lingo seeping into the mainstream; now it means ‘get back to you’. Originally, a tool to send message packets to a network address to measure the time & quality of the response.
9 44 35 Rock-and-a-hard-place — A supposedly intractable situation though it usually gets back on track (Our ‘between Iraq and a hard place’ is being replaced because of the on-going political situation}
10 20 10 Win-Win Much — more positive than tie-tie or lose-lose
11 35 24 As if it was — Used some four times more than the correct, ‘as if it were’. You know, conditional voice.
12 7 -5 Utilize (rather than use) — Please deflate the diction and utilize the word ‘use’
13 5 -8 Literally — Principally used in non-literal situation, e.g., “Literally, an explosion of laughter”.
14 11 -3 Any noun used as a verb — To concept. To ballpark, and the like ….
15 6 -9 Guru — Someone moderately skilled in a subject or particular field (cf. ‘rocket scientist’ or ‘brain surgeon’).
16 42 26 Re-purpose — Finding a new use for an old ‘solution. Unfortunately anything thing can be re-purposed, including your job (or yourself).
17 8 -9 Robust — Applies to oh-so-many products: software, tablets (computer and otherwise), coffee, perfume, mileage, and hundreds of others
18 38 20 Value-add — P+E+VA, where Product (is P) + Enhancement (is Ε ), and Value add (is VA)
19 4 -15 Transparency — Remains a goal far from corporate reality; perhaps a handy scale would be 1} Opaque, 2} Translucent, 3) Transparent.
20 12 -8 Seamless — Seldom actually seamless (Cf. Obamacare website), often merely ‘seemless’ or meaningless
21 3 -18 Sustainability — No. 1 Word in 2007; have been rising in BizBuzz every year
22 51 29 Hashtag — The number-sign and pound- sign grows more powerful every day.
23 16 -7 Bandwidth — Measurement of electronic communications devices to send and receive information with upper and lower limits
24 40 16 Glass is half-full — Used nine times more that glass is half empty …
25 22 -3 Pro-active — Evidently better than amateur-active
26 46 20 Quick-and-dirty — Cited tens of thousands of times; we prefer ‘quick-and-clean’
27 18 -9 Synergy — The interaction of two efforts that result in a greater return than the sum of the two
28 14 -14 The Cloud — Everything (and every one) now apparently ‘lives in the cloud’ though networking clouds pre-date the web by a decade or two
29 36 7 In the Cloud — Yes, dwelling within the Cloud merits a special mention.
30 21 -9 Game changer — A step way below a paradigm-shift but still usually an exaggeration nonetheless.
31 48 17 Touch base — Another baseball allusion: if you don’t actually touch the base you are ‘called out’. Cf Cricket allusions, such as using ‘sticky wicket ‘ for a quandary.
32 13 -19 Moving Forward — From the results of those countless ‘moving forwards’, moving sideways might be more appropriate
33 23 -10 Rock Star — What’s the hierarchy among Guru, Rocket Scientist, Brain Surgeon, and Rock Star?
34 39 5 Future proof — In reality an impossible feat because it assumes you are cognizant of future events; in Marketing, just another day of concepting.
35 47 12 Push the envelope — A phrase few actually understand; Originally a descriptor of breaking through the sound barrier by X-Series Test Pilots (e.g., X-15).
36 33 -3 Ballpark — Another name for a ‘guesstimate’ (another baseball allusion).
37 31 -6 Multi-task — Swapping in and out of tasks quickly is the key to multi-tasking not doing many things as once which actually decreases productivity (as imagined by Dave Nelson and other tech industries leaders in the 1970s).
38 30 -8 110% — We believe it’s time to synchronize the exertion scale. As a hiring manager, how do you compare 110% from an Ivy school with an exertion level of 130% from the Big Ten?
39 26 -13 Resonate — Produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound, belief or emotion
40 29 -11 Deliverable — An output, product, result, or outcome; a term of great flexibility.
41 27 -14 Monetize — The attempt to transmute Internet lead into gold.
42 34 -8 Flounder — A ship might ‘founder’ along New England’s rocky coastline. Over time the act of foundering became collated with flounder the fish. Your grasp of the language is telegraphed by this confusion.
43 32 -11 Rocket science –One step up (or down) from a guru; equivalent to a Brain surgeon).
44 17 -27 New paradigm == Revolutionary new ideas that change the then-existing worldview; think Copernicus, think Newton, think Einstein, most definitely not your next product.
45 28 -17 Double Down — To double an investment in an already risky proposition.
46 43 -3 Brain surgery — One step up (or down) from a guru; equivalent to a Rocket Scientist.
47 45 -2 Bleeding edge — Leading edge of the leading edge (top ten per cent).
48 50 2 Low-hanging fruit — Easy pickin’s for the sales force; unfortunately, obsolete since 2008
49 24 -25 30,000 foot level — Let’s decide if we are viewing the topic from the 30,000-, 40,000-, or 100,000 foot level. Airlines typically fly at a 35,000 foot cruise level
50 49 -1 Herding cats — Used in high tech circles for several decades regarding controlling headstrong engineers, a seemingly impossible task.
51 25 -26 Out-of-the-Box (experience) — OOBE is evermore important to the marketing of consumer electronic devices.
Although better known for her Silver Screen exploits, Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) also became a pioneer in the field of wireless communications following her emigration to the United States. The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a "Secret Communications System" to help combat the Nazis in World War II. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.
Lamarr and Anthiel received a patent in 1941, but the enormous significance of their invention was not realized until decades later. It was first implemented on naval ships during the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequently emerged in numerous military applications. But most importantly, the "spread spectrum" technology that Lamarr helped to invent would galvanize the digital communications boom, forming the technical backbone that makes cellular phones, fax machines and other wireless operations possible.
As is the case with many of the famous women inventors, Lamarr received very little recognition of her innovative talent at the time, but recently she has been showered with praise for her groundbreaking invention. In 1997, she and George Anthiel were honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Award. And later in the same year, Lamarr became the first female recipient of the BULBIE™ Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, a prestigious lifetime accomplishment prize for inventors that is dubbed "The Oscar™ of Inventing."
Proving she was much more than just another pretty face, Lamarr shattered stereotypes and earned a place among the 20th century's most important women inventors. She truly was a visionary whose technological acumen was far ahead of its time.
For more information on inventor Hedy Lamarr, refer to:
