INTRODUCTION:

Materials department is a part of N.E.D University which allows students to earn a bachelors as well as masters degree in the discipline of materials engineering. In the first semester of the first year the students have to study a total of FOUR subjects including Engineering Mechanics, Introduction to Engineering Materials, Applied Physics, Workshop (CARPENTARY & FITTING) and English.

ENGLISH is such of a subject on whose existence in the syllabus of B.E is often questioned by students. Most of them consider it to be a waste of time as it has no logical relationship with their field of study. The focus or the topic of this report is the English class held in the materials department for the session 2011 -2012

ENGLISH (HS-101) :
For spring semester the English course for the department of materials was taken by MISS SARAH USMAN who is a visitor teacher from Karachi University & is teaching English to polymer and metallurgy department as well.

THE BEGINING: The class was started with everyone's introduction along with the same question WHAT IS UR OPINION OVER ENGLISH BEING PART OF SYLLABUS?" The reply to this question divided the class in a sort of group of three:

THE SUPPORTERS: those who considered English as a great help to their professional life as it would not only be a source to improve their language but will also assist them in learning the methods of writing different things, along with a review of what they have learned till now.

THE REBELS: Second was of those who opposed this course as they thought it had no relation with their field of study and, the credit hours for this subject could've been easily utilized for learning a subject belonging to materials engineering.

THE CONFUSE: Finally were those who didnt have any opinion of their own and used the above mentioned points to save their neck. Quite easy was it to be done though!

Well it can easily be said that the start of the class was quite filled with an opposing atmosphere but how it proceeded and was finished is what actually matters.

COURSE:
The English course started with HOW TO LOOK UP WORDS IN A DICTIONARY properly along with quick reading skills including techniques like reading between the lines or getting the idea as to what the passage could be about through the main heading. Apart from this, it included several other topics which were quite different from what we had learned till intermediate.

The students for better practice and know how were given a workbook which consisted of the following parts

READING COMPREHENSION:

This portion of the workbook had 5 parts, each

containing a paragraph along with MCQ's, true & false, selecting the appropriate meaning for the underlined word and about two questions which the student had to define them. The students were fortunate enough as each of these 5 units were completed in the class under the teachers supervision unlike other departments where they had to do it on their own.

PARAGRAPH WRITING: The second half consisted of paragraph writing in which the students were taught how to write a proper paragraph. It involved sketching a mind map to bring your ideas onto paper and to create links between them; than to create scratch outline, to give a proper order to the mind map, following the paragraph itself. Along with these students were also taught about introductory sentence, supporting

details, concluding sentence and the most important TOPIC Sentence.

MEMO AND ESSAY WRITING: Following the paragraphs the next target was to learn how to write a memo and the proper forms of essay. There were introductory classes for explaining the types of essays and memos along with the proper method of writing, rules needed to be obeyed which were then aided by the exercises given in the workbook.

PRECIS: Apart from essay and memo something which was quite difficult to learn and to write was the precis. Though it was like a summary but was very different from it as the writer had to summarize the authors point of view with high exactness and assuring that he doesnt exceed a certain length.

LETTER: Letter writing was also a part of this work book but, due to lack of time students were only given introduction to letter along with a handout to help them practice further. There were formal and informal letters and the two methods that are full block and semi-block.

Besides covering the topics in the workbook, the coarse also consisted of certain grammar which involved punctuation, tenses, question tags, idioms and proverbs, homophones, clauses, phrases, types of sentences etc. Each topic was given a proper lecture, time to understand and handouts were provided at ALI'S PHOTOSHOP to help in practicing.

PRESENTATION:
Along with the marks of the finals the students also have to earn sessionals which is based on the lecturer as to how he/she distributes it. In case of English in materials the sessionals were divided as 10 for paragraph, 10 for assignments & 10 for presentation. This presentation was quite a spot light catcher as compared to others because the students were given a time of one month along with introductory lectures and a workbook (which was bought by probably 1 or 2 people). They were divided into group of four and five and had to prepare a topic for a total of 5 minutes for each member to speak. Students had arranged slideshows on PowerPoint were well dressed on the presentation day and did presented a group of versatile topics according to

their choices.

CLASS ATMOSPHERE/STUDENT BEHAVIOUR:

If this is brought into consideration than the entire semester was quite fine for the students. They had fun, took an active part while solving the workbook. There were moments when a foolish reply from a student caused the entire class to burst into laughter, times when the announcement of a class being cancelled brought about joy amongst the students. However, there was also quite tiresome and boring moments ( if students words are quoted exactly) like when students were tired after having tough classes before English so they were sleepy or when they had to take extra classes till 4 o' clock or had to stay in the university especially for Englishs class.

CONCLUSION:
The English period in the department of materials for the spring semester 2011-12 was no different than a roller coaster ride. It had its positive aspects of fun and learning, which without a doubt will support us in our future while we pursue our carrier as a "MATERIALS ENGINEER"; along with some lazy moments too like the extra classes supported with their wrong timings which made the students quite uneasy at times and subjected many to bunk as well. But, overall this entire ride was very interesting...