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English for Computer Science

Lecture 2

Reading in General (1)

Importance of Words in Reading Handling Known Words Understanding Unknown Words Using Dictionaries Reading Practice

Importance of Words in Reading

Words are the building blocks of a passage.

Many students believe their English is poor because their vocabulary is small.

The set of words in a special CS area is more or less finite and closed.

Handling Known Words

Just because you “know” a word doesn’t mean you can always understand it correctly.

It is important to refer to context to understand known words.

There has been a minute improvement in the working conditions of the factory.

I sometimes develop, print and enlarge my own photographs, but usually I have them processed at a camera shop.

Understanding Unknown Words

Using context

Using etymological knowledge

Expanding your domain CS vocabulary

In machine learning, ensemble methods use multiple learning algorithms to obtain better predictive performance.

asynchronous, interdisciplinary, immutable, underpinning, perturbation, reimburse

In-Class Exercise

Explain the meaning of the following words with your word-building knowledge. You can use any kind of dictionary and/or seek online or offline help.

infallible

heterogeneous

nanotechnology

Understanding Unknown Words

Expanding your domain CS vocabulary

Amass academic words in your research domain

Do not fall prey to shortcuts to large vocabulary

Befriend vocabulary building books and good dictionaries

Using Dictionaries

Paper dictionaries

Electronic dictionaries

English-English dictionaries

English-Chinese dictionaries

Chinese-English dictionaries

Bilingual dictionaries

General-purpose dictionaries

Dictionaries for CS English

Reading Practice

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Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.

See you next time.

Carol Burnett