English that architects need
Common needs include:
- Speaking with prospective or actual clients, suppliers, business partners and colleagues
- Reading rules and regulations, catalogues, architecture journals and textbooks
- Writing emails, proposals, reports (e.g. progress reports) and essays
- To pass exams and to join professional associations
- Attending and presenting at conferences
- Giving presentations
If they are spending time in an English-speaking country, they might also have to deal with government representatives (e.g. health and safety inspectors).
Functions that are likely to come up while speaking are (in no particular order):
- Negotiating
- Dealing with enquiries
- Explaining why things have changed
- Explaining why things are impossible
- Responding to complaints
- Asking for more information
- Making arrangements
There will also be things specific to emailing, teleconferencing etc if (as is likely) they have to do those things. A lot of the language above can easily be adapted from ESP and Business English books by replacing words like “balance sheet” and “corporate restructuring” with more relevant vocabulary.
Vocabulary they might need includes:
- Types of building (“old people’s home”)
- Parts of buildings and particular types of them (“thatched roof”, “partition wall” etc)
- Building and decorating materials
- Stages of the process of finishing a building
- Things architects do (e.g. “estimate” and “model”)
- Things they use in their job (e.g. “set square”), especially if they have foreign colleagues
- Things other related people use and do, e.g. “lay foundations” and “estimate”
- Vocabulary connected to rules and regulations
- Colours
- Shapes
- Fittings and decorations
- Positive and negative adjectives to describe buildings and people’s reactions to them
- Actions that people do in buildings
- Finance related to buildings (e.g. “mortgage” and “rent”)
- Architectural styles and trends (“postmodern” etc)
The grammar they need will obviously be more general, but in the same way as a Technical English or Business English textbook will vary the order and priority given to grammar points, you can do the same for your English for Architects classes. For example, time expressions and future tenses are likely to be even more important for architects than for other professionals. Depending on what exactly your students do, the same may be true for numbers and quantifiers.
Profesor: Rita Leticia Cordero Olvera
Analizar, diseñar y revisar elementos de concreto, sujetos a diferentes tipos de solicitaciones y deformaciones, generadas por las cargas a las que va a estar sometida durante su vida útil, de acuerdo a los reglamentos y especificaciones vigentes.
Profesor: ALDO ALEJANDRO BARRERA RAMOS
Profesor: Alejandro Delgadillo Garcia
Que el alumno dispongan de un ámbito que les permita reflexionar sobre la práctica y los métodos de la investigación científica en el campo de la Arquitectura, del Diseño y del Urbanismo.
Debatir las perspectivas y principales categorías de análisis que emplean en la producción de sus ideas científicas en su disciplina; puedan debatir sobre los esquemas de investigación (exploración, descripción, verificación de hipótesis, etc.); las diversas estrategias investigativas (estudio de desarrollo de caso; estudio de tendencias; estudios de comparación de desarrollos, etc.); y los grados de profundización en la dinámica del objeto (estudios analíticos, estructurales, funcionales, históricos).
