English Center
Welcome to the English Center.
The English center's main objective is to offer language support to professors, staff and students at Tecnun.
For students, as future Engineers, English is as essential as Math, it is not an option! If you want a good job in the future, you need English! Whether or not you can speak English is one of the first things your potential employer is going to ask you.
Tecnun offers 20% of its courses in English so it is the English Center's responsibility to ensure a high quality level of English from our professors as well as offering the possibility of our students the chance to improve their English.
Carol Cullinane
Head of English Center. Coordinator of Bilingual Program
ccullinane@unav.es
Carol Cullinane
20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain
+34 943 21 98 77 Ext. 84 2504
Elisabet Bosch
Head of English Center. International programs coordinator.
eboschgalle@unav.es
Elisabet Bosch
20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain
+34 943 21 98 77 Ext. 84 2504
IMPORTANCE OF ENGLISH FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Most of the scientific papers or journals in the world are written in English. Most of the engineering graphs are also marked in English. Moreover, most engineering professors in various universities are also conducting their lectures in English. Hence, engineering students should at least master the Basic English ability to deal with the countless English lectures, tutorials, labs, projects and papers. Finally, they have to submit their important theses, still in English.
SELF STUDY FOR TOEFL AND OTHER OFFICIAL EXAMS
GAMES & PUZZLES
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Logic Puzzles (for developing comprehension skills)
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Drop Quotes (for developing familiarity with English spelling)
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Reverse Word Searches (for developing familiarity with English spelling)
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Clueless Crosswords (for developing familiarity with English spelling)
BASIC RESOURCES
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ETS Test Questions (PDF file)
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ETS Quick Prep (PDF file)
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Magoosh is one of the best TOEFL sites. You especially want to read the helpful blog posts about TOEFL and they also have a mini test available in their Practice Test area. Finally, Magoosh has compiled vocabulary lists in a PDF version and a flashcard version.
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Edusynch.com has more than 1,200 interactive reading and listen questions. On top of that it analyzes your results, showing you your strengths and weaknesses.
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Prepscholar went through official TOEFL examinations and developed an excellent list of vocab words.
READING
One of the best ways to prepare for any language exam is to read in the target language.
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Kindle App which offers apart from books that you can buy, classic books that are available for free.
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New York Times is one of the leading newspapers in the United States. The Guardian is a British paper with a great app as well as a webpage. Their excellent writing style and their use of advanced vocabulary will prepare students well for the TOEFL reading.
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Popular Science is another resource for students who struggle with the scientific texts. This scientific magazine deals with a variety of subjects such as technology, entertainment, and science.
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If authentic text challenges you too much, you may wish to first look at Breaking News English which is specifically designed for ESL students.
LISTENING
As most of the TOEFL Listening tracks are recorded with an American accent, the best way to improve your score is to expose yourself to American accents by constantly listening to them. Here are some free resources to improve your TOEFL listening score.
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Movies, podcasts, TV shows...
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Talk radio (there are many American radio stations on line)
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Lyrics Training (an app that turns song lyrics into a game)
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Elllo is a great site for ESL students because it contains over 2,500 free lessons and recordings made specifically for ESL students.
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Ted Talks is a really great program that has over 2,400 free talks on a variety of subjects.
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The BBC apart from its various radio stations, has a 6-minute podcasts (They are not producing new podcasts, but the archive is very large).
WRITING
With the recent changes to the TOEFL exam, many of the writing resources may not be up to date, but any writing practice will help!
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Good Luck TOEFL has hundreds of sample writing prompts that is categorized into five question types.
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Beat the Test has a list of 155 TOEFL Independent Writing questions that was used in the real TOEFL test by the ETS.
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TOEFL Resources is an excellent guide to the writing section. First, it has 40 sample TOEFL essay questions with answers. Second, it provides students with TOEFL writing templates which helps the students to form structured essays and to save time.