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APPENDIX. GRAMMAR
It is proven that nowadays a foreign language is an important part of the
educational process, as well as a necessity in life. The English language is not
only the international language of science; it is becoming the international
language of business and computers.
Grammar is one of the constituent parts of language. “Grammar is the
backbone of a language”. All ideas cannot be conveyed to their full extent
without a good command of the grammar patterns and structures of the
language. Grammar is essential in order to master a language; it is important to
use and apply the rules and not to recite them by heart.
The aim of the grammar part is a thorough review of grammatical
structures with clear explanations and examples illustrating every structure. It
can be used for self-study, for homework and in class. It includes all the active
tenses, sentence word order, conditionals and modal verb, infinitive and gerund.
Here is grammar that will help students in the so-called small talks, i.e.
the choice of tenses and structures mostly used in everyday communication and
those used in specific engineering discussions a future electrical and electronics
engineer is going to use.
The passive voice
In texts describing or explaining a technical process, the passive is usually
the default verb form. This is because the focus is mainly on the process or
action (expressed in the verb) and the thing acted upon (the subject of the
passive verb): First of all,
bauxite is extracted from the ground and is carried
from the mine on conveyor belts to crushers, where it is ground into powder.
However, even in texts dealing with a process, the active will sometimes
be used:
•
if the verb is intransitive, it cannot take an object and therefore
cannot be used in the passive.
The bauxite goes into / enters the crushers, where
it is ground and becomes powder.
The verbs go, enter and become are
intransitive, and therefore have to be active.
•
the ability to switch between active and passive (and vice versa)
gives more options to the writer for making the meaning clear, especially when
a relative clause is linked to the main clause:
Archimedes' cylinder contains
revolving blades, which are turned by hand.
If an active sentence is changed into the passive, (1) the subject of the
active verb becomes the agent of the passive verb (is / are * past participle), and
(2) the object of the active verb becomes the subject of the passive verb.
