Unit 12: English for Programmers

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This unit teaches some basic programming terminology like variables, arrays, and loops.

Did you know? The following activities can be customized as desired by the teacher or school pedagogue.

Basic activities (computer-graded)

Vocabulary Builder Activity

Students will learn the following key terms and phrases:

Reading Activity: Dialogue: Procedural Programming is not Rocket Science

Students will be able to correctly answer true/false questions after reading and listening to topical short articles and dialogs featuring topical vocabulary.

Dialogue Between a Senior Programmer and a Junior Programmer working at an aerospace startup in Los Angeles, CA. CommanderKeen: Hey kid, how is that new integration going for the booster rocket project? SpaceCadet: Huh? What? Okay I guess. CommanderKeen: So will it be ready to demo next week as scheduled? The client really thinks this product will "take… Continue

Multiple Choice Activity

Students will be able to select the best match between unit terms and their definitions.

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Listening Comprehension Activity

Students will be able to listen to short audio clips in English and then spell them correctly.

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Spelling and Recognition

Students will be able to identify and spell a vocabulary term correctly given only the definition.

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Advanced activities (optionally teacher-graded)

Speaking Practice Activity

Students will be able to speak and record 5 example sentences from the unit vocabulary and then submit them for grading by the classroom teacher. If no teacher is available or desired, then the students will be shown good examples of other students' work.

Value1 and value2 are both arguments in the expression sum(value1, value2).

The program returned a fatal error because a required parameter was missing.

For security reasons the bank password variable had a local scope and was confined to a single function.

It took the programmer a week to code the required procedure but it fulfilled its purpose well for many years.

The professor said that using goto statements is considered bad practice with the possible exception of breaking out of nested loops.

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Writing Practice Activity

Students will write a short essay to be graded by the teacher. If no teacher is available or desired, then the student is shown previous examples of other writings by students.

Research 3 procedural programming terms or concepts not covered in this unit. Write a definition and example sentence similar to the ones in the vocabulary sheet. Explain why these terms/concepts are important to you.

Are you more like CommanderKeen or more like SpaceCadet? Are there any alternatives to procedural and object-oriented programming? Functional programming maybe? Do you like tacos and beer? Discuss.

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