Universidad de Concepción

Facultad de Ingeniería
Depto. Ingeniería Civil Metalúrgica

Dealing with texts and their

structure
Prof. Boris Pradel

Technical English - 2017

 Reading a text implies
understanding the meaning of
what is read.
In other words, reading is the
process of decoding what the
writer had in mind when
encoding the information
contained in a text.
Reading also implies to be able to
understand that a text has:
- purpose
- structure
- intention
- coherence
- cohesion
- time
A text is a sequence of paragraphs
that represents an extended unit of
speech and share the characteristics
of purpose, structure, cohesion,
coherence, etc.
LET US ANALYZE A SHORT TEXT
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF ITS
CHARACTERISTICS, THAT IS,
STRUCTURE, COHERENCE, COHESION,
ETC.
Every text or paragraph has a MAIN IDEA or
TOPIC SENTENCE that introduces it.
Fatigue Analysis
Fatigue is one of the key contributing factors
to the degradation of aging components.
SUPPORTING SENTENCES follow the
main idea to expand it or to provide
illustrative examples.
Fatigue Analysis
Fatigue is one of the key contributing factors to the
degradation of aging components.
Fatigue failures occur when these structures
are subjected to cyclic stresses and strains
over time. This leads to the development of
micro-cracks in the most highly strained
locations, which subsequently propagate until
the component fails.
 A CONCLUDING IDEA or
SENTENCE closes every text or
paragraph.
The engineers at O'Donnell Consulting
understand the factors that contribute to
fatigue failures and provide practical solutions
to prevent these failures.
Fatigue Analysis
Fatigue is one of the key contributing factors
to the degradation of aging components.
Fatigue failures occur when these structures
are subjected to cyclic stresses and strains
over time. This leads to the development of
micro-cracks in the most highly strained
locations, which subsequently propagates
until the component fails. The engineers at
O'Donnell Consulting understand the factors
that contribute to fatigue failures and provide
practical solutions to prevent these failures.
In general, texts may be:

- narrative
- procedural
- expository
- descriptive
- argumentative, etc.
A narrative text is an account of events.
Metallurgy is a domain of materials science
and of materials engineering that studies the
physical and chemical behavior of metallic
elements and their mixtures, which are called
alloys.
An expository text is a text which
explains something.
Metallurgists study the microscopic
mechanisms that cause a metal or alloy to
behave in the way that it does, i.e. the changes
that occur on the atomic level that affect the
metal's (or alloy's) macroscopic properties.
Examples of tools used for microscopic
examination of metals are optical and electron
microscopes and mass spectrometers.
A procedural text is a text which gives
instructions on how to do something.
Metals are shaped by processes such as casting, forging,
rolling, extrusion, sintering, metalworking, machining and
fabrication. With casting, molten metal is poured into a
shaped mould. With forging, a red-hot billet is hammered
into shape. With rolling, a billet is passed through
successively narrower rollers to create a sheet. With
extrusion, a hot and malleable metal is forced under pressure
through a die, which shapes it before it cools. With
sintering, a powdered metal is compressed into a die at high
temperature. With machining, lathes, milling machines,
planing machines and drills are used to cut the cold metal to
shape. With fabrication, sheets of metal are cut with
guillotines or gas cutters and bent into shape.
An argumentative text is built around a specific
statement known as the thesis or conclusion that is
debatable within the field in which you are studying.
In other words, at the center of an argumentative
essay is a statement with which your readers may
disagree. Your essay will need to support that
statement in a manner that convinces your readers of
its truth.
Through empirical solubility testing and comparison
with natural analogues, it can be predicted that
crystalline synthetic scorodite should remain stable for
prolonged periods of time. Since scorodite is
commonly found in many weathering zones and in
most climatic regions of the world it is considered to be
the most stable arsenate compound formed in nature
and may be suitable for arsenic disposal purposes. The
conceptualized processing of arsenical liquors by the
hydrothermal route has been named the “Scorodite
Process” and this is considered to represent a realistic
process option for arsenic disposal in the 2lst century.
A descriptive text is a text which lists the
characteristics of something.

- The topic is usually about the attributes of a thing.

- Third person forms are used.
Corrosion attacks all kinds of engineering materials. It
reduces the life of a material and, therefore, it increases the
cost of a structure. A steel bridge must be repainted
regularly so that it may be protected from rust.
Consequently, various metals have been developed to
resist corrosion. Among them are the stainless steels,
which contain a percentage of chromium, thus making
them corrosion-resistant. However, no material can be
completely corrosion-resistant. Even stainless steels will
corrode.
ACTIVITY:

LET US TAKE A LOOK AT THE

FOLLOWING TEXTS.

- DO THE FOLLOWING:

What is the main idea in each one of them?

The blast furnace relied on the fact that the unwanted sulfur-
iron compounds were lighter than the pure iron and iron-
carbon mix, pig iron, which was its main product. The
furnace was built in the form of a tall chimney-like cauldron
lined with refractory brick. Coke, limestone and iron ore are
poured in the top, which would normally burn only on the
surface. Pre-heated air was blown into the middle, thus the
"blast", allowing combustion in the middle of the mixture.
The result of this localized burning was a liquid that sank to
the bottom of the furnace, with the lighter materials on top. A
valve was opened to allow the slag to pour out, and once
emptied, another valve at the bottom opened to remove the
pig iron.
Engineering research has a different character to scientific
research. Firstly, it often deals with areas where the basic
physics and/or chemistry are well understood, though the
problems are too complex to solve exactly. Therefore, the
purpose of engineering research is to find approximations
to the problem that can be solved. Secondly, it employs
many semi-empirical methods that are foreign to pure
scientific research. In general, it can be stated that a
scientist builds in order to learn, but an engineer learns in
order to build.
Very large quantities of solid wastes are generated during the mining
and processing of mineral commodities. The mining wastes are
typically of the order of 30% of the mined material in the case of iron,
gypsum and other industrial minerals, about 50% for base metals and
as high as 80% for strip-mined coal. An “average” Canadian base
metal ore mine, for example, has been estimated to reject 42% of the
total mined material as waste rock, 52% as mill tailings, 4% as
smelter slag. The remaining 2% only is recovered as useful values for
which the mining operations were established. The Canadian mining
industry currently produces more than 500 million tons of waste rock
and tailings every year.
To be classified as a "true" mineral, a substance must be a solid
and have a crystal structure. It must also be an inorganic,
naturally-occurring, homogeneous substance with a defined
chemical composition. The chemical composition may vary
between end members of a mineral system. For example the
plagioclase feldspars comprise a continuous series from sodium-
rich albite (NaAlSi3O8) to calcium-rich anorthite (CaAl2Si2O8)
with four recognized intermediate compositions between. Mineral-
like substances that don't strictly meet the definition are
sometimes classified as mineraloids. Other natural-occurring
substances are nonminerals. Industrial minerals is a market term
and refers to commercially valuable mined materials.
Powder metallurgy is a forming and fabrication technique
consisting of three major processing stages. First, the
primary material is physically powdered - divided into
many small individual particles. Next, the powder is
injected into a mold or passed through a die to produce a
weakly cohesive structure (via cold welding) very near the
true dimensions of the object ultimately to be
manufactured. Finally, the end part is formed by applying
pressure, high temperature, long setting times (during
which self-welding occurs), or any combination thereof.
 KEEP IN MIND THE HINTS
SUGGESTED WHENEVER YOU
READ.