Maritime English 'Engine Room Communication' Course

Maritime technical vocabulary, better pronunciation & more fluency for engineers

Working as an engineer on board or in the maritime industry, communicating with a large network of supporting professionals and suppliers, complying to all rules and regulations all require a lot of communication between crew members, colleagues in the office(s), authorities and many others involved. This is the reason we have chosen to build a specific vocabulary for our Maritime English Communication program that helps improve safety and efficiency in a very practical way. In this article more about the contents of our Engine Room Communication course and the Maritime English vocabulary we think is most practical and relevant.

For maritime and offshore organizations with multinational teams, crews, networks and operations

The Engine Room Communication course can be used for:

Engineers, technicians, other seafarers & maritime professionals working in international crews, teams and networks
Office personnel working in the maritime or offshore industry

Maritime English vocabulary, listening and speaking skills

This course is developed for seafarers and other professionals working in the maritime industry. Both engineers and people communicating regularly with maritime engineers will benefit from the course and the specific maritime & technical vocabulary that the course helps develop. The words that are used and that participants in Spot On Learning's Maritime English Communication program learn are useful for all on board merchant ships and for many professionals involved in managing, running and servicing cargo ships.

Benefits

Our clients want their crew members to be effective, stay safe and learn continuously to adapt to changing requirements and circumstances. Our Maritime English language courses are designed to support these causes. In addition, being able to communicate with people from many backgrounds influences social wellbeing and motivation in a positive way.

The benefits of better communication in English in "bullets":

more safety, less incidents and risks
more efficiency, less costs of mistakes, misunderstandings, inefficient operations
a safe and social work environment, better contact between people that work together as a crew or remotely in a network

Content & methodology of the Engine Room Communication course

The spoken text lines in the Engine Room Communication course of our program contain around 6,500 words in total. A lot of words are used several times, of course. An analysis of the full text shows that around 1,500 different words are used. Many of these are matched with IMO's well-known SMCP list, among which a number of them match with the "safety onboard" section. Other words and phrases chosen because they can serve as a standard basic vocabulary for maritime engineers and people that work with engineers and technicians in the maritime industry and related sectors.

There are 34 videos in the course, each with several learning activities and a lesson plan that can be used by tutors and teachers and for self-study.

Speech technology and extra interactive lessons

Speech technology developed by our partner EnglishCentral helps participants verify and improve correct pronunciation of the maritime vocabulary used in the course. Besides the videos the course consists of extra interactive online lessons.

What follows is an overview of the course (9 units containing 34 videos and extra interactive lessons).

Unit 1: Engines & their parts	Unit 6: Monitoring in/from the control room
Unit 2: Spaces in the engine room	Unit 7: Spare parts, what to keep in store, the workshop
Unit 3: Ensuring significant onboard operations	Unit 8: Efficiency, cost control, sustainability, regulations
Unit 4: Safety first	Unit 9: Technological developments in the maritime industry
Unit 5: Maintenance: regular & special, repairs & troubleshooting	Interactive lessons: more about maintenance & repairs, more tools & spare parts, maritime innovations

At the end of each unit relevant words that have been used in the videos are quizzed. Words are added to a personal study list that monitors progress in building a relevant vocabulary.

At the end of the course every participant is invited for an online test to measure if all learning goals for this course are attained.