Englisch - Sprachkompetenz und Textarbeit im Fach Englisch
This domain assesses how precisely you handle English technical texts: comprehension (gist, detail, summary), analysis of argument, structure and style, mediation (Sprachmittlung) between German and English, and your own production - describing data and processes, weighing arguments, writing a comment. Accuracy counts as content here: a wrong technical term or a false friend changes the meaning of an otherwise well-structured answer.
Recurring operations
- Summary: present tense, own words, no evaluation, no direct quotation; follow the source's sequence of ideas rather than its sentence boundaries.
- Analysis: name the device, quote it or give line numbers, then explain its function for the reader - "the statistic makes the risk concrete for a non-specialist audience". Separate the author's claim from the evidence offered for it.
- Tone and stance: neutral, hedged/cautious, alarmist, ironic. Look for hedges ("arguably", "tends to") and intensifiers ("dramatically", "utterly").
- Describing data: "rose sharply from 12 % to 31 %", "peaked at", "levelled off", "halved"; distinguish per cent from percentage points.
- Describing a process: passive voice plus sequencers - "The blank is clamped, then milled to size before being hardened."
- Mediation: convey the information faithfully in natural English; preserve figures, conditions and hedging, but drop German syntax and word order.
Worked example
German source: "Durch den Einsatz von Leichtbauwerkstoffen konnte der Verbrauch um rund 12 % gesenkt werden, allerdings stiegen die Fertigungskosten."
Reasoning: both halves and their contrast must survive; "Durch den Einsatz" becomes "the use of" (not the heavy "through the utilisation of"); "konnte … gesenkt werden" becomes active "reduced" or passive "was reduced"; "rund" is "around" (not "circa"); "allerdings" needs "however" after a semicolon or in a new sentence, never a comma splice. Result: "The use of lightweight materials reduced consumption by around 12 %; however, manufacturing costs rose." Check afterwards: figures intact, contrast intact, no German word order left over.
Marks that are lost
"Technik" rendered as technique; actual for "aktuell" (use current); become for "bekommen" (use get, receive); gift for "Gift" (poison); whole clauses copied into a summary; personal opinion inserted into a summary; ignoring the operator - a task saying evaluate needs a judgement, one saying describe does not; quoting stylistic devices without line references; comma splices and tense drift; confusing per cent with percentage points.
Register
Technical writing in English is impersonal and precise: prefer the passive and nominalisations in process descriptions, avoid "you", hedge claims you cannot prove, and use standard terms ("efficiency", "torque", "yield strength") rather than ad-hoc translations.