Discuss it with your groupmates

Unit 4

Text Study: Programming Languages.

Additional Text: SIMULA, SMALLTALK, AND EIFFEL.

Grammar: Revision of the Module V.

Text Study

I. Pre-reading Exercises

1. Repeat the words in chorus:

To compile, to interpret, an acronym, features, consequently, to support, suitable, compiler, efficient, considerable, power, responsibility, to revise, acceptable, errors, superficial, level, syntactically, ambiguous.

2. While reading the text you will come across a number of international words. Try to guess what Ukrainian words they remind of you:

To transform, algebraic, formulae, phrases, commercial, algorithmic, portable, peripheral, to manipulate, specific, registers, a dialect, abstract, technique, natural, grammatical, information.

3. Pay attention to some grammatical points:

1) Computers can deal with different kinds of problems if they are given the right instructions for what to do. 2) Instructions are first written in one of the high-level languages, e.g. FORTRAN, COBOL, ALCOL, PL/I, PASCAL, BASIC, or C., depending on the type of problem to be solved. 3) A program written in one of these languages is often called a source program. 4) This language is used for solving scientific and mathematical problems. 5) C was designed to be a language that would be suitable for writing system's software, like the core parts of an operating system. 6) The code generated by the compiler had to be very efficient if the language was to be used in this way. 7) Consequently, in some respects the language is simpler than other Algol family languages that have retained the relatively complex nested program structures. 8) Programming languages have grammatical rules that need to be learnt, just as natural languages do.