1. Correct the wrong usage of words to do with written work in these sentences.

1. His PhD assignment thesis was 90,000 words long and was on the history of US place names.

2. Little Martha did her first dissertation composition in school today. It was called ‘My family’.

3. We have to hand in an essay portfolio at the end of the course. It can consist of up to five different pieces of work.

4. The teacher gave us the title of this week’s project essay today. We have to write 1,000 words on the topic of ‘If I ruled the world’ and hand it in next Monday.

5. At the end of this course you have to do a 5,000-word thesis assignment which will be assessed, and the grade will contribute to your final degree.

6. I think I’ll do a study of people’s personal banking habits for my MSc composition. dissertation. It has to be about 12,000 words.

7. I’ve chosen to do the portfolio project instead of the two exams, because I like to do one single piece of work where I can research something that interests me personally.

2. Here are some idiomatic expressions about studying and exams. Use the context to guess what they mean and choose the right answer.

1. It’s very easy to fall behind with your studies if you miss even just a few classes.

a) stay close behind other students

b) find yourself far behind other students

c) get ahead of other students

2. She seemed to just breeze through the exams. Everyone else was in such a panic and almost had nervous breakdowns.

a) do them calmly and efficiently b) not take them seriously c) cheat in them

3. I just can’t seem to get the hang of English prepositions. Just when I think I’ve learnt them I make new mistakes.

a) memorize b) understand c) enjoy

4. When I sat down and looked at the exam paper my mind just went blank. Everyone else seemed to be writing away quite happily.

a) became confused b) became very focused c) became empty

3. Answer these questions.

1. What do we call the first attempt at writing something, e.g. an essay?

2. What word means ‘the date by which you must do something’?

3. What word means ‘using someone else’s ideas as if they were yours”?

4. What are more formal words for ‘to hand in’ and for ‘to mark’?

5. What verb do we use when someone doesn’t complete their course?

6. What is another word for an academic article? Where can you read them?

7. What is the name of the system for getting books from other libraries?

8. What word means ‘the comments you get back from the teacher about your work’?

Home education

You will read three texts concerning home education. Before you read, tell your groupmates in what way home education is different from education provided at schools.

Nine months ago Victor and Sally Wilkings withdrew their two elder children from a small country school which, Sally says, ‘had nice teachers and a friendly atmosphere.’ It was not this particular school but a belief that all schools have a damaging effect that prompted the withdrawal of Seth, aged nine, and Esther, aged six and a half.

Sally feels that schools rob children of the personal responsibility for use of their own time. She also thinks that children are exposed to conflicting opinions and examples which confuse them. The influence of television also worries her.

A typical education-at-home day begins with a few domestic chores. These done, Seth and Esther settle down at the table in their cosy kitchen. The children usually choose what they do, select three or four subjects from a list which includes story-writing, reading, maths games and puzzles, science, history and music. The children keep a daily diary of their work and Sally corrects the balance if on occasions she feels something is being neglected. She also encourages them to finish whatever they begin. After a couple of hours it’s time for refreshments and a story. The afternoons, when Victor is sometimes free to join them, are usually spent out of doors – gardening, or enjoying an outing or nature walk. During the evenings and at week-ends the children often attend local clubs.

Victor admits that he was a bit uneasy about home education when Sally first talked about it. ‘I suppose I thought that other people might think we were irresponsible. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I was also worried that it would be too much for Sally to take on. What made the decision easier for me was going to a conference organized by Education Otherwise and finding that even academics were disillusioned with the school system. After that we decided to give it a year’s trial. Now that I see how happy the children are I wouldn’t dream of sending them back to school.’

1. Explain the following:

• to be exposed to conflicting opinions and examples

• to be uneasy about

• to be disillusioned with smth

• to give smth a trial

2. Answer the following questions.

1. Do you agree with Sally that ‘schools rob children of the personal responsibility for use of their own time’?

2. Do you support the idea that at school ‘children are exposed to conflicting opinions and examples which confuse them’?

3. Why do you think Victor might be ‘a bit uneasy about home education’?

The setting is every child’s dream. A huge, rambling, 300-year-old house, warmed by log fires, overrun by pets, and set in acres of natural playground. And no school.

That is what makes the Kirkbride household so rare. James, 18, Tamara, 15, Tigger, 14, and Hoppy, 10, have spent the last four years doing what other children only enjoy at weekends and holidays.

They get up when they feel like it, breakfast at leisure, and spend the rest of the day doing what they want. They walk, swim, fish, paint, read, play musical instruments, cook or sit around and chat.

There has been no attempt at having any lessons since John and Melinda Kirkbride took their children out of the local school – James five years ago and the others a year later. Hoppy had been there only six days. ‘We did start with a sort of curriculum when we took James out’, says John, 46, a large forceful man. ‘But we soon realized we were repeating the mistakes of the system.’

‘From the beginning, we both felt that packing our children off to school was wrong’, says Melinda, a German-born former actress. ‘Seeing their unhappiness made us re-examine our own school years, and remember how destructive they were.’ John, formerly a TV producer, began a teachers’ training course in Norwich, ‘to see if I could reform from within.’ He soon found he couldn’t and, after completing the course and teaching for four months, he removed himself and his children, from the system.

If the personalities of the children were the only criteria, the experiment would be an undoubted success. They are intelligent, confident, capable and considerate. All, including the two boys, cook and sew. Chores are shared without arguments. Their friendliness to each other, and to the many guests who visit the house, is natural and unforced.

‘Teach is a swear word in this house,’ says John. ‘It destroys the child’s own natural talent and creativity. Now learning – that’s a different matter. All our children learn when and if they want to learn something. They look it up in books or they go and ask someone who knows, they use their initiative – which is more than any school could teach them.’

1. Explain how you understand the following:

• rambling house

• to be overrun by pets

• packing our children off to school was wrong

• destructive school years

• to re-examine one’s own school years

• to reform from within

• unforced friendliness

2. Answer the following questions.

1. Do you support the Kirkbrides’ ideas?

2. In your opinion, what is the difference between teaching and learning?

3. In what way may teaching ‘destroy the child’s own natural talent and creativity’?

Elaine and Roy Fullwood had no intention of educating their children themselves until things went badly wrong at school. When a new headteacher with what Roy describes as ‘trendy educational methods’ took over at the local school, the work of their eldest child, Alex, suffered and she became bored and aimless.

Despite a meeting with the headteacher, the Deputy Director of Education and other concerned parents nothing changed. At this point Elaine and Roy decided to take Alex, aged 8, and Anna, aged 6, away from school.

A year later Elaine was concerned about whether the girls were making enough progress. ‘For advice, we took the girls’ work to the heads of the schools where they would have been pupils. In both cases they were well ahead for their age. This reassured us that we were on the right way.’

Alex and Anna have now been at home for two years and are joined in their morning studies by six-year-old sister Miriam, who has never been to school. Four-year-old John occasionally joins in and 14-month-old Luke is often crawling nearby.

Having no teacher-training, it was necessary to plan work very carefully in the early days but now Elaine finds that it’s become second nature.

Roy trained as a teacher but has never actually taught. Now he spends as much time with the family as his job allows.

Roy and Elaine make it quite clear that being at home is not a soft option. They put a lot of emphasis on responsibility and self-discipline. For example, Alex and Anna are in charge of the animals – hens, a horse and a goat – which they have to feed and clean out in all weathers. No one stands over them but they know that if they shirk their responsibilities then the animals will go. The children themselves will decide whether they want to do ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels. Roy and Elaine certainly won’t try to influence them.

The Fullwoods are clearly a close-knit family but they also have many friends. Although the children may never go to school again there is no anti-school feeling in the home. ‘The door’s open. If ever they want to go they can.’

Discuss the following questions.

1. How do you understand the expression ‘to become second nature?’

2. Why is ‘being at home not a soft option’?

3. What are the pros and cons of home education?

4. Are you in favour of home education? Why?

5. What problems can you face educating children at home?

‘Examinations exert a pernicious influence on education’

We might marvel at the progress made I every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationalists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude. As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of ‘drop-outs’: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?

A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorise. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress.

The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark the stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after the examiner’s. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true abilities. It is cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: ‘I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.’