Part II

I AM A UNIVERSITY STUDENT

Unit 1

THE WORLD A PART OF WHICH

YOU HAVE BECOME

‘To achieve the goal you need to be going.’

You are already acquainted with the etiquette of interaction and know how to communicate in formal and informal situations. Now you are going to learn how to communicate effectively in academic situations. This Part provides you with understanding of the notion ‘university’ and introduces the University Community to you. We, the authors of this Part, are members of this Community, just as you are now, and that is why we were so overwhelmed while writing this Part. We joined this community many years ago, first learning to understand and appreciate its values as students, and later as teachers and researchers. You certainly agree that basic university values are timeless and universal which makes them important for students of all generations.

Now you are a university student, which means that you have joined the global university community. You have received a privilege to get to know it by using a foreign language and knowledge of a different language culture.

The Part consists of three units. Each is subdivided into sections that teach some definite skills: how to build up your own vocabulary on the topic, how to read different kinds of texts, how to communicate, to verbalize and discuss problems. A new thing for you is to build the skills of research work together with the skills of effective learning at a university level (effective learning strategies). You will learn how to read and render (review) educational and research texts, find out key words and make summaries, how to specify objects and subject-matters of your research or any other educational activity, how to set objectives and aims of your study or research together with finding the proper methods for their achievement.

You already know that to have a good command of a foreign language for communicating with a foreigner is not just to know a certain amount of words and grammar rules. You cannot be an effective communicator without understanding the situations of communication and the communities you interact with. Thus, to study at university and to communicate with university people you need to know this particular community and its rules of interaction.

You will have opportunities to use your creative thinking and social abilities while working on the projects offered at the end of each topic. Together with your groupmates you will be searching for the answers to different questions during your classes. Looking for the best solution of the problem, you will make presentations of your joint verbal and written communicative products, have role plays and simulate communicative situations.

Turn over this page and open the door to our university world.

You will learn here

• that university is a special world that defines (диктует) specific communicative patterns and communication style;

• how to grasp and render texts about your new world;

• about university, faculty and chair structures;

• how to name participants of the university community.

You will be able to

• collect and use the vocabulary on the topic;

• read, understand and render mini-texts on the topic;

• read and understand tables and charts;

• find the necessary information in the texts about the university community;

• speak on the structure of your faculty and university;

• get information and exchange it in different communicative situations of university interaction.

Unit 1

The world a part of which you have become

 vocabulary building

1 Listen to the dialogues and simultaneously look through them marking their order. Where could they take place?

1 (…)

– Hi, Jane! What a surprise to see you here on campus! I bet you^à are a student already.

–

^à While working on the dialogues you'll come across conversational phrases like I bet, by the way, etc. In case you have any difficulty in understanding them, go to Grammar and Vocabulary File.

Hi, Kate! You are right. I’ve entered the Information and Communication Department of the Institute of Journalism, this year. How about you?

– Oh, I am doing my third year here, at the university. By the way, I study in a similar department; the only difference is that mine is in the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences. Anyway, they have classes in the same building so we’ll see each other quite often.

– Sounds great! And what do you major in?

–PR management.

– Me too. After graduation I am planning to work in advertising business so I specialize in this field.

2 (…)

– Excuse me, I’m not quite sure how to get to the Department of International Affairs. I am from Poland, actually, and I am here on the Erasmus program. Could you help me, please?

– Sure. You should go to the administrative part of this building. The office is on the ground floor, room 110. Turn to the left, go down the stairs and then turn to the right. Ask for the Erasmus coordinator.

– Thank you! That’s very helpful.

– Good luck!

3 (…)

– Andrew, do you have any idea what classes we are having tomorrow?

– Colloquium on argumentation, first class in the morning.

– Oh, no! I’ve quite forgotten about the colloquium. I am afraid I won’t be ready for it. I haven’t done any reading yet. It just couldn’t be worse.

– How come?

– You know, I’ve lost my Xerox copy of the timetable and mixed up some classes.

– That’s not good. Do you want me to send you our time-table by e-mail? I can do it tonight when I am home after the classes.

– That’ll be great, thank you so much.

4 (…)

– Good morning, Professor. I am calling to find out whether we are gathering in the Dean’s Office today for our Academic Council session.

– Morning, colleague. In fact, today we are having a joint meeting of the Academic Council and Students’ Association and our library staff in two hours. We are meeting this time in room 119, which can fit us all.

– Thank you. Sorry for bothering you.

– You are welcome!

5 (…)

–

^à Do you know that prepositions used after verbs can change their meaning? Such verbs are called phrasal verbs (look for is not the same as look). If you need to refresh your knowledge about them, go to Grammar and Vocabulary File.

Any plans for tonight, Steve?

– Nothing special. It looks^à like I can relax a bit. And what about you?

– Oh, I’ve got a huge assignment. I doubt if I’ll manage to prepare it for tomorrow.

– Oh, dear. Is it really so much?

– Yes, tomorrow we are having English. I have words to learn and a text to render and I must tell you this text is really difficult to grasp. When I first looked it over^à, I could hardly make any head or tail of what it’s all about. I need to work with it. Plus I need to be ready for making a group presentation, and I cannot find any material on the Internet. So I’ll have to look for^à the sources in the library.

6 (…)

– Bon appétit, Mike. How’s it going?

• Today it’s been the first time that I gave students a twenty-minute lecture in the course of my scientific supervisor. Have you already had any experience in lecturing?

– Of course, I have. This is a usual thing for a second year post-grad.

– Do you find it difficult to do?

– I really enjoyed it. The lecture I gave was on the same topic as my postgraduate paper. There were several situations when I didn’t feel comfortable, though. The students asked me tricky questions, you know, and I had to use all my expertise not to fail.

2 Read the dialogues again and define their communicative situations^à in a little more detail – find out who is talking, with whom, where, when, and on what occasion.

^à You've guessed already that a communicative situation is exactly the physical context of a talk. Sometimes it is easy to define its parameters, just like in these dialogues, and sometimes it is not so easy.

Dialogue No	Addresser (who)	Addressee (with whom)	Time (when)	Place (where)	Event (on what occasion)
1
2
3
4
5
6

3 Think of the aspects of the university life presented in the scheme below. Which of them were mentioned in the dialogues? What other aspects could be considered as parts of university life?