1. Make up a dialogue using as many idioms as possible.
2. Make up a monologue to illustrate the use of some idioms. Communication skills development schooling
Look at the photos above and discuss these questions:
1. What do you think the people in each picture are studying? How are they feeling?
2. Which class looks the most interesting?
3. How would each scene look different in your country for pupils/ students of the same age?
4. What changes have there been in education in your country recently?
The ideal school Rank order
Put in order of priority. Give grounds for your list of priorities.
School should be about practical not theoretical things.
Television should be used more to make school more interesting.
Teachers should decide what is studied at school, not pupils.
Everyone should study the same things.
Parents should be allowed to come to classes.
More time should be spent out of school – in the town doing things.
Sport should be given a more important place at school.
Everybody should have to study his own language, mathematics, the history of their country and English all the time they are at school.
Schools should organize more social events for pupils - discos and so on.
Try to agree some guidelines for the “ideal” school (or explain why we shouldn’t have schools at all, if this is your view). Consider all the following points:
What subjects would be taught – any new ones not currently taught?
Technical aids – television, computers and so on.
Internal administration – rules, pupil power, a school council.
The influence of the parents on the running of the school.
Starting and finishing age and the length of the normal school day.
Say if you agree, disagree or not sure.
Teachers should keep pupils quiet at school.
Teachers talk too much.
Wearing uniforms is silly.
If a teacher doesn’t know the answer, he should say “I don’t know”.
Corporal punishment can sometimes be a good idea.
The best age to start school is seven.
Teachers should teach their subject and not worry about what you are wearing, what you are doing and things like that.
Boys and girls should be treated exactly the same at school.
School at the moment is too easy.
School starts too early in the morning.
Face 2 face
Read this dialogue and sum up opinions of these students about education and schools.
Club: Before we start criticizing school, what are the advantages which your
school has to offer?
Louise: The main thing is its excellent facilities, sport facilities especially. It has a
fantastic swimming pool.
Gaby: It's very modern but I wish it weren't so austere and grim. It's a large new
school built for 1400 pupils. The classes are quite large.
Club: Would smaller classes help the school to be less impersonal?
Louise: No, I think that in lots of subjects, English, for example, the views of the
other people in the class are important. It's easy to get very arrogant about
your own views or knowledge, but in a large class you realize that there are
lots of other points of view, not just your own.
Paul: That's why I think special schools are bad. It's useless to put all the musicians
or all the people who are good at French into one school. It reinforces seg-
regation. It's building walls between people. The more subjects and pupils are
mixed together, the better.
Club: How do English schools compare with foreign schools?
Gaby: I went to school in France for a short time. The education I received there
was a lot broader than here. It's good, of course that you don't specialize in
arts or science at an early age. But it meant that we had years of a subject
which we hated - I hated Latin.
Louise: I'd like to do more subjects at A-level. If we did, we would get a more
general education, but the syllabus would have to change first. In the lower
forms we did 15 or 16 subjects, now we just do three. I often stay up till
midnight to finish my homework for three subjects. If we did 5 A-levels, we
would never get any sleep! The entire system in this country is aimed at
pushing as many people as possible into university.
Simon: There's not enough emphasis on practical education. Since R.O.S.L.A., a lot
of people are forced to stay on at school and do more English and maths
when they'd really be a lot happier earning their first year's salary in a fac-
tory.
Louise: That's not really fair to say that, Simon. In some schools they do have more
preparation for "the outside world". They do social studies: they learn how
banks work; they learn how to fill in tax forms. It's simply that our school
has a more academic tradition.
Gaby: I want to make the same complaints about school uniform. This is the first
school I've ever been to where I've had to wear uniform. Teachers say that if
we wore ordinary clothes, there would be a lot of competition between girls
who want to wear the latest fashions.
Club: It's a kind of "badge".
Read this dialogue between Michael and his mother. What do you think of Michael’s progress at school?
Mother: Well, Michael, this isn't a very brilliant report, is it? What have you got
to say for yourself?
Michael: I don't think it's as bad as all that. After all, I did quite well in some
subjects - one or two. You can't expect me to be good at everything. Mother: I'm not going to argue with you, Michael. You know very well that
this just isn't good enough. What's your father going to say? Hm?
Michael: I try my hardest. I really do.
Mother: Hm. If you put so much effort into your schoolwork as you do into foot-
ball, there wouldn't be any problem.
Michael: But, Mummy, everybody should have a hobby. Surely you don't begrudge
me my one small hobby, do you?
Mother: Obsession, more like. Look, Michael, I'm not nagging, but you'd better
not be sitting around watching TV or reading your football magazines
when your father comes in. And you' d better start thinking up an
explanation for this report right now.
Michael: I still think you're being a bit hard on me. I bet you sometimes had bad
reports when you were at school.
Mother: Aha! So you admit that it's a bad report!
Michael: Well, I – er – didn’t mean that exactly.
Mother: Come on, Michael, stop making excuses. I suggest you be on your best
behaviour tonight, and just hope that your father is in a good mood.
Michael: Oh, I'm sure he will be in a good mood. His favourite football team are
on television tonight. I daresay I shall watch the match with him.
Mother: Michael Pater, you are incorrigible!
Here is the dialogue that can be used as the model for your own one. But the situation is to be the exact opposite: the boy is quite eager to go to college as he is a bright one and comes top at school
COLLEGE OR NO COLLEGE?
- She thinks I oughta be like her and get all As. But I can't, Karl. I have to work my
head off just to get those Cs. And I don't want to go to college. I want to be a me-
chanic!
- I wish I had gone to college.
- You didn't go to college?
- Nope. I didn't like school that much. And I was in too big a rush. I wanted to start
working in the company full-time. I wanted to do a man's job instead of wasting
time in school like some little kid.
- So why are you sorry?
- Because going to college is a lot more than learning English and maths. It's getting
to socialize with people your own age and figuring out who you are, what you be-
lieve, where you fit in with the rest of the world. It's sort of transition between be-
ing a teenager and being an adult.
- I never thought of college that way before.
- Neither did I until I looked back and realized what I'd missed. And, eventually, I
even started to regret not taking those English and history courses.
- Why?
- Sometimes I'd be out with friends - people who'd kept on going to school while I
was busy working. Someone would mention a book I'd never read or some his-
torical incident I'd never heard about, and I'd feel like a real dummy. I didn't like
that feeling. I didn't like to think that my friends were moving on learning and
growing, while I was just standing still. I started taking a course or two at night.
First J took a business course. Then I took an engineering class. I finally worked
up enough nerve to register for a literature course.
- How bad was it?
- I survived. And I found out that I was smarter than I had thought. I worked hard to
get my Bs and Cs in high school. I didn't have a talent for memorizing and feeding
back the teacher's ideas like some of those A students. I had to really understand
the facts before I could do well on a test. But once I understood, I didn't forget the
information the next day. It was mine for good.