Find and Present the information 1.2.:

Skinner

See:

http://images.google.ru/images?um=1&hl=ru&lr=&newwindow=1&rlz=1G1GGLQ_RURU310&q=B.F.+Skinner-video

Unit 1. 3.

Listening 1.3

With College Endowments, How Much Is Too Much?

Wealthy U.S. schools are being pushed to use more of their money to help students pay high tuition costs. Transcript of radio broadcast:

16 January 2008

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

An endowment is money from donations and investments. Colleges use endowment money for student aid and campus improvements, and for financial security.

But college costs in the United States have been rising faster than inflation. Graduates often face years of debt from student loans. Yet more than sixty colleges and universities, half of them public, have endowments worth at least one billion dollars.

Critics say schools with a lot of money should be sharing more of their wealth to ease the struggle for families. As we reported last week, some now plan to do just that. These include Harvard and Yale. They will also give money to families that earn much more than those that now receive aid.

Harvard has by far the largest endowment of any American university, thirty-five billion, followed by Yale at twenty-two and a half billion.

Yet some educational activists worry what might happen as less-endowed colleges try to compete with these changes. They say the pressure to help upper middle-class families might mean less aid for poor students.

Colleges and their endowments are excused from taxes. Other tax-exempt groups are required to spend at least five percent of their endowments each year. Some people, including Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, think it is reasonable to consider such a requirement for colleges.

The senator praised Harvard and Yale for their plans and said he hopes others will follow.

Senator Grassley is the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which deals with tax policy. Last September, at his urging, the committee questioned experts about this issue.

One was Lynn Munson of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. She says universities pay out only about four percent of their endowments, yet their investments earn much more than that.

A study found that endowments of more than one billion dollars earned an average return of fifteen percent in two thousand six. The average for all endowments was just under eleven percent.

But some experts say most endowment money has to remain invested so schools are not hurt when markets fall.Also, universities point out that donors often restrict the uses for their donations. Still, Lynn Munson said forty-five percent of endowment money at private schools is unrestricted, and twenty percent at public colleges.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Steve Ember.

Find and Present the information 1.3.:

Jean Piaget

See: http ://images.google.ru/imgres?imgurl=http://sciencestage.com/uploads/thumbs/QxsuBNnLuttVkWP0DRIH.jpg&imgrefurl=http://sciencestage.com/de/v/197/jean-piaget-child-psychology.html&usg=__LM3F7q3fHxZ_lrAmNVQcDqdSC6s=&h=262&w=356&sz=64&hl=ru&start=4&tbnid=P6ytUuhrLJlXDM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=121&prev=/images%3Fq%3DJean%2BPiaget%2Bvideo%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Dru%26newwindow%3D1

Lev Vygotsky

See:

http://video.healthhaven.com/video-play.aspx?video=634376752589779456&ei=aLSISaC4DZbUqAPejbCJCw&q=Vygotsky+video

Jerome Bruner

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2H_swMUlOg&feature=related

Carl Rogers

(1902-1987) Principally known as the founder of person-centred psychotherapy and almost the inventor of counselling, also a leading figure in the development of humanistic approaches to education.

In the field of adult learning, do not confuse with Alan Rogers, or Jennifer Rogers

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HarEcd4bt-s&feature=related

John Holt

(1923-1985) Radical thinker and maths teacher, best known for How Children Fail.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Caldwell_Holt#Further_reading

http://sandradodd.com/johnholt

Paulo Freire

(1921-1997) Brazilian educationalist: pioneer of adult literacy programmes as a means of raising the consciousness (conscientization) of South American peasants and urban underclass. Critic of the "banking" model of education, in which the elite own and construct the knowledge, and the poor are excluded. Very influential in politicised adult education. Not easy to read.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVz_AOFuZ_E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj4SGO4iO9M&feature=related

ПРОВЕРИТЬ РОВНОСТЬ

Unit 1. 4.

Listening 1.4

Teachers of English in Russia Feeling Winds of Change in Their Profession

07 November 2006

Last month I had the opportunity to speak at two conferences -- one was a meeting of SPELTA, the St. Petersburg English Language Teachers' Association. The other brought top English teachers from across the Russian Federation to Kursk State University, in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine.

Both conferences were about using technology to teach English. But it was also a chance to talk with several English language instructors about other developments in the field.

LUDMILA KUZNETSOVA: "I'm Ludmila Kuznetsova, a professor of Saint-Petersburg University. I've been recently elected president of [SPELTA.]"

AA: "What's it like teaching English today, at a time where traditionally British English has been taught in the Russian schools, but now there seems to be more and more interest in American English?"

LUDMILA KUZNETSOVA: "Well, all students have to learn a foreign language. And the English language is taking over, and American English is also taking over from the British version of the language. So there is more and more of American language taught at Russian colleges and universities, as a compulsory course. But also Russian schools and university teachers teach more courses on American culture."

AA: "What advice do you have for English teachers who are in a situation where they're trying to get their students to communicate more, to talk more."

LUDMILA KUZNETSOVA: "I'm also a teacher trainer and I always tell my trainees that they shouldn't be afraid of giving their power over to students, to trust them more and to involve them more. Not only in responding to the teacher's questions or doing exercises, drills or other tasks, but to create materials for the language classroom -- to unleash their creativity and use it to the benefit of the students."

AA: "And what use are you making of Internet technology in language teaching in Russia?"

LUDMILA KUZNETSOVA: "Only recently have we started using Internet technologies. And basically we at present are the takers of the information, of the materials from the Internet, and we are learning to use the resources that are out there, but not yet creating our own. This will be probably our next step."

DMITRIY KLIMENTIEV: "My name is Dmitriy Klimentiev and I'm associate professor of English language, Kursk State University."

AA: "Now you're something of a legend here, it seems, with Internet and information technology. What advice do you give to teachers who are thinking about using the Internet in their lessons, or maybe already using it and not sure how to make the most effective use of it?"

DMITRIY KLIMENTIEV: "What I usually say, the first thing we should think about is the reasonable approach. You should use each teaching tool only when it is really more efficient than the one you used to offer before.

"So if you need more information, if you need something which the students are not used to, then you go online and you look for something. If the Web connection is not very good, if your computers are old, then don't waste time. Choose whatever is more efficient, whatever saves time and whatever is more motivating for students.

"Now you can even make use of a cell phone which plays MP3 files. And they can listen to a book which they download from the Internet or somebody from a CD into their cell phone, and then after having listened to this book, they will just share the contents with the others."

Dmitriy Klimentiev teaches at a university, but one of his projects has been to work with local high school students to create English-teaching CDs of their own. They used Microsoft's PowerPoint software to develop a volume of interactive presentations, based on VOA's Special English programs for English learners. They downloaded transcripts and MP3 files from voaspecialenglish.com.

Unit 1. 5.

Listening 1.5

Foreign Student Series: College, University or Institute?

Part three of our Foreign Student Series explains the different kinds of higher learning institutions in the U.S. Transcript of radio broadcast:

24 September 2008

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Americans use the term "college students" to mean students either in colleges or universities. Not only that, Americans almost never say "going off to university" or "when I was in university." That sounds British. Instead, they say "going off to college" and "when I was in college."

College, university: what's the difference? We answer that this week in part three of our Foreign Student Series on American higher education.

Colleges and universities have many things in common. Both offer undergraduate degrees in the arts and sciences, for example. And both can help prepare young people to earn a living.

But many colleges do not offer graduate studies. Another difference is that universities are generally bigger. They offer more programs and do more research.

Another place of higher education, especially in technical areas, is an institute, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet even an institute of technology can offer a wide choice of programs and activities. M.I.T. says that seventy-five percent of freshmen come there with a strong interest and involvement in the arts.

Modern universities developed from those of Europe in the Middle Ages. The word "university" came from the Latin universitas, describing a group of people organized for a common purpose.

"College" came from collegium, a Latin word with a similar meaning. In England, colleges were formed to provide students with places to live. Usually each group was studying the same thing. So college came to mean an area of study.

The first American universities divided their studies into a number of areas and called each one a college. This is still true.

A college can also be a part of a university. For example, Harvard College is the undergraduate part of Harvard University.

Programs in higher learning can also be called schools, like a school of engineering or a medical school within a college or university. You know, learning all these terms is an education in itself.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com.

We invite your questions for our Foreign Student Series. We cannot offer any personal advice or assistance. But we might be able to answer a general question during our series.

Be sure to tell us your name and where you are. Write to special@voanews.com or use the Contact Us link at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

Unit 1. 6.

Lead –In 1.6.

CALL – computer assisted learning

1 D 2 A 3 C 4B

Listening 1.6

On the Web, College Classes With No Charge (or Credit)

Knowledge is free on the Internet at a small but growing number of colleges and universities.

About one hundred sixty schools around the world now offer course materials free online to the public. Recent additions in the United States include projects at Yale, Johns Hopkins and the University of California, Berkeley.

Berkeley said it will offer videos of lectures on YouTube. Free videos from other schools are available at the Apple iTunes store.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became an early leader with its OpenCourseWare project, first announced in two thousand one. Free lecture notes, exams and other resources are published at ocw.mit.edu. Many exams and homework assignments even include the answers. The Web site also has videos of lectures and demonstrations.

Today, OpenCourseWare offers materials from one thousand eight hundred undergraduate and graduate courses. These range from physics and linear algebra to anthropology, political science -- even scuba diving.

Visitors can learn the same things M.I.T. students learn. But as the site points out, OpenCourseWare is not an M.I.T. education. Visitors receive no credit toward a degree. Some materials from a course may not be available, and the site does not provide contact with teachers.

Still, M.I.T. says the site has had forty million visits by thirty-one million visitors from almost every country. Sixty percent of the visitors are from outside the United States and Canada.

There are links to materials translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Thai. OpenCourseWare averages one million visits each month, and the translations receive half a million more.

Students and educators use the site, including students at M.I.T. But the largest number of visitors, about half, are self-learners.

Some professors have become well known around the world as a result of appearing online. Walter Lewin, a physics professor at M.I.T., is especially popular. Fans enjoy his entertaining demonstrations.

M.I.T. OpenCourseWare now includes materials for high school. The goal is to improve education in science, technology, math and engineering.