Профессиональное чтение на английском языке = Professional Reading in English. Учебное пособие

Министерство науки и высшего образования Российской Федерации Федеральное государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение

высшего образования

«Московский педагогический государственный университет»

И. И. Игнатенко

ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОЕ ЧТЕНИЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

I. I. Ignatenko

PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

Учебное пособие

2-е издание, стереотипное электронное

МПГУ Москва

• 2024

CONTENTS

I. EDUCATION

Do we need to teach children joined-up handwriting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Grammar schools must be open to ‘ordinary families’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 How grammar school changed my life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Consequences of a Low GPA in College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Hopes and fears of graduates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

II. ENGLISH IN ACADEMIC LIFE

English for Academic Purposes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 English as a Medium of Instruction for Academics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Truth About Harvard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

III. ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

English as lingua franca (ELF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

BBC won’t employ ‘posh’ voices any more,

says Charlotte Green. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 The Gift of the Magi by O Henry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

IV. COUNTRY STUDIES

Conversation codes: the weather . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 The rules of introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Humour rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Queuing rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

V. ADDITIONAL READING

Just 2.6% of grammar pupils are from poor backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . 60 EMI and globalisation: a good thing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

“Too common for telly”

BBC presenter lashes out at Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 The English. A Portrait of a People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Translation Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

VI. QUOTES FOR COMMENTING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

VII. SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

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I. EDUCATION

Do we need to teach children joined-up handwriting?

The US state of Illinois has passed a law requiring school students to learn joined-up handwriting, or “cursive”, overriding the governor’s veto. It is no longer a requirement in US schools, and some countries have dropped the skill from the curriculum or made it optional. Why, then, do some – like the UK – still insist on it in a digital age? Shouldn’t children learn to type effectively instead?

Goodbye writing

While victorious Illinois senators claimed the skill was essential, the reality is that many adults no longer write much by hand. A 2012 survey of 2,000 adults by UK mailing firm Docmail found that on average, it had been 41 days since respondents wrote – and that two-thirds of us only write short notes like shopping lists. The clear, blocky “print” style that children are first taught is enough for that purpose. And for an increasing number of young children, that’s where their training ends.

US states such as Indiana have dropped joined-up writing entirely; Finland phased out handwriting lessons; and Indian schools are reportedly abandoning it. The usual argument is that the time investment could be used to teach modern skills such as typing or coding instead. But is there a benefit to hours spent painstakingly copying the joined alphabet?

Developing style

Teaching children to write by hand seems to have some advantages that typing on a keyboard does not. A 2005 paper by researchers at AixMarseille University compared typing and writing in children aged three to five to see if there was a difference later in recognising the letters. Their evidence suggested that writing by hand helped the older ones recall the letters better. A study in 2012 went further, putting five-year- old children who had yet to learn to read and write through similar tests – writing, typing, or tracing letters. Then, they were shown images of the same letters and shapes while an MRI machine scanned their brains. In the children who wrote – but not in those who typed – an area of the brain used in reading activated.

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I. EDUCATION

Researchers concluded that it’s possible – but not proven – that the physical act of writing might help children learn to read. “The motor control is important,” said Dr Karin James, one of the authors. “Doing things is important in setting up brain systems that are important for cognitive development.” Later research from Dr James also suggests that learning joined letters by watching someone else write them – rather than doing it for yourself – does not provide the same benefit.

Slow and steady

One argument for the importance of joined-up writing is that it’s usually faster and more fluid for note-taking than printing letters. But a skilled typist can copy words down even faster – so after early childhood, is there any benefit? The evidence so far suggests that writing by hand retains its benefits for memorisation long beyond early childhood development. A 2014 study from UCLA, titled The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard, found exactly that. It studied laptop use among university students, and said it could be “impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing”. It tested students by asking them to take notes from a lecture, using either a laptop or a pen and paper, and then tested their recall on both facts and deeper conceptual questions.

Essentially, the study found that students taking long-form notes on pen and paper tended to process the information on a deeper level. “When somebody’s telling you something and you’re writing it down by hand... you paraphrase it... you somehow have ownership of it and put it in your own words,” Dr James said of the study.

Typed notes, though faster, tended to be closer to lecture transcripts than personal notes.

Cursive culture

There are also cultural issues. Proponents of cursive argue that hundreds of years of manuscripts could not be read by a generation who never learned it. We also tend to view “a fine hand” favourably for its elegance, and careful calligraphy remains popular on elaborate documents and wedding invitations. In the same way, bad handwriting leads to poorer test scores, according to a study by the Carnegie Foundation. The same thoughts and ideas expressed “in a less legible version of a paper” tended to be scored more harshly.

Meanwhile for students with dyslexia, typing may help significantly increase exam grades, according to the British Dyslexia Association. And

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I. I. IGNATENKO. PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

those with physical impairments have long used technology to record their thoughts.

For now, there isn’t an international consensus. And with many hours of classroom time spent on traditional cursive writing, the benefits, some argue, may not be worth it.

Questions:

•What are the arguments of the proponents of cursive?

•What are the arguments against teaching cursive?

•What is the attitude to teaching cursive in Russia?

•What is your own attitude to cursive?

Grammar schools must be open to ‘ordinary families’

Education Secretary Justine Greening wants England’s schools, including a new generation of grammars, to do more to help “ordinary working families”. The school system needs to support those who are struggling and not “the privileged few”, she will say later. But new government analysis shows a majority of selective school places go to more affluent families. Labour says this adds to the evidence that grammar schools do not support social mobility. These “ordinary working families” are defined as not the poorest, but living on “modest incomes”, and likely to live in suburbs and coastal towns away from London.

‘Ordinary’ family income

Ms Greening said they could be a family with a “household income of around £33,000”. Helping these struggling, working families, missed by other poverty measures, has become a focus of Ms Greening’s education reforms. It is also addressing a question about admissions policies for new grammar schools – with the suggestion that a fair intake needed to reflect more than counting the number of pupils eligible for free school meals.

Ms Greening said she wanted grammars to do much more to ensure accessforchildrenfrom allbackgrounds.Thecurrentdominanceofmiddle class families in taking places was a “case for not keeping the status quo”, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. But Ms Greening declined to say whether she wanted grammars to have quotas to ensure a more

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I. EDUCATION

mixed social intake. In a speech at St Mary’s University in Twickenham the education secretary said that “ordinary working families are “the backbone of our economy, of our country”. The education secretary said that these families “need more good schools”. “I believe that selection, in new, 21st Century state grammar schools, will add to the options available to young people, to truly help make the most of their talents. And grammars should not just be for one better off group in society to attend. We want to see more children from disadvantaged families get into grammars – that’s vital.”

Admissions rules

The education secretary said all grammar schools should change their admissions code to give priority to disadvantaged children. Ms Greening said “many young people from an ordinary working class background already attend our existing grammar schools”. But Labour’s shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said the government had “cooked the books”, but still could not “hide from the fact that grammar schools do not aid social mobility”. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: “Rather than making every state school excellent the government want to spend more cash on another ideological experiment.”

Free meals ‘unreliable measure’

Head teachers’ leader Russell Hobby said the government seemed “fixated” on expanding academic selection. “Despite all the evidence showing the harmful effects on social mobility, the government is committed to delivering a policy for the few at the expense of the many,” said Mr Hobby. Richard Watts of the Local Government Association said that local authorities “must have a say over whether or not selective schools are introduced in non-selective areas”. A consultation published by the government on Wednesday, examining how schools should support such “ordinary working families”, shows affluent children are currently much more likely to take places in grammar schools. The consultation shows 36% of places are taken by children from families with belowaverage incomes but not receiving free meals, compared with 53% of places taken by families with above-average incomes.

In non-selective secondary schools, there are 35% of pupils from these “ordinary” families, and 32% from more affluent families, a much lower proportion than in grammars. The analysis also says these “ordinary families” are more likely to miss out on places in outstanding schools,

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I. I. IGNATENKO. PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

compared with children from better-off families. The consultation says while there has been much attention and support for the very poorest families, there is “very limited understanding” of the experiences of children in families of “modest incomes”. St Mary’s University, where Ms Greening is speaking, recently published research showing that counting pupils eligible for free school meals had become an unreliable measure of poverty.

The researchers said that focusing on these pupils missed families who might be working multiple jobs and living in precarious financial circumstances, but above the threshold for free meals. The study warned that using proportions of free school meal pupils had also become an unreliable way of assessing the fairness of admissions systems.

Questions:

•Do grammar schools support social mobility according to the Labour?

•How does the education secretary see the future of the new, 21st Century state grammar schools?

•What changes for state schools do Liberal Democrats demand from the government?

•Why has the system of using proportions of free school meal pupils become an unreliable way of assessing the fairness of admission to grammar schools?

How grammar school changed my life

When Norma Jennings talks about grammar schools, she does not talk about statistics or education policy, she talks about her memories of teachers and how her schooldays still make such a strong impression decades later.

The debate about creating new grammar schools in England has heard many attacks on the negative impact of selection. But to understand the durable appeal of grammars, there’s a need to consider a different type of evidence, the personal experiences of former pupils, who can feel that their memories have been shouted down in all the political exchanges. Norma Jennings has helped to write the history of her old school – Harold Hill Grammar School in Essex – which was abolished as a grammar school in 1973. And her memories encapsulate how the grammars have retained such a hold on the post-War imagination.

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I. EDUCATION

She sent a copy of the book to Prime Minister Theresa May with a letter about what she thought had been lost when most of the grammar system was scrapped.

Harold Hill Grammar School was built in the mid-1950s to serve new overspill estates built in Essex to accommodate thousands of east London families needing homes after the Second World War.

Post-War social planning

It was a piece of deliberate social planning, designed to take the brightest children and create a new generation of professionals. Mrs Jennings, who left the school in 1963, says it’s easy to forget how radical and “revolutionary” all this seemed.

Working-class children were being given the chance to have an education that would never have been within the reach of their parents. For these children, the first generation of the post-War welfare state, this was a system of free milk and opportunity, and Harold Hill was part of a wave of hundreds of new secondary schools built for an expanding, ambitious population. Mrs Jennings’s memories also refer to another touchstone of grammar schools – the strong impression made by teachers. At a recent reunion, she said, there were stories of pupils who had kept in touch with their former teachers all their lives.

‘Stamp of curiosity’

For schoolgirls in the 1950s, unlikely to come across many women in professions, female teachers were inspiring role models for staying in education and having a career. Mrs Jennings talks of the “intellectual life of the school”, separate from academic achievement, with teachers setting up all kind of clubs and societies, and leaving pupils with a “stamp of curiosity”. It was also a time of assumed values, when the head teacher could unselfconsciously write about staff being able to “distinguish what is first-rate from what is not”.

Much of the symbolism and the cut-and-paste Latin might have been borrowed from public schools. But what made grammar schools so distinctive was that the pupils were not from the playing fields of Eton but the overspill estates of Essex. And these schools, with a strong sense of their own identity, often left an intense impression on those who spent time there. Harold Hill was very much a “product of its time”, says Mrs Jennings. And it’s hard to know how much the school could be separated from the era. This was a time of boys being known only by their surnames, teachers wearing

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I. I. IGNATENKO. PROFESSIONAL READING IN ENGLISH

gowns, there were hymns and prize-givings, boys and girls were segregated into separate playgrounds and miscreants faced the cane. It was also a type of education available only to the minority who passed the 11-plus.

End of an era

But as a child Mrs Jennings was not aware of such debates, and she says there was no sense of social separation. You can only remember the schooldays you had – and not what it meant for those who missed out. Harold Hill’s history also touches on another long shadow over the grammar debate. How grammar schools were closed has left an often unhappy legacy, with a sense of schools being dismantled without sufficient care for what was being lost. Mrs Jennings says it would have been better if there had been a way to adapt the selection system, rather than shutting down the grammar schools. She says the mergers with secondary moderns were often rushed and disruptive, with buildings scattered across different sites.

Mrs Jennings went on to train as a teacher and spent a happy career in comprehensives, but she still describes the way grammars were abolished as a “disaster”.

Many former grammar teachers struggled in their new environments. And there was a whole demographic of pupils at school who faced this upheaval in the 1970s – with a long wake of turbulence, as former grammars readjusted to their new identity.

Disrupted generation

Mrs May is one of the most high profile of this generation, starting at a grammar that became a comprehensive. And who knows how much this has been a shaping experience? Harold Hill’s merger with a secondary modern was not to be long-lasting. The comprehensive that emerged has also disappeared, and the site has now been redeveloped for housing. Nothing exists of it apart from the memories of former pupils. Another former pupil of Harold Hill, Colin Sparrow, says his grammar school days were a “melting pot” of different social classes and he had a very positive experience. But he says if the grammar system had survived, the school would have been “a very different animal” from the one he attended in the 1960s. In terms of whether they were elitist, he quotes Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee, speaking in 1945: “I am myself in favour of an educational system which will break down class barriers, and will preserve the unity of the nation, but I am also in favour of variety and

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