Intensive reading:

Reading an Article

By Rosanne Skirble

Competitive pressures placed on young people in U.S. high schools are damaging many otherwise promising lives. Nearly a third of students responding to a 2010 national survey of first-year college students reported they were overwhelmed by the heavy workload in their last year of high school.

Deborah Stipek, dean of the Stanford University School of Education, is an expert in what motivates students to learn and says they are stressed. And for good reason. “They are not enjoying what can be the incredible satisfaction of learning and developing understandings and skills. Learning can be an adventure, but instead of an adventure it’s really about the test. It’s about the college application.”

In an editorial in the journal Science, Stipek says the trend in many high schools is to teach to the test, as her daughter recently reminded her. Relieved after completing her final Advanced Placement, or AP exam for a college-level French course, she told her mother she was happy never to speak French again. “I think that revealed the real basic problem,” Stipek says, “which is the AP courses that she was taking in French were not about learning French, not about being able to communicate with a different culture, or to travel, or to have a skill that could be useful in life. It was about getting a score on an AP test that would help her get into the college of her choice.”

Stipek says educators must begin to rethink homework policies, match students with colleges better suited to their interests and listen to what students say. “One of the things that schools are doing that we’re working with is doing yearly surveys of students to find out what their sources of stress and anxiety are and get their ideas on what the schools can do, what kinds of policies can be supportive of them. And this has been amazing, because we’ve gone into schools where they say this isn’t a problem and then they do a survey of the students and they are blown away by what the students say when they are actually asked.”

Perhaps that explains the grassroots success of the 2009 documentary film, “Race to Nowhere,” that gives young people, their parents and teachers a voice.  The movie has screened before nearly 600,000 people in schools, colleges and churches across the United States and several other countries. One teenager profiled says she's consumed by homework. “I really can’t remember the last time I had a chance to go in the back yard and just run around”, she says.

Stipek, who was also interviewed for the film, says, “These are students who feel under enormous pressure to perform as opposed to learn.” Stipek adds that educators – and parents – must respond by helping students to sharpen their interests, engagement and intellectual skills, and at the same time to reduce their stress. Otherwise, she says, we risk killing young people’s enthusiasm for learning (abridged from http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/-124644319.html).

Activity I: Mastering Vocabulary

1. Complete the gaps with correct prepositions:

_____ good reason an expert _______ to be overwhelmed ________ to focus ________ to respond ________

to be stressed _________ enthusiasm ________ to feel _______ pressure to get a score _______ a test to match sth/sb ________

2. If possible, complete the table with derivatives.

Verb	Noun	Adjective/Participle	Adverb
	anxiety
	application
		competitive
complete
	engagement
perform
respond
sharpen
		supportive

3. Explain what the underlined phrases mean.

1. American high schoolers are overwhelmed by the heavy workload and focus on college prep.

2. Deborah Stipek, dean of the Stanford University School of Education, is an expert in what motivates students to learn and says they are stressed.

3. Relieved after completing her final AP exam for a college-level French course, she told her mother she was happy never to speak French again.

4. Stipek says educators must begin to rethink homework policies, match students with colleges better suited to their interests and listen to what students say.

5. And this has been amazing, because we’ve gone into schools where they say this isn’t a problem and then they do a survey of the students and they are blown away by what the students say when they are actually asked.

6. Perhaps that explains the grassroots success of the 2009 documentary film, “Race to Nowhere,” that gives young people, their parents and teachers a voice. 

7. The movie has screened before nearly 600,000 people in schools, colleges and churches across the United States and several other countries.

Activity II: Analyzing the Structure and the Content.

1. Think of a headline for the article. Remember that a good headline should grab readers’ attention and communicate a message to the audience. It sets the tone of the article and compels you to continue reading.

2. Discuss all the headlines suggested and choose the best one/ones. Then compare them with the original headline provided by your teacher.

3. A newspaper article has all the important information in the opening paragraph often called the lead. This information usually includes who, what, when, where, why and how. It is written this way because most people do not read the whole article. So journalists put the most important information at the beginning.

Read the lead of the article. Does it get you interested in reading the entire article? What information does it include? What is the main point of the article?

4. The body of the article, which follows the lead, contains details and facts that a reader might want to know. It can also include direct quotes which are used to add interest to the story. Look through the article and say how the main point of the article is supported in its body.

5. There are several ways to write a conclusion of the article. For example, you can:

• end with a quotation or startling statement.

• invite the reader to go in a different direction.

• end your magazine article with a story.

• summarize your article at the end.

• circle back to your lead.

(http://theadventurouswriter.com/blogwriting/writing-conclusions-how-to-end-your-articles-essays-book-chapters/).

Which of the ways of writing a conclusion is used in the article?

Activity III: Answering the Questions

1. Why do many American teenagers feel stressed in their last year of high school?

2. How do you think can this situation be improved?

3. Did you feel overwhelmed by heavy workload and focus on college preparation in your last school year? Why/Why not?

ACTIVE SPEAKING

Activity I: Dialogs

Choose any situation to act out a dialog:

1. You believe that a private school is the best option for your child whereas your spouse disagrees with you.

2. Your wife wants to send your daughter to a single-sex school. You don’t think it’s a good idea.

3. You are thinking of hiring a tutor to get your son ready for the SAT and you are convinced that it is a worthwhile investment in his future. However, your husband says it is a waste of time and money.

Activity II: Discussing the Issues

1. Which is better – a centralized public school system with a national curriculum (the European model) or a decentralized public school system represented by a variety of curricula in each state and each school district (the American model). Discuss pros and cons of each model.

2. There is a wide-spread belief in the USA that the more schooling you have, the better off you will be in the future. Do you agree with this idea? Why/Why not?

3. There is a great emphasis on standardized testing in U.S. public schools. These tests are becoming more and more wide-spread in the Russian system of education, too. Are standardized tests so worthwhile to be used on such a large scale?

4. Some teachers believe that it is a ridiculous idea to use computers instead of textbooks in schools. However, such schools already exist in the USA. For example, Empire High School in Vail, Arizona, has introduced all-laptop curriculum, which means laptops, no textbooks, are used in class. Supporters of this decision say that more schools will move towards laptop instruction in the years ahead. Which of the views do you share?

ACTIVE WRITING:

Writing a Descriptive Paragraph

A paragraph is a series of related sentences which work together to develop a specific topic or idea. Most paragraphs contain a sentence which states (or strongly suggests) the focus or the topic of the paragraph. This sentence is called the topic sentence and is often found at or near the beginning of the paragraph. In a tightly organized paragraph, every sentence is closely related to the topic sentence, bringing a sense of unity and clarity to your writing.

There are four basic types of paragraphs: narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. A narrative paragraph tells a story of one kind or another. A descriptive paragraph is one in which sentences work together to present a single, clear picture (description) of a person, place, thing, or idea. An expository paragraph is one which presents facts, gives directions, defines terms, and so on. This type of writing can be used when you wish to present or explain facts or ideas. A persuasive paragraph is one which presents information to support or prove a point. It expresses an opinion and tries to convince the reader that the opinion is correct or valid (abridged from Sebranek P., Meyer V., Kemper D. “Writers INC: A Guide to Writing, Thinking, & Learning”, The Write Source Publishing House, 1989).

1. Read the following plan on writing an essay about your school.

The introduction of the essay: the name of the school, its location and other simple information about the school.

The body of the essay: description of your school (e.g. school building location, the building from the outside and inside, the departments, the faculty, the school’s surroundings, the students in the school, the kind of results that the students in this school get, the curricular and extracurricular activities, etc).

The final part of the essay: the conclusion where you can express your own opinions and feelings about the school.

2. Write a one-paragraph essay keeping to the plan above.

Focus III: College

ACTIVE LISTENING

Before Listening Activities

Activity I: Orientation

1. Project: College Admissions

Find information about applying to college in the USA. Divide the material to cover among all the students in your group, organize it in a coherent and logical order and present it in class. Then, discuss the differences between college admissions in the USA and in Russia.

2. Analyze the data given in the table below. What kind of colleges and universities are presented in it? Which of them belong to the Ivy League? What do you know about the Ivy League?