Part 1 what is a college?

Some universities consist of a number of colleges. This is only one of the meanings of college. More often a college is not part of a university, but a separate institution. Whereas a university aims at giving an academic education, and is mainly non-vocational, a college education is in most cases less academic, more practical, and usually vocational. Most colleges are state colleges, built and maintained by the local education authorities, but there are also private colleges.

1. Further Education College (College of Technology, Technical College).

The system has strong ties with commerce and industry, and co-operation with business is encouraged by the Government and its agencies. Employers are normally involved in designing courses.

Courses are run by some 550 institutions of further education, about 60% of them classified as large (over 1000 full-time-equivalent students), many of which also offer higher education courses. state colleges, built and maintained by the local education authorities, but there are also private colleges. They go by a variety of titles, technical colleges, colleges of agriculture, colleges of art and colleges of commerce. They offer full-and part-time courses in subjects such as art and architecture, drama, languages, and English for foreign students.

Tutorial colleges, sometimes known as “crammers”, are privately run establishments offering intensive courses to prepare students for particular examinations, usually O or A levels.

2. College as Part of a University.

The university is a federation of colleges. The university arranges the courses, the lectures, and the examinations, and awards the degrees.

The college system at Oxford and Cambridge is unlike that of any other university, whether in Britain or America. In order to enter the university, a student must first apply to a college and become a member of the university through the college. The colleges are not connected with any particular study and are governed by twenty to thirty "Fellows". Fellows of a college are "tutors" (teachers, often called dons). They teach their own subject to those students in the college who are studying it, and they are responsible for their progress. Most dons give one or two lectures a week which students from any college may attend. No lectures are compulsory and tutors usually advise their students which lectures they should go to.

Each college has its own completely separate living quarters, its own dining hall and its own chapel. Cambridge and Oxford both have two women's colleges. Today most of the colleges are co-educational.

3. Higher Education Colleges

Most of the colleges were originally established by religious foundations to train teachers for schools, but they now offer a wide variety of other courses, mainly at degree level (Bachelor and BTEC-HND Higher National Diploma).

4. Colleges of Education (Teacher-Training Colleges) resulted in the 1970s from the integration of teacher training outside universities with the rest of further education. As well as teaching qualifications, they generally provide other degree and diploma courses, and so are similar to polytechnics and universities, although usually much smaller in size.

Part 2

lectures; tutorials; training; teaching aids; teaching; training;

teaching methods; secondary school; university; theoretical;

post-graduate; demonstration; term; educational.

A student at a College of Education in Britain studies (1) _______________ parallel to his special subject courses. An English (2) ______________student after obtaining a first degree (usually the B.A. or B.Sc) takes a (3) _______________diploma course at a university Department of Education. This course is exclusively concerned with (4) ______________him as a teacher, usually as a (5) ______________teacher.

The first six weeks of the (6) ______________are chiefly taken up with lectures and (7) ______________on the theory of education, (8) ______________psychology, the history and sociology of English education. The students are also given a course on the use of (9) ______________. They are also able to watch (10) ______________lessons in various schools. Then their first full-time (11) ______________ practice begins. Next term is also divided between (12) ______________and practical work. In the summer term there are a few weeks of (13) ______________and tutorials, followed by examinations in May.