- •Part I. Higher Education in Britain Text 1
- •1. Scan the article and find the answers to the questions:
- •Further and higher education in Great Britain
- •An ancient University in the modern world
- •2. Write a plan of the article in questions and discuss the article.
- •3. Notes:
- •4. Translate the following partnerships from English into Russian.
- •5. Translate these sentences from Russian into English.
- •6. Match the words to form partnerships:
- •7. Tick the boxes to form phrases:
- •8. Change from active into Passive Voice:
- •Read the article and write 5-7 questions to sum up its content. Teaching and Examining at Oxford
- •Underline the correct word.
- •Look at the study methods in the list. For which of the tasks is each method suited?
- •Read the text about Cambridge and find exciting facts about Cambridge University. Cambridge
- •Retell the gist of the article in English. Студент в «тумане»
- •7. Discuss the similarities and differences between:
- •Part II The Universities of the usa
- •Scan the text and answer the following questions:
- •Study the table.
- •Read the text and write down the features at the academic student life in American universities. Text 2 Academic Student Life in the us
- •Scan the text and expand on the types of testing. Text 3 Modern Examinations
- •Read the text. Text 4 Schools Degrees
- •Retell the gyst of the article in English. Text 5 Чего стоит знаменитый Гарвард
- •Discuss the similarities and differences between American and Russian:
- •Write down compositions (essays):
- •Additional reading Text 1
- •1.Translate the text into English and discuss in pairs the system of higher education a Student’s life in Australia.
- •Система образования Австралии
- •II. Проживание студентов
- •III. Трудоустройство.
- •1.Retell the gyst of the article in English. Система образования Канады.
6. Match the words to form partnerships:
-
first-class/master
higher/first rate
compulsory/formal
post-graduate/2-year
tuition/registration
long-distance/accelerated
school-leaving/medical
learning
degree
schooling
certificate
diploma
course
education
7. Tick the boxes to form phrases:
-
sit
get
have
do
good marks
an exam
one’s homework
for one’s finals
a project
extracurricular activities
8. Change from active into Passive Voice:
Oxford university provides high academic standards.
The learned men were delivering lectures at the beginning of the twelfth century.
Senior members elected the Vice Chancellor two years ago.
The governing council will select students from the applicants soon.
Everybody helps to rule the university.
The admission body has already arranged the entrance exams.
Faculty committee had admitted undergraduates by October, 1.
Now the candidates are competing for limited places in the main hall.
Last year the students were writing the final exam at that time.
Postgraduates have been doing their research since September.
This student has persuaded the college of his choice that he is academically better.
Postgraduates had been preparing their theses for a long time before they presented it for public.
The young lecturer will have been working in the libraries for years before he finished his dissertation.
The postgraduate will be discussing his article with his supervisor at 10 tomorrow.
This year I have passed the entrance exams to a postgraduate study.
Text 3
Read the article and write 5-7 questions to sum up its content. Teaching and Examining at Oxford
The teaching at Oxford combines the standard methods of university education – lectures, classes, and (in the Sciences) laboratory work – with a systematic and intensive use of tutorials. Lectures, classes, and laboratory courses are provided by the University, tutorials by the colleges. A college is thus not just a hall of residence, but a place where social life and learning are combined.
A tutorial is a weekly meeting of one or two students with the tutor to whom they are assigned for their subject. A major proportion of your tutorials will normally be with a tutor who is a member of your own college, though some will be taken by tutors in other colleges who are expert in particular branches of the subject. Most college tutors also hold University lecturerships and give lectures open to members of all colleges.
At the weekly meeting with your tutor you present the result of a week’s work, the reading, assembled from the various sources suggested by the tutor the previous week. What you are expected to present is something more than information. Whether it is set out as your solution to a problem, or as a more formal essay, it is essential to develop a critical attitude to facts, to learn to sift evidence, and to establish priorities. This is true of all subjects, of physics no less than of philosophy, or geology, or jurisprudence. Thus a tutorial is a meeting-point of two kinds of critical activity: you learn to be critical in handling data; your tutor analyses and criticizes your efforts. The success of the tutorial method depends upon an attitude of active co-operation between yourself and your tutor: you must risk giving your own opinions and be ready to accept frank criticism and advice given by your tutor. What is at issue is not marks or grades, not even praise or blame, but a joint attempt to make sense of a particular topic. Students do not prepare a single text, or base work on a single textbook. They are free to search out books, and to select from among those they find. They are judged by their critical attitude to what they have discovered. At the heart of the tutorial method is a theory of teaching people to think for themselves.
The University provides an extensive programme of lectures which range in character from survey courses intended to give systematic coverage of a syllabus to (particularly in the later years of a course) critical discussions of limited topics in which the lecturer has special interest and expertise. The main value of a course of lectures often lies as much in the viewpoint that it develops, and the critical method that it exhibits, as in the factual knowledge it conveys. What students get from lectures casts light on their tutorial work, and vice versa. Almost all lectures are open to you as a student, whatever the main subject of your course.
Laboratory courses in the Sciences are compulsory. They are designed to ensure that you become familiar with the main experimental methods in your subject and the critical interpretation of their results, and that you gain some skill in manipulation of scientific equipment.
Finally, the fact that the Oxford term lasts only eight weeks means that each is spent working intensively for tutorials and attending lectures and practical classes. You are expected to undertake during the vacations the wider, more leisurely reading which is essential to all courses. But despite the intensive character of each term’s work, students are able, given a reasonably efficient organization of time and effort, to take full advantage of the opportunities the University offers for other activities – athletic, cultural, and social.
Once at Oxford, students have to pass two examinations, known as the First and Second Public Examinations. The First Public Examination is usually taken during the first year (the exact time varies between subjects), and is in many cases a qualifying (pass/fail) examination, though in some subjects classes are awarded. The Second Public Examination, which is classified and upon which your degree is awarded, follows at least two years later, at the end of the final year. The work done throughout your course should be cumulative, allowing you progressively to develop your understanding of your subject, and reaching full fruition only in the final year as you perceive the interrelation of all the ideas you have come across; and the Second Public Examination, drawing on all your work since your first year, aims primarily to get you to show this understanding. Oxford’s courses, whether they are in a single subject or a combination of subjects, are essentially unitary, rather than strongly modular, with ‘preliminary’, ‘part 1’ and ‘part 2’ courses allowing for easy changes of subject between one and the next, as at many other universities.
So our teaching and examining systems reflect our overall aim of providing you with the opportunity not only to gain knowledge, but above all to learn how to think about it. To get the most out of them, you need to be good at and enjoy working and thinking, with guidance certainly, but in an independent and self-reliant way, and in the realms of ideas and arguments as much as facts. Our entrance system reflects this same aim: we are looking for indications of these qualities in you, so that we can see whether you and our approach are well suited to each other.