Read the following dialogue and learn it by heart

Education in England

Ann: In Britain all children have to go to school from the age of five to sixteen. It’s the law.

Bill: Yes. I believe the school-leaving age has been raised to sixteen, hasn’t it?

Ann: Yes, it has.

Bill: Do all parents send their children to State schools?

Ann: Nearly all of them do, yes. But we have independent schools where the fees are high and not many parents can afford them. Many private schools are boarding schools, though they usually cater both for boarders and day pupils.

Bill: Did you go to a State primary school?

Ann: Yes, I did. I went to a nursery school first, at the age of four. There was a good kindergarten in our neighbourhood so my parents decided to send me there for a year.

Bill: Can you still remember it?

Ann: Yes, I have faint but very pleasant memories of it. It was a delightful place, full of fun and games. As in most nursery schools, work – if you can call it that — consisted of story-telling, drawing, singing and dancing.

Bill: And you went to the Infants’ School at the age of five, didn’t you?

Ann: Yes, but you know, right up to the age of seven school life was very pleasant. It was only later in the Junior School that we began to have more formal lessons and even worry about exams.

Bill: Really? Did you have to do exams at that age?

Ann: Yes, we used to then. We had to take an exam at the age of eleven called the “Eleven Plus” to see what kind of secondary school we would get into. But this exam is slowly disappearing nowadays.

Dialogue 3.

Render the contents of the dialogues in indirect speech

Mary: You look happy today!

Fred : I am happy. I have just passed my Literature exam.

Mary: Congratulations! I am glad somebody’s happy.

Fred: Why? What’s the matter?

Mary: Oh, I’m just worried, I guess. I have to take a history exam next week.

Fred: Oh, come, you are always worried about your exams, but you get only fives, as far as I know. You’ve passed some exams already haven’t you?

Mary: Yes, I’ve passed my French exam.

Fred: Oh, I give up. 1 simply can’t learn French.

Mary: Why do you say that? I think you are making a lot of progress.

Fred: No, I’m not. I try and try and 1 still can’t speak it very well.

Mary: Learning any language takes a lot of effort. But don’t give up. Why don’t we practise those dialogues together?

Fred: Good idea. That just might help.

Dialogue 4.

Bob: Excuse me, Tom is this seat taken?

Tom: No, it isn’t.

Bob: Would you mind moving over one, so my friend and I can sit together?

Tom: Not at all.

Bob: Thanks a lot. Do you always attend Professor Brown’s lectures? -

Tom: As a rule I do. I find them very interesting and instructive, besides he is a brilliant speaker.

Bob: Yes, 1 quite agree with you.

Tom: What do you think of Professor Green’s course?

Bob: Not much.

Tom: Why, what’s wrong with it?

Bob: Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that he ... Well, because he overloads it with detail. That course he gave on town planning last year. It was just the same — just a load of detail which you could have got from a book

anyway and more and more technical terms. There was no……

Tom: No general overview you mean.

Bob: Yes. I suppose you could call it that. I couldn’t see the town for the buildings.

Tom: But you’ve got to have detail in this kind of subject, Bob, and anyway I think he’s good. You take his first lecture for instance I thought that was very interesting, and not at all over-detailed.

Bob: But that’s just it, Tom. That’s just what I’m getting at. He starts off all right and engages your interest so that you sit back and think “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to get a general idea of the important points in “this topic”. When bang! Before you know it you’re up to your neck in minute details and he’s bombarding you with technical terminology.

Tom: Oh rubbish! Now you’re exaggerating.

Dialogue 5.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1719