DETAILED COURSE DESCRIPTION 2 page

Before listening ask the students to guess the meanings of the following words and word combinations:

fall (A.E.) – autumn (B.E.)

undergraduate – a student.

to estimate – to assess, to evaluate.

investigation – research, exploration.

living expenses – the money for living needs.

Listen to The Voice of America and try to understand

Foreign Student Series: A Look at Washington University

We answer a question from a student in China in Part 42 of our series. Transcript of radio broadcast:

20 June 2007

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

A student at Xinjiang Normal University in China has a question for our Foreign Student Series. Akbar Mamat wants to go overseas after graduation and would like some information about Washington University.

Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, is a medium-sized school in the Midwest. It has almost eleven thousand students. Twelve percent this last school year were international students, mostly graduate students.

The university has schools for law, medicine and social work. It also has a business school, a school of design and visual arts and a school of engineering and applied science. But more than seventy percent of courses are taught through the Arts and Sciences program.

The new school year that begins this fall will cost fifty-two thousand dollars for undergraduates. That includes twelve months of living expenses estimated at seventeen thousand dollars.

Graduate tuition differs by program. Tuition for the Master of Social Work program, for example, will cost twenty-seven thousand dollars in the coming year. The Master of Business Administration program will cost about thirty-eight thousand dollars.

The university offers financial assistance to international students, including first-year students, but says its resources are limited.

Scholarships are available. The university also offers a monthly payment plan to spread out the cost of tuition. And it offers loan programs.

International students in the United States generally cannot receive federal student loans. But they may be able to take out private loans, as many American students do. The student loan industry is in the news right now. Investigations are looking at questionable dealings between colleges and lenders.

Washington University in Saint Louis was named Eliot Seminary when it opened in eighteen fifty-three. Later the name was changed to honour the first American president, George Washington.

But other schools share the name Washington, including the University of Washington and George Washington University. So in nineteen seventy-six Washington University added the words "in Saint Louis" to its name.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our Foreign Student Series on higher education in the United States is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION

I. True or False?

1. Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, is one of the largest schools in the Midwest (False).

2. The new school year begins this autumn and will cost 52 thousand dollars for undergraduates (True).

3. Graduate tuition doesn’t differ by the program (False).

1. The University doesn’t offer any financial assistance to international students because its resources are limited. (False).
2. International students may take out only private loans, as many American students do (True).

II. Answer the questions.

1. The university has schools for law, medicine, social work, a business school, a school of design and visual arts and a school of engineering and applied science.

2. Graduate tuition differs by program.

3. International students in the United States generally can’t receive federal student loans, but the university offers some financial assistance to international students, including first-year students (scholarships, private loans).

Lesson 4

The lesson plan

1. Lexical exercises. Active vocabulary (15 min)
2. Reading (20 min)
3. Listening (15 min)
4. Speaking practice (30 min)
5. Homework

LEXICAL EXERCISES

I. Ask students to refresh words and word combinations they have learnt at the previous lesson, doing this exercise (to match the words and their definitions given below):

Grade, high school, diploma, vocational, score, higher school, standards, selective subjects, term, admission, middle class, boarding school, mandatory subjects, loan, campus.

the mark given to a student for his work – grade

institution for giving secondary education – high school

educational certificate of proficiency – diploma

professional – vocational

record points – score

universities – higher school

academic requirements – standards

subjects that a student may choose – selective subjects

one of the periods into which the academic year is divided – term

being accepted to a school, a club – admission

class of society between the poor and the rich – middle class

a school where pupils study and live – boarding school

subjects that every student must study – mandatory subjects

sum of money given to a person who should return it – loan

place where students live – campus

II. Ask students to fill the gaps in the sentences:

1. In the UK most children start primary school at the age of five and move to secondary school when they are eleven. They can leave school at sixteen, but most students stay on in the sixth form till they are eighteen.
2. Our teacher was very strict and we were always punished if we misbehaved. Sometimes, if we were really naughty we were put in detention and had to stay after school.
3. The head is in charge of the pupils/students and staff of a school (the last two in any order).
4. Mary got such good marks/scores/grades in her exams, that she got a place at a Cambridge University and a scholarship to pay for her studies. She did so well that she graduated with the first class honours.

Reading

Ask students to match the words and their definitions:

scary – frightening.

to realize – to know and understand something.

to push somebody to do something – to make somebody do something.

to pick on somebody – to behave in an unfair way to someone.

to tease – to laugh at someone and make jokes in order to have fun by embarrassing them.

naughty – disobedient.

cheeky – rude or disrespectful, sometimes in a way that is amusing.

detention - here a punishment in which children who have behaved badly are forced to stay at school for a short time after the others have gone home.

confident – sure that something will happen in the way that you want or expect.

despite – syn. in spite of – used to say that something happens or is true even though something else might have prevented it.

reports – here complain.

to treat - to behave towards sb/sth.

to take a gap (year) – a period of time when nothing is happening, that exists between two other periods of time when something is happening.

Speaking

Work in pairs

Ask students to retell the story about their school-days, using useful expressions, given above.

Listening

(The purpose of the Listening exercises is to give students an opportunity of practice in listening to spoken English and to develop skills to make them better listeners. The task is to help them to understand the main points that are made – and to discourage them for listening to every single word or worrying about the words they don’t understand.

The voices represent a variety of authentic accents, and the speech contains the normal hesitations, false starts, pauses and interruptions that occur in authentic spoken language. All these hesitations and false starts are reproduced in the transcripts.):

You will hear Rachel talking about her schools-days. Put ticks in the chart with information about her:

Transcript

Listening comprehension

Leo Jones, Making Progress, Cambridge.

SPEAKING PRACTICE

The students in pairs are asked to make a questionnaire about the university and students’ activity (in the Present Simple Tense), using all the information, discussed before.

After that they should make up dialogues on the theme. We advise to remind them to use active vocabulary and useful phrases in their dialogues and to give another group of useful expressions:

Asking and answering questions:

Some students like to ask provocative questions, aware that the groupmates don’t know the exact answer. Explain to them that unpredictable situations happen very often in real life and advise them to store other useful phrases, just in case:

Well, that’s hard to say right now, but next time I’ll try to answer!

I’m not perfectly ready to answer this question, but next time I’ll try to answer!

What a difficult question!

All this routine work has to be done as a preliminary preparation to the presentation.

Lesson 5

The lesson plan

1. Lexical exercises (15 min)
2. Reading (10 min)
3. Speaking practice (35 min)
4. Writing (20 min)
5. Homework

LEXICAL EXERCISES

New Words

Ask students to match the words and their definitions:

magnet – a thing that attracts (literally, a piece of metal that attracts or repels iron).

overseas – coming from abroad, foreign.

guaranteed – promised and assured.

assessed – evaluated, ranked.

recognition – accepting that something (e.g. a course) is of high quality.

cost-effective – here, provides good education for not too much money.

degree – here, providing further education.

scholarships – payments from a sponsor's funds to maintain a good student in full-time education.

IELTS – short for International English Language Testing System. It measures ability to communicate in English across all four language skills: listening, reading, writing and speaking.

foundation – here, basic, preparatory.

personalized – focused on individual students.

emphasis – special importance.

global job market – jobs that are open to people all over the world.

guidance – help and direction.

drop out – when you have to stop your university studies before you have completed your course.

pass rate – marks that you need to get in order to begin/continue to study at a university.

impartial – fair, unbiased.

dynamic – where a lot happens and changes happen quite often.

cosmopolitan – including people of many different backgrounds.

fascinating – very interesting, irresistibly attractive.

Reading

Ask students to read the text UNIVERSITIES IN THE UK.

SPEAKING PRACTICE

Mini-presentation UNIVERSITIES – THE PARTICIPANTS of the Tempus Joint European Project

Writing

Ask students to discuss with their partners and write a short report about differences and similar features of education at home and abroad using the information, having got before.

Homework

The teacher asks students to find more additional information about the university and their faculty from all possible resources, determines everybody’s participation at the presentation, chooses the students to play their parts, explains the process of the next lesson and the evaluation points in order to inspire for more effective further organisation of discussion.

Lesson 6

The lesson plan

1. Reading (15 min)
2. Listening (15 min)
3. Speaking (15 min)
4. Presentation (40 min)
5. Evaluation (5 min)

Reading

I. Ask students to find in the text the synonyms of the following phrases:

a) you won’t make much progress – you won’t get very far

b) become angry because you can’t do what you want to do – to get frustrated

c) see and pay attention to – to notice

d) often and carefully, and in an organised way – systematically

e) alone, without help – on their own way

f) do something that makes you seem stupid – make fools of ourselves.

Listening

Transcript

FIVE NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Lida Baker suggests five resolutions for people who want to improve their English in the New Year.

LIDA BAKER: "My first resolution that I would recommend people make is to spend a certain amount of time listening to English – and it can be five minutes a day or it can be 10 minutes a week or it can be whatever suits a person's work schedule, life schedule or whatever. But it's really important to set goals and to stick to them. And it would be very helpful if people had Internet access to do this, because what I'm going to recommend is listening to sites that have scripts included."

RS: "What do you do if you don't have access to a computer, how can you listen better?

LIDA BAKER: "Well, almost everyone all over the world has access to pop music. And one of my resolutions would be to spend time listening to English music. The advantage of listening to music is that it's a really wonderful way to work on your pronunciation, because you get a feeling for the stress and the rhythm of the language when you're singing. And also music is full of idioms, so it's a terrific way to learn colloquial vocabulary and to work on your pronunciation. And a third advantage of listening to music is that it's really easy to remember.

"So for people who have access only to a radio, even they can do something to improve their English just by listening to pop music. And I might add, if you do have access to the Internet, there are lots of Internet sites that will give you the lyrics to pop songs. Do a search, type 'music' or 'songs' plus 'lyrics,' and you'll find sites where you can type in the name of the song and it will give you the lyrics to the song.

RS: "So spend a little bit more time listening, or have a goal for listening. Listen to English music. What else?"

LIDA BAKER: "Something else I tell my students, and they're always surprised when I tell them this, is read children's books."

AA: "That makes sense, though."

LIDA BAKER: "Yeah. Why do you say that?"

RS: "Well, few words."

AA: "It's simpler."

RS: "Direct, simple. Lots of pictures."

LIDA BAKER: "There you go."

RS: "That puts it in a context."

LIDA BAKER: "There you go. And the other thing is, you can find children's books at all levels. If you were a total beginner in English, you start with books that have just a few words on the page and lots of pictures, and you can work your way up to books that have relatively speaking more text and fewer illustrations. But again, children's books are very motivating. To this day I enjoy reading the books that I read to my daughter when she was a little girl."

AA: "So now we've got the listening to the radio, listening to music, going online and looking for scripts of programs to go with the audio, reading children's books. What's your next resolution?"

LIDA BAKER: "Learn a new word every day. And if you don't have time to do it every day, do it every other day. Again, pick a realistic goal. Choose your word, look up the meaning, but then don't stop there. Look at the examples in the dictionary for how the word is used. Is it used as a noun? Is it a verb? Is it used to talk about people? If it's an adjective, does it have a positive meaning or a negative meaning? So look for what's called the connotation of the word. And then, when you're sitting in your car, or you're walking to the bus stop or sitting on the bus, practice. Put the word into your own sentences. Think of ways that you could use that word.

"And so now we come to our last resolution, which in a way is the most difficult one, because my last resolution would be, even if it's only very occasionally, talk to native speakers every chance you get."

AA: Lida Baker from the American Language Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, with five New Year's resolutions that people can make to improve their English.

RS: Before we go, as we come to the end of another year, we note the passing of Mary Newton Bruder, the linguist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, known as The Grammar Lady. She dedicated her life to helping people improve their grammar. We are grateful for her contributions to Wordmaster. Mary Newton Bruder died in August at the age of sixty-four.

RS: That's all for Wordmaster this week. Our e-mail address is word@voanews.com. And Internet users can read and listen to all of our segments at voanews.com/wordmaster.

RS: Wishing you all the best this holiday season, with Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

Voice of America

word@voanews.com

PRESENTATION

MY UNIVERSITY

The aim of the final lesson on the topic “Education” in the form of presentation for students is to speak on given theme and to demonstrate their knowledge and ability to communicate.

SELF-STUDY MATERIALS FOR UNIT I

After the preliminary test we recommend to start from the explanation of the Verb to be in the Present Simple Tense according to the system given below with all types of questions. These grammar materials are intended not only for elementary students but also for lower-intermediate level students whose grammar is weaker than other aspects of their English. At the end of every lesson the students have revision test. We advise to do all given exercises at the lesson to help students to understand all peculiarities of using of the verb to be in all questions.

Verb to be (the Present Simple Tense)

Positive and Negative Forms

NOTE: Look at the negative forms: She isn’t married. You aren’t British.

BUT: I’m not a schoolboy.

Exercise 1. Write the short form (she’s, we aren’t, etc.).

1. He’s 4. I’m not
2. They’re 5. It’s
3. She isn’t 6. You aren’t

Exercise 2. Write the full form (she is/we are not, etc.).

1. We are not 4. They are not
2. I am 5. It is not
3. You are 6. She is

Exercise 3. Put in am/am not/is/isn’t/are/aren’t.

1. I am from Russia.
2. Debbie and Mark aren’t British. They are German.
3. My friend is interested in computers.
4. His parents are around 40.
5. How old are you? I am 18.
6. London is not situated on the river Evans. It is situated on the river Thames.
7. I am keen on sports. But I am not rather good at basketball.
8. Her name isn’t Jane. It‘s Helen.

Exercise 4. Write true sentences, positive or negative. Use am/am not/is/isn’t/are/aren’t.

1. I am (am not) keen on Biology.
2. Rome isn’t in Spain.
3. We are Russian.
4. Football is a popular sport in Britain.
5. The “Beatles” and “Deep Purple” are famous British groups.
6. American English is different from British English.

7. My hobbies are art and music.

General Questions

Exercise 5. Make general questions with these words. Give short answers.

1. Is your mother at work? Yes, she is/No, she isn’t.
2. Are her children at home? Yes, they are./No, they aren’t.
3. Is he from Italy? Yes, he is./No, he isn’t.
4. Am I good at English? Yes, you are./No, you aren’t.
5. Are you interested in books? Yes, I am.
6. Am I right? Yes, you are./No, you aren’t.
7. Is this subject difficult? Yes, it is./No, it isn’t.

Exercise 6. Give short answers (Yes, I am/No, he isn’t, etc.).

1. Are your parents old? No, they aren’t.
2. Are all your school friends students now? Yes, they are.
3. Is English difficult? No, it isn’t./Yes, it is.
4. Is your home town small? Yes, it is.
5. Are you interested in music? Yes, I am.

6. Is your friend good at languages? Yes, he is./No, he isn’t.

Alternative questions

Exercise 7. Ask alternative questions with the following words. Give answers.

Example: You/a student/a schoolboy? — Are you a student or a schoolboy? — I’m a student.

1. Is he in Moscow or in Kiev?
2. Are Alan and Henry students or teachers?
3. Are your new friends sociable or not?
4. Is his daughter 17 or 18?
5. Are your parents old or young?
6. Is Russia a big or a small country?

7. Are they designers or artists?

Special questions

Exercise 8. Ask and answer questions.

Example: What colour is a banana? – It’s yellow.

The sun

Ambulances in Moscow?

What colour is/are Roses?

The Christmas tree?

The sky

Exercise 9. Complete the sentences.

Example: Where are my books? – On the table.

Exercise 10. Ask the questions.

Example: What is your name? – My name’s Mark.

Tag questions

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