1.Use the topical vocabulary in answering the following questions:

1.What steps do students have to take to enroll in a college/ university for admission? Speak about the exams they take — PSAT, SAT, ACT. 2. What financial assistance are applicants eligible for? What is college scholarship, grants, loan? Explain and bring out the essence of student financial aid. 3. Speak about academic calendar of a university. How does an academic year differ from the one in Russia? 4. How many credit hours does a student need to graduate? What type curricular courses and how many does a student have to take to earn a degree? What is a GPA (grade point average)? 6. What is there to say about a college faculty? What is tenure? 7. What is the role of a student’s counselor? Specify the function of career development and job placement within a university. 8. Should there be an age limit for university full-time students? What are your attitudes to mature students? 9. What are the sources of funding for universities and colleges (both public and private)? 10. What is an undergraduate student? A graduate student?

2.Give English equivalents of the following words and expressions:

Подавать заявление в вуз; быть зачисленным; записаться на курс; провалить курс; отсеяться; пересдавать экзамен; читать лекцию; иметь право на материальную помощь; присудить степень; проводить собеседование; специализироваться по какому-нибудь предмету; опрос; данные об успеваемости; вступительные требования; срок пребывания в должности; копия; закончить с отличием; плата за обучение; абитуриент; 10-ть абитуриентов на место; первокурсник; второкурсник; зам. декана; проректор; каникулы; заочник; ссуда; стипендия; необязательный предмет; диссертация; университетский женский клуб; студенческая мужская организация; студенческий совет.

3.Speak about Vitebsk State University, its administration and organization, facilities, faculty, admissions requirements, student body, etc. Use the topical vocabulary.

Reading 4

Harvard University, today recognized as part of the top echelon of the world’s universities, came from very inauspicious and humble beginnings.

This oldest of American universities was founded in 1636, just sixteen years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Included in the Puritan emigrants to the Massachusetts colony during that period were more than 100 graduates of England’s prestigious Oxford and Cambridge universities, and these university graduates in the New World were determined that their sons would have the same educational opportunities that they themselves had had. Because of this support in the colony for an institution of higher learning, the General Court of Massachusetts appropriated 400 pounds for a college in October of 1636 and early the following year decided on a parcel of land for the school; this land was in an area called Newetowne, which was later renamed Cambridge after its English cousin and is the site of the present-day university.

When a young minister named John Harvard, who came from the neighboring town of Charlestowne, died from tuberculosis in 1638, he willed half of his estate of 1,700 pounds to the fledgling college. In spite of the fact that only half of the bequest was actually paid, the General Court named the college after the minister in appreciation for what he had done. The amount of the bequest may not have been large, particularly by today’s standards, but it was more than the General Court had found it necessary to appropriate in order to open the college.

Henry Dunster was appointed the first president of Harvard in 1640, and it should be noted that in addition to serving as president, he was also the entire faculty, with an entering freshman class of four students. Although the staff did expand somewhat, for the first century of its existence the entire teaching staff consisted of the president and three or four tutors.

1. The main idea of this passage is that

(A) Harvard is one of the world’s most prestigious universities

(B) what is today a great university started out small

(C) John Harvard was key to the development of a great university

(D) Harvard University developed under the auspices of the General Court of Massachusetts

2. The passage indicates that Harvard is

(A) one of the oldest universities in the world

2. the oldest university in the world

3. one of the oldest universities in America

(D) the oldest university in America

3. It can be inferred from the passage that the Puritans who travelled to the Massachusetts colony were

1. rather well educated

2. rather rich

3. rather supportive of the English government

(D) rather undemocratic

4. The pronoun “they” in line 8 refers to

1. Oxford and Cambridge universities

2. university graduates

3. sons

4. educational opportunities

5. The “pounds” in line 10 are probably

1. types of books

2. college students

3. units of money

4. school campuses

6. The “English cousin” in line 13 refers to a

1. city

2. relative

3. person

4. court

7. Which of the following is NOT mentioned about John Harvard?

1. What he died of

2. Where he came from

3. Where he was buried

4. How much he bequeathed to Harvard

8. By which of the following could the word “fledgling” be replaced best of all?

1. Newborn

2. Flying

3. Winged

4. Established

9. The passage implies that

(A) Henry Dunster was an ineffective president

(B) someone else really served as president of Harvard before Henry Dunster

(C) Henry Dunster spent much of his time as president managing the Harvard faculty

(D) the position of president of Harvard was not merely an administrative position in the early years

10. The word “somewhat” could best be replaced by

1. back and forth

2. to and fro

3. side by side

4. more or less

Reading 5

“Examinations exert a pernicious influence on education”

We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to devise anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude.

As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of “drop-outs”: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?

A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorize. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedom. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress.

The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person’s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: “I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.”