Е. В. Захарова язык и культура великобритании в условиях европейской интеграции предисловие данное учебное пособие
| Вид материала | Учебное пособие |
| Unit iii. higher education : broadening horizons ? Ii.vocabulary focus Iii. interpretation Iv. speaking personally |
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UNIT III. HIGHER EDUCATION : BROADENING HORIZONS ?
I. READING COMPREHENSION
A. Pre-reading Task. Answer the questions:
1) What are the most famous British universities?
2) Have you ever heard the term ‘red-brick’ universities?
3) What is the Open University?
B. Read and translate the text. Make use of the following words and expressions:
Vocational – профессиональный
Civil engineering – гражданское строительство
Be geared – быть предназначенным, приспособленным
Qualify – готовиться стать специалистом в какой-либо области
Peg – искусственно поддерживать цену
Loan – заем
Hardship – затруднение
Afford – позволить себе
Subsidize – субсидировать
Mesmerize – очаровывать
Boast – гордиться
polytechnic – политехнический институт
realm – область, сфера
visual art – изобразительное искусство
cater for smth – обслуживать, заботиться
intake – набор, прием
hinder – препятствовать
access to smth – доступ к чему-либо
assess – оценивать
gap – пропасть
seek – искать
sponsorship – спонсирование
alumni – бывшие студенты, выпускники
tuition fee – плата за обучение
be exempted – быть освобожденным (от обязанности, уплаты и т.д.)
salary – заработная плата
retain – сохранять
spell-binding – очаровательный
On leaving school at 18, more than 40 percent of pupils become students at universities and colleges. Including the Open University, which is mainly part-time,there are 110 universities in Britain: 93 in England, 13 in Scotland, 2 in Wales and 2 in Northern Ireland. They have 1,802,000 students and 78,900 lecturers. The standard length of undergraduate study in Britain is three years for a Bachelor of Arts or Science degree (BA/BSc) and up to seven years for ‘vocational’ degrees (that is ones linked to a specific job), such as medicine, dentistry, veterinary courses or architecture. Students of subjects such as civil engineering spend an intermediate year in industry (a ‘sandwich’ course). Many universities offer the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree which is a four-year course geared towards classroom experience. The majority of primary-school teachers qualify by this route. The standard way to train to be a secondary-school teacher is to do a three-year university course in a specialist subject such as biology, history or mathematics followed by a one-year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) which includes teaching practice.
Students on Master’s courses (MA/MSc) study for at least one year, and those doing Doctorates (PhDs) for upwards of three years. Students finance their studies with great difficulty. Grants were pegged at 1982 levels and abolished altogether in1994. A system of loans was introduced in 1990/91, and in 1997 for the first time students had to pay £1,000 towards fees. Hence today they experience real financial hardship. Only those with parents who can afford to subsidize them are without money worries. The percentage of working-class young people attending university is declining.
Oxford and Cambridge (known collectively as ‘Oxbridge’) are the oldest universities in Britain. Though much expanded, their student numbers are still small, compared with London’s 102,000. At the beginning of the twenty-first century Oxford had a little over 16,000 students in residence, Cambridge about 17,000. Founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries respectively, they are easily the most famous of Britain’s universities. While educating less than one-twentieth of Britain’s total university population, they continue to attract many of the best brains and to mesmerize an even greater number, partly on account of their prestige, but also on account of the seductive beauty of many of their buildings and surroundings.
Both universities grew gradually, as federations of independent colleges, most of which were founded in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In both universities, however, new colleges are periodically established.
Scotland boasts four ancient universities: Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen, all founded in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In the Scottish lowlands greater value was placed on education during the sixteenth and later centuries than in much of England. These universities were created with strong links with the ancient universities of continental Europe and followed their longer and broader course of studies. Even today, Scottish universities provide four-year undergraduate courses, compared with the usual three-year courses in England and Wales.
Old universities, such as Durham for example, are distinguished from the so-called ‘redbrick’ universities founded around the beginning of the twentieth century (for example, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester) through their emphasis on traditional subjects. ‘New’ universities created in the 1960s with the expansion of higher education include Lancaster, York, Kent and Sussex. In 1992 all the former polytechnics (originally colleges with a technical bias) hanged their names and joined the existing forty-four universities.
Britain has two other main universities (apart from the European campuses of several American ones): the University of Buckingham and the Open University. The former was Britain’s first private university, the latter offers a wide range of degree programmes delivered partly by television and radio, appealing to those who are already engaged in full-time work and whose only all-day attendance commitment is a week-long annual summer school. Students have to fund themselves.
In addition there are a large number of specialist higher education institutions in the realm of the performing and visual arts. For example, there are four leading conservatories: the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music. There are a large number of art colleges, of which the most famous is the Royal College of Art. Other colleges cater for dance, film-making and other specialist areas of artistic study.
Female undergraduates have greatly increased proportionately in recent years. In the mid-1960s they were only 28 per cent of the intake, and by the end of the century they were more than 50 per cent. There is still an unfortunate separation of the sexes in fields of chosen study, arising from occupational tradition and social expectations. Caring for others is still a ‘proper’ career for women; building bridges, it seems, is not. Unless one believes women’s brains are better geared to nursing and other forms of caring and men’s to bridge-building, one must conclude that social expectations still hinder women and men from realizing their potential.
Access to higher education is still determined by the class one happens to be born into. For example, in Britain as a whole currently 80 per cent of children from professional middle-class families study at university, compared with 17 per cent from the poorest homes. For Labour there are two issues here: equality of opportunity and maximizing all of society’s intellectual potential.
Ethnic minorities’ representation is growing. It is noteworthy that their university representation exceeds their proportion within the whole population , a measure of their commitment to higher education.
In 1988 a new funding body, the University Funding Council, was established, with power to produce a certain number of qualified people in specific fields. It is under the UFC’s watchful eye that the universities have been forced to double their student intake, and each university department is assessed on its performance and quality. The fear, of course, is that the greatly increased quantity of students that universities must now take might lead to a loss of academic quality.
Expansion has led to a growing funding gap. Universities have been forced to seek sponsorship from the commercial world, wealthy patrons and also from their alumni. The Conservative Party also decided to reduce maintenance grants but to offer students loans in order to finance their studies. However, the funding gap has continued to grow and Labour shocked many who had voted for it by introducing tuition fees at £1,000 per annum in 1998.Although poorer students were to be exempted it was feared that, even with student loans, up to 10 per cent of those planning to go to university would abandon the idea. One effect of the financial burden is that more students are living at home while continuing their studies.
Today many university science and technology departments, for example, at Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Imperial College London and Strathclyde are among the best in Europe. The concern is whether they will continue to be so in the future. Academics’ pay has fallen so far behind other professions and behind academic salaries elsewhere, that many of the best brains have gone abroad. Adequate pay and sufficient research funding to keep the best in Britain remains a major challenge.
As with the schools system, so also with higher education: there is a real problem about the exclusivity of Britain’s two oldest universities. While Oxbridge is no longer the preserve of a social elite, it retains its exclusive, narrow and spell-binding culture. Together with the public school system, it creates a narrow social and intellectual channel from which the nation’s leaders are almost exclusively drawn. Few people are in top jobs in the Civil Service, the armed forces, the law or finance, who have not been either to a public school or Oxbridge, or to both.
The problem is not the quality of education offered either in the independent schools or Oxbridge. The problem is cultural. Can the products of such exclusive establishments remain closely in touch with the remaining 95 per cent of the population? If the expectation is that Oxbridge, particularly, will continue to dominate the controlling positions in the state and economy, is the country ignoring equal talent which does not have the Oxbridge label? As with the specialization at the age of 16 for A levels, the danger is that Britain’s governing elite is too narrow. It is just possible that the new Labour government, which itself reflects a much wider field of life experience in Britain, will mark the beginning of significantly fuller popular participation in the controlling institutions of state.
C. Make up 12 questions covering the contents of the text.
II.VOCABULARY FOCUS
- Translate the following word-combinations into Russian
Part-time; undergraduate study; bachelor of Arts degree; to place value on smth; campus; female; to appeal to smb; noteworthy; financial burden; spell-binding.
In which situations are they given in the text? Reproduce them.
B. Find the English equivalents in the text:
Быть связанным с чем-либо; преподавательская практика; ввести систему; частично; ежегодный; равенство возможностей; отказаться от какой-либо идеи; эксклюзивность; не терять связи с кем-либо; контролировать что-либо.
Think of your own sentences with these expressions.
C. Match the words which collocate with each other:
1. civil a. potential
2. financial b. courses
3. undergraduate c. arts
4. technical d. grant
5. visual e. minorities
6. intellectual f. engineering
7. ethnic g. bias
8. maintenance h. hardship
D. Match the words which are close in their meaning:
1. qualified a. top-notch
2. noteworthy b. rule
3. wealthy c. fascinate
4. elite d. attractive
5. dominate e. aggrandize
6. mesmerize f. important
7. seductive g. certified
8. expand h. prosperous
E. Match the words having the opposing meaning:
1. wealthy a. repellent
2. qualified b. insignificant
3. elite c. needy
4. dominate d. confine
5. mesmerize e. common
6. noteworthy f. unskilled
7. expand g. yield
8. seductive h. disenchant
F. Match the words and their definitions:
| 1) to prepare smth or make it suitable for a particular situation, group or use | a. hardship |
| 2) to become a member of a particular profession after a period of training or study | b. boast |
| 3) an amount of money that a person, business or country borrows, especially from a bank | c. subsidize |
| 4) a situation in which life is very difficult, usually because you do not have enough money | d. to gear |
| 5) to pay some of the cost of goods or services so that they can be sold to other people at a lower price | e. qualify |
| 6) to attract or interest you so much that you do not notice anything else around you | f. gap |
| 7) to have smth good, often an attractive feature that other people admire | g. mesmerize |
| 8) a large difference between things or groups | h. loan |
. G. Translate the sentences into Russian:
1) The museum is geared toward children.
2) Andrew qualified as a teacher in 1999.
3) Kenya was still paying off a multimillion-dollar loan to the IMF.
4) Many students are facing financial hardship.
5) The government has said it will no longer subsidize public transport.
6) Grimm’s Fairy Tales have mesmerized generations of readers.
7) The island boasts the highest number of tourists in the area.
8) The gap between farm incomes and land values is wider than ever.
H. Insert prepositions where necessary (in; for; with; on; apart; to):
1. to be linked __ smth 6. apart __ smth
2. compared ___ smth 7. to cater ___ smth
3. __ account of smth 8. to be geared ___ smth
4. to place value __ smth 9. access __ smth
5. emphasis __ smth 10. participation ___ smth
I. Complete the sentences using the words in the box:
| access boasts realm visual alumni seek loans gap assessed intake qualify grants |
1) There are a large number of specialist higher education institutions in the ___ of the performing and ___ arts.
2) Scotland ___ four ancient universities.
3) ___ to higher education is still determined by the class one happens to be born into.
4) Expansion has led to a growing funding ___.
5) Universities have been forced to ___ sponsorship from the commercial world, wealthy patrons and also from their __.
6) The Conservative Party also decided to reduce maintenance ___ but to offer students ___ in order to finance their studies.
7) The majority of primary school teachers ___ by this route.
8) The universities have been forced to double their student ___, and each university department is ___ on its performance and quality.
J. In which meanings are the following words used in the text:
1) to qualify
a. to become a member of particular profession after a period of training or study
b. to reach a particular stage of a competition by competing successfully in an earlier stage
c. to add smth to a statement in order to change it slightly or state the situations in which it is not true
2) a loan
a. a situation in which someone lends smth to someone
b. an amount of money that a person, business or country borrows, especially from a bank
3) to boast
a. to proudly tell other people about what you or someone connected with you has done or can do, or about smth you own, especially in order to make them admire you
b. to have smth good, often an attractive feature that other people admire
4) a gap
a. a space of opening in the middle of smth or between things
b. smth missing from a situation or a system that prevents it from being complete or perfect
c. a large difference between things or groups
III. INTERPRETATION
A. Answer the following questions:
1) 40 per cent of pupils become students at universities and colleges. What do you think of this percentage? How many school-leavers become students in our country? In other European countries?
2) The system of teachers’ training in Great Britain differs greatly from that in Russia. What is the principal difference?
3) What are the main degrees in universities? How do they correspond to ours?
4) What is the reason for serious financial hardship that students experience?
5) Why are Oxford and Cambridge so attractive for new generations of students?
6) What makes the system of higher education in Scotland different from that of England?
7) How can it be accounted for historically? Are there any famous universities in other parts of the UK?
8) What are higher education institutions in the field of performing and visual arts?
9) What does the fact that the university representation of ethnic minorities exceeds their proportion within the whole population prove?
10) Many university science and technology departments are among the best in Europe. But inadequate pay and insufficient research funding made many of the best brains go abroad. Is the situation the same in Russia?
11) What are the principal social effects of the fact that people in top jobs are the products of such exclusive establishments as public schools and Oxbridge?
B. Paraphrase and explain the following statements. Comment on them:
1) There is still an unfortunate separation of the sexes in fields of chosen study, arising from occupational tradition and social expectations. (…) Unless one believes women’s brains are better geared to nursing and other forms of caring and men’s to bridge-building, one must conclude that social expectations still hinder women and men from realizing the potential.
2) Access to higher education is still determined by the class one happens to be born into.
3) Together with the public school system it [Oxbridge] creates a narrow social and intellectual channel from which the nation’s leaders are almost exclusively drawn.
IV. SPEAKING PERSONALLY
Discuss the following issues:
1) Oxford and Cambridge have a structure which is quite different from other universities of the world. Describe it and say which positive and negative features you see in it.
2) What are advantages and disadvantages of studying in ‘red-brick’ and ‘new universities’?
3) Would you like to study at the Open University?
4) There are fears that the greatly increased quantity of students the universities must now take might lead to a loss of academic quality. Do you agree?