Reading Comprehension I

Meeting 2

Pre Reading

1) Discuss with your friends (15 minutes)

- How to apply to a university in your country?

2) Make notes about the discussion.

Reading (15 minutes)

Universities
by Richard Sidaway

Cairo, Bologna, and Paris have been offering them the longest. What am I talking about? A university
education, of course. So who goes to university and what do they get out of their experience? More
than a quarter of the working population of the USA has one.

Admission

Most universities don't let just anyone in. Grades in the subjects you take in the final years of
secondary education are what usually count and in many countries people also have to do an entry
test. While most participants in higher education are in the 18-25 age group, some people choose to
take a break from work later on in life and opt for the role of mature student, bringing experience of
work and the real world to their studies.

Which one to go to

In many countries there is a pecking order to the universities, with a few high status institutions at
the top turning out an intellectual elite and attracting the best minds in teaching and research. Take a
quick name check of the leading writers, politicians or scientists in the UK or the USA and you
should find the majority chose to spend their student years sitting in the dining halls and libraries of
Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard, Princeton and Yale. The training grounds for medicine, law or
engineering in Britain tend to be the metropolitan ‘redbrick’ universities slightly lower down the list.

Money
When entrance was restricted to a lucky few in Britain, the state actually paid the sons and
daughters of the middle classes not only their tuition fees but also a yearly grant towards living
expenses as well. These days most European and North American students are given a loan which
they have to pay back to the government once they are in full-time employment, or they finance
themselves by working their way through college with part-time jobs in the evenings or at weekends.

Where to live

For the majority of students, attending a university in a town or city near to where they live is the only
financially viable option, but in Britain for many years going to university meant leaving home, with all
the freedom and independence that implied. Universities traditionally offer cheap and clean
accommodation in halls of residence or student houses. After a year or so, many students opt to
share private rented accommodation outside the university, which often pushes their culinary and
hygiene skills to the limit.

Year out

These days if you haven’t taken time off between finishing school and embarking on higher
education, you haven’t really lived. The gap year can be devoted to working for charities in different
parts of the world, or simply to travelling, but it can at least concentrate the mind and perhaps give
you a few more ideas about what you should do with the rest of your life. If you want to study
abroad, you can often get a year out as part of a language course, or enter a scholarship
programme such as Erasmus to support you while studying at a foreign university. Business or
management students often devote time away from university in the form of a work placement, to
help them gain practical experience in a professional environment.

Teaching & learning

A common feature of any university is attending lectures, which involves taking notes while a
lecturer, a university teacher, is speaking to a large group of students. In Britain, you are also
expected to present a subject perhaps once a term and comment on it in tutorials. These are small
group discussions led by a lecturer at which closer analysis of a particular area is undertaken.
Science-oriented courses also involve practical lessons and field trips which enable students to get
to grips with their chosen course of study in the laboratory or beyond the university walls.

How you are doing

Social life

There is an old saying that ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, and prospective students
expect a rich and varied social life. Friendships forged in the student union bar or in the many and
varied clubs & societies that exist at most universities may last a lifetime. In the USA fraternities &
sororities encourage a similar bond.

Life after university

Well before the graduation ceremony, when students queue up to receive their degrees from the
Chancellor of the university at a special ceremony, the careers office has been busy assessing future
graduates for the kind of employment paths they should take by giving them an aptitude test,
arranging interviews, company presentations and recruitment fairs. For those attracted by the
academic life, there are further opportunities for study on Masters and Doctorate (PhD) programmes
and on into further research and teaching.

And what does university education all add up to?

This was the opinion of Theodore Roosevelt, a former US American President - A man who has
never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education he may steal
the whole railroad.

Or is it as an American journalist, Sydney Harris, said? - The primary purpose of a liberal education
is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.

After reading
Exercise 1 (20 minutes)
For each section, match the words taken from the text (in the box at the top) with the definitions below.
.
Aptitude test Clubs and society Continuous assessment
Degree Dissertation Doctorate
Entry test Field trip Finals
Fraternities and sororities Gap year Grades
Grant Halls of residence Intellectual elite
Lecture Masters Pecking order
Private rented accommodation Recruitment fairs Redbrick universities
Scholarship programme Student houses Student union bar
Subjects Tuition fees Tutorial
Work placement Working your way through
college

Admission
1. an examination to see if you are good enough to go to university
2. areas of knowledge you study at school
3. a number or letter to symbolize how well you have done in an exam
Which one to go to
4. learning institutions built later than Oxford or Cambridge
5. hierarchy
6. the best minds in the country
Money
7. money given by the state to help for e.g. education
8. money you pay for a university course
9. paying for your education by being employed while you are studying
Where to live
10. houses bought by the university and rented to their students
11. houses rented to anyone
12. communal accommodation built by university
Year out
13. a year between school and university when you don’t study
14. a temporary position with a company to gain employment experience
15. money from a private organisation to help with the cost of study
Teaching & learning
16. study away from the classroom often to collect data or samples
17. small group lesson based on discussing an area or problem
18. lesson in the form of a formal speech using notes and visual aids
How you are doing
19. a long, structured piece of writing exploring a subject in detail
20. examinations at the end of a course
21. evaluating pieces of work during the course
Social life
22. organisations run by and for students to develop different interests
23. a place for students to have a drink
24. student membership organisations in the USA
Life after university
25. exam to see what kind of jobs would suit you
26. university qualification gained after a degree taking one or two years
27. highest university qualification after a Masters taking four or more years of research
28. the first university qualification you receive after 3 or more years of study
29. large ‘market place’ where employers try to interest

Exercise 2 (15 minutes)

Find the synonym of the words in bold!

Admission
Which one to go
Money
Where to live
Year out
Teaching and learning
How you are doing
Social life
Life after university
What does university education all add up to