Education in Great Britain. Бояринцева Е.И - 10 стр.

      3. Compress the text:                                                  Text C.   Read the text and do the tasks that follow. Pay attention to
                                                                                       abbreviations you come across in the text and their meaning.
     a) leaving out unimportant extra information according to the
                                                                                       Do you think British university degrees in any way corre-
Model I.
                                                                                       spond to Russian degrees?
                                 Model I
The country has always …… academic pile (original version of 23                                      Postgraduate course
words). The country has always had a tradition of high quality higher
education for a few selected students (compressed version of 16 words).                            Types of university degrees
                                                                                     In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the most usual titles for
      b) combining sentences to express the main idea of the whole           a first degree are Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc)
passage according to Model II.                                               and those for a second degree – Master of Arts (MA), Master of Sci-
                                 Model II                                    ence (MSc) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). After a course of studies
       The country has always had a tradition of high quality higher         lasting from three to four years which must be pursued at one and the
education for relatively few students, selected from the top of academic     same university the undergraduate student sits for a final examination
pile. Over the last few years, however, the government has made a            which, if he passes it, entitles him to a first degree. The present three-
concerted effort to widen the sector so that a larger proportion of the      year degree course in Britain is one of the shortest in the world (it’s 4
population gains qualifications. (original version)                          in Scotland and many subjects take more than 3 years in England too,
       Lately the UK government has tried to widen the sector of stu-        eg. modern languages).
dents enjoying a tradition of high quality higher education from rela-               The present first-degree system varies both in length and nomen-
tively few selected groups to a larger proportion of the population.         clature. First-degree courses in Arts and Science are of two main kinds:
(version 1)                                                                  those which allow the student to spread his/her studies over a wider
       Lately the UK government has tried to make the country’s edu-         field but less intensively and degrees in which the student specializes in
cation less selective. (version 2)                                           a specific field and studies it in depth. Universities use different names
                                                                             to describe the degrees to which these two types of course lead. The
      4. Render the text according to the plan                               degree obtained at the end of a specialised course in a single subject is
                                                                             usually called a degree with honours, although in some universities it
       1. What’s the headline? What key words helped you to predict          may be called a Special degree.
the content of the article?                                                          After taking a first degree those graduates who are interested in
       2. What is the purpose of the article? (to report a problem in        research work follow postgraduate or advanced studies. Postgraduate
education, a new government policy, a new way of teaching and so on)         studies lead to higher degrees most of which are Master’s or Doctor’s
       3. What is the main idea of the article?                              degrees. Postgraduate students are granted the Master’s degree by the-
       4. Does the article report a problem? If so, what is it?              sis or examination after a minimum of one or two years of advanced
       5. Does the article offer a solution to the problem? If so, what is   studies. The Doctorate (Doctoral /Doctor’s degree) generally requires
it?                                                                          outstanding proficiency in some specialised branch of research. It is
       6. Does the article make you feel optimistic or pessimistic about     regarded as the highest degree.
this topic in education? Why?


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