Unit4. Teaching and learning

  INTRODUCTORY TEXT

Teaching has always been regarded as one of the noblest professions. It benefits society a lot because teachers are trusted to educate and bring up younger generation. It is often necessary to study long and hard to enter a teaching profession. With teaching, as with most things in life, nothing worthwhile comes easy.

· Teachingis communicating skill or knowledge. A period of teaching is a lesson. A typical language lesson involves two stages. A presentation stage: the focus of the lesson may be a grammatical structure, a set of new vocabulary or a language function such as ‘greetings’, ‘making suggestions’, etc. A practice stage tries out the new language in the form of drills or discussion. 

A lesson may include: a) a warm-up to get everybody think and talk; b) revision of recent work; c) attention to a specific aspect of the language. Lessons are normally conducted in English, but translation or explanation in your mother tongue may sometimes be useful. 

Successful language learning requires a great deal of revision.

· Learning is the process of getting knowledge, understanding, or mastery of a study or experience.    The Chinese proverb goes ‘Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.’ It means that teachers are not ultimately (в конечном итоге) responsible for their students’ motivation. The real motivation comes from within each student. On the other hand, a good teacher is the one who compels (побуждает) students to work harder, makes the subject matter interesting, improves and adapts new methods, materials and courses, and maintains discipline in the classroom.

· Methods of teaching a foreign language in Europe and the USA vary, but there is most commonly a balance between formal lessons and activities in which students work in small groups round a table with the teacher supervising.

Specific system of teaching can be found in Oxford and Cambridge. The system is called ‘ tutorials’ whereby each student gets personal tuition once a week in his or her tutor’s (Don’s) room, sitting in an armchair and reading out an essay which students and the tutor then discuss. The number of students participating in a tutorial is not more than four. Part of the teaching is by means of lectures organized by the university, any student may attend any university lecture. The Don gives one or two lectures a week on a subject which is his special field of interest. The effect of this system on students is profound. As almost nothing is compulsory except the weekly tutorials students must learn to discipline themselves.

· In England and Wales university courses usually last for three years, and students typically study either one subject or two subjects that are related. Most courses last three years, languages four years (including a year spent abroad). Medicine and dentistry courses are longer (5-7 years).  In Scotland the university system is different, and courses usually continue for four years.   

· In the USA ‘a college’ and ‘a faculty’ have practically the same meaning, for example, the College (Faculty) of Modern Languages, etc. A ‘university’ usually offers many graduate programmes and focuses upon research as well as teaching. A subject of academic study chosen as a field of specialization is a major.  Other subjects a student chooses to study are minors (secondary fields of specialization).

All the universities in the USA set their own admission standards and offer their own courses of study (curricula, also– lums). The greater is the prestige of the university, the higher are the credits - recognition by a learning institution that a student has completed a requirement leading to a degree. Students’ knowledge is evaluated through grades. A grade is the final evaluation of a test, paper or oral presentation. The grade is determined by how many points the student scores on an exam or paper. An examination test usually contains 100 questions, each question being worth one point. The final grade depends on the percentage of correct answers. A grade rating a student’s work as superior is A. A grade rating a student’s work as good is B. A grade rating a student’s work as fair (зд. посредственно, удовлетворительно) is C.

· A 1^st-year student in the USA is called a ‘ freshman’ (a ‘ fresher ’). Often freshmen live in a dormitory, a residence hall which provides sleeping rooms. (In their second or third year students prefer to rent a room or share a house with friends.) The first week at the university is called an orientation week. During the orientation week clubs and societies hold a ‘freshers’ fair’.Student Union representativesadvise s tudents on associations and societies. During this time students are learning to change from a school community to one of many thousands.       

· In the U.K. and the USA university students have to pay tuition fees in addition to which they have to pay for books and accommodation. Students showing high academic skills get a subsidy from the government or local authorities. This money is usually enough to pay for lodging and food. A student may also take out a student loan in a bank. To save some moneymany students take jobs in summer for about six weeks.They also do some holiday jobs at Christmas or Easter. American students do a lot of baby-sitting.    

· Britishand American universities usually have no single building which can be called ‘the University’. They are built as a separate complex, called ‘ campus’, with teaching blocks, libraries, and many other facilities grouped together. Most universities are a number of campuses scattered about the town.