Text 2. Lectures Start on Monday (by Dacre Balsden)

I 1.What lectures do you attend at the University? Do you take notes or just listen to the lecturer?

2.Study the words.

English School – отделение английского языка и литературы

lecture-list – перечень лекций, которые будут прочитаны в учебном семестре

Delegacy of training – Управление по подготовке школьных учителей

II1.As you read the text, put these sentences in their right places.

a)Shall he lecture one hour a week or two?

b)On the first Monday the lecturer has his largest audience for the term.
c)Let a lecturer lecture on whatever subject he chooses.

d)Nobody has ever taught them how to lecture well.

e)Lectures start on the first Monday of term.

f)Undergraduates find it very long indeed and if there is no clock in the room, they find it even longer.

g)Those are the conditions under which the majority of the dons are paid to lecture.

h)If he does not care about the size of his audience and prefers to lecture on some small field of learning on which he happens himself to be researching or writing a learned paper, he will lecture one hour a week.

i)The pupil never knew.

j)But you could.

k)And then, after an interval, he lectures again.

Lectures Start on Monday

–(1)– Lecturers are sometimes in fashion (and in the English School even glamorous); lectures as such are never in fashion.

Why take notes when you could as well read it all in a book? The question is unanswerable. Not, of course , that there always is a book. Not that, if there is, you always read it. –(2)–

Lectures are born (or monotonously reborn) half-way through the term before the one in which they are delivered. That is the time when the lecture-lists go to the printer. That is when the lecturer decides what lecture he shall advertise. –(3)– If he lectures twice a week, he need only lecture in one term of the year. If he lectures one hour a week, he must lecture in two terms of the year. –(4)–

In some subjects the lecture-list is itself carefully organized by the Faculty, so that all the necessary lectures are given, and given in the terms in which undergraduates need them. In other faculties the freedom of the lecturer is not so rigidly curtailed. –(5)– If he hopes for an audience, he will choose a subject useful to undergraduates, a subject with a certain breadth, and he will lecture on it twice a week. –(6)– Thursday at 11, Mr Smooth, “Plutarch, On the Virtue of Women”.

Dons in general hate lectures as much as undergraduates. That is why they lecture so badly. –(7)– There is a Delegacy in Oxford for the training of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses; there is no delegacy for the training of dons.

–(8)– Where there are a hundred young men and women today, there will, in eight weeks time, be no more than five or six. Where there is an audience of two today, there will perhaps be one next week and, after that, no audience at all.

A professor’s lecture is sometimes like the pas seul of a prima ballerina. He appears; he lectures; he retires. –(9)– But the College tutor’s public lectures is an interruption in a week otherwise devoted to teaching pupils in his rooms, listening to their essays and talking about them. These are “private hours” – “tutes”, as the undergraduates call them, or tutorials. Sometimes a pupil comes alone, sometimes in a pair, sometimes with two or three others. Once tutors taught in this way for ten hours a week; now, in an inflated University they teach for fifteen or eighteen, even for twenty. Is it surprising if they teach less well?

Young tutors find the hour too long, old tutors find it too short. –(10)– When you reach a tutor’s age, it is less easy to listen than to talk; and observant undergraduates quickly realize that their tutors criticize the final sentences of their essays but give little evidence of having observed the rest. There is a splendid story of the great Ingram Bywater.

“Ah,” he said, in greeting, to his pupil, “what is the subject of your essay? Expediency? Splendid. Then will you read what you have written?”

At the end, he said, “For the next week, will you write an essay on – er – Expediency? That’s all.”

Had he slept through the whole of the essay? Or was he uttering the most devastating criticism? –(11)–

2.Answer the questions.

1)How are lectures prepared and delivered?

2)Does the faculty take into consideration the undergraduates’ interests when planning the lectures?

3)How does the subject of the lecture affect the audience?

4)Why do dons lecture so badly?

5)How does the audience change during the term?

6)Do tutors perform their duties well?

3.Comment on the following:

a)A professor’s lecture is somewhat like the pas seul of a prima ballerina. He appears; he lectures; he retires.

b) Young tutors find the hour too long, old tutors find it too short. Undergraduates find it very long indeed and if there is no clock in the room, they find it even longer.

c)Had he slept through the whole of the essay? Or was he uttering the most devastating criticism?

4.Explain the meaning of these words: don, undergraduate, tutorials.

5.Find words in the text which mean the following:

in a tiring and uninteresting manner; stiffly, firmly; to reduce, limit; to go away; increased to a high level, blown up; quick at noticing things.

6. Look at these pairs of sentences. The adverbials in italics are in different positions. How does this change the meaning of the sentence?

1)Actually he’s performing in the play tomorrow. He’s actually performing in the play tomorrow.

2)Only Kate knows how to look after horses. Kate only knows how to look after horses.

3)Honestly, I can’t speak to her any more. I can’t speak to her honestly any more.

4)Earlier, I had wanted Rich to come to the meeting. I had wanted Rich to come to the meeting earlier.

Make up examples of your own.

III1.Act out a dialogue between an undergraduate and his tutor.

2.You are (a)a lecturer, (b)a student. Speak on the problem of students’ attendance.

3.How can one make lectures more attractive to students?