Communication

Watch the video and try to get its main points.
Make notes. Be ready to agree or disagree with Jim’s ideas.

READ the text and tell me if you agree with its main message.

Should You be Facebook Friends with Your Teachers?
The impact of the Facebook craze has swept across the high-school population. But now, the growing popularity of this social networking site has spread beyond the student level: teachers are now becoming “friends” with students on Facebook. This method of communication can be useful in many ways. Teachers can now post class notes onto the site, allowing students who have missed class to easily catch up on course material. As well, shy students no longer have to raise trembling hands and stammer out questions in front of the whole class to receive help. Besides providing academic support, the social networking site also allows teachers to notify students of meetings and practices for clubs and sports teams.
However, behind this convenience hides a somewhat sticky issue. Since users can view photos and other personal content related to their “friends,” it is now possible for students to poke their nose into the private lives of their teachers and vice versa. This of course raises the question: “When does this access to information become inappropriate?”
Many teachers prefer to stay away from this ticking moral time bomb. They claim that Facebook does expose both teachers and students to fairly significant risk when it comes to respecting the boundaries between educator and student. Teachers that would never take a child to lunch or offer to drive a student home may not hesitate to add a student as a “friend” on Facebook, exposing the student to personal information never shared in a classroom setting.
And teachers are not the only ones who are having second thoughts on the issue. Students are equally nervous about teachers having access to their Facebook walls. After all, it may not be a good idea to allow your math teacher to read your rants about the uselessness of trigonometry! Most students agree that after graduation, these “online friendships” are no longer a sensitive issue.
In the end, the choice of whether or not to offer or accept a friend request is due to the individual student and teacher. However, just to be safe, it is probably best to save those friend requests for your favourite teachers until after graduation.

HOMEWORK:
1) Write a short essay on your own attitude to FACEBOOK
2) Study the following issues connected with cross-cultural communication. Do the exercises.

3) Learn the following expressions:

Ссылка для скачивания, если Вам удобнее читать из ворда: http://rusfolder.com/41837096

My attitude to Facebook

Social networks have become a part of our reality, they are totally built in our day-to-day routine. Waking up, brushing your teeth, checking email and profile on Facebook, having breakfast. And then again – at work and after work, and so on. People use social networks for self-presentation, communication with friends and relatives, putting themselves about, for flirtation, study and even for work.

As I mentioned, there are some pro’s and con’s of the issue. Nowadays life is so hectic that you have to minimise time loss. Everybody wants to manage their world like Julius Caesar. While driving home we may talk with the boyfriend on hands-free and choose new wallpaper for our dining-room, or a postgraduate course along with a place for the next vacations. This is the reason why people are so mad about social networks. They may get in touch with friends and colleagues all over the world in just a brace of shake. It influences our lives in a positive way. Moreover, social networks let people stay connected at long distances. Sometimes it’s extremely important to have an opportunity to tell your mum that everything’s all right when you’re as far as Far Far Away Kingdom from home.

On the other hand, social networks are stealing our private space. At times we expose too much posting naughty photos and stories on Facebook. Letting strangers into our private life we tend to lose control. Nobody knows what impact might be caused by the leak of the ‘sensitive’ information. One more disadvantage: we are spending so much time reading lousy posts full of verbal diarrhea. And that precious time could be spent with family or good books.

On Facebook, I have about 100 friends. I had known most of them before I joined Facebook, and I met a vast majority in real life first.They include family members, colleagues, and my closest high school friends. We have a feeling we know what is going on in each other’s lives. The urge to reach out over the phone isn’t as pressing. However, In spite of reading responsible press news, and sharing we discuss rumors, reposts and all kinds of virtual things. Frankly speaking, how many Facebook friends you may call your soulmates, your true friends? Maybe a couple, maybe a dozen. Just a dozen of the hundreds or thousands of them. Of course, it depends on your personal definition of friends and friendship. But as far as I am concerned, Social Networking has a negative impact on our relationships. That’s why I’m trying not to show too much and not to spend much time on Facebook.

Education-1 27.09

1) DISCUSSSION

Read the pieces of Bill Gates’ advice. Be ready to comment on each peice.

2) GRAMMAR/ LUKE PRODROMEAU — TENSE REVISION

HOME ASSIGNMENT FOR THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY:
READING: Why are Finnish schools successful?

Education-2 4.10

1) GRAMMAR — LUKE PRODROMEAU — Tense Review
2) DISCUSSION — Bill Gates’ words of wisdome

HOME ASSIGNMENT
1) LISTENING: Happy days at school?
Listen to the stories these people are telling about their school years.Write down key expressions. Be ready to tell me about your school days, university days. Share your best and worst memories.

2) GRAMMAR
LUKE PRODROMEAU Pages 23-25 and 32-35

3) READING
Read the article about the great system of education that WORKS. WRITE a 300 words text (compilation welcome!), summing up the main points of the article. (Very good language in there)

Education Reforms.docx
Download (34 KB)

It’s a real burning problem to reform schools to make them efficient. Nowadays each society is trying to build an educational system that really works. But it’s not so easy because of schools failing, poor test scores, and dwindling budgets. Developing the economy is impossible without ambitious highbrows who drive the whole system and provide a long-lasting benefit. Over the past decade, the situation has been heating up: plenty of young men got a gulf of some university and pretend to have well-paid job afterwards.
One of the best educational system is in effect in Finland. It is very specific but successful. Finland’s students have consistently scored near or at the top of international assessments. What makes them so effective? Firstly, Finnish schools assign far less homework than any of the top performing nations. In fact, high school students are rarely assigned more than a half-hour of homework a night and students in elementary and middle school aren’t assigned any homework at all. Finland’s educational model is based on the idea that kids should have time to just be kids and teachers don’t want to weigh young students down with hours of homework. Moreover, instead of large-scale tests, teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using customized tests that they create themselves and random samplings of students are tested each year by the Ministry of Education.
Finns believe that real winners don’t have to compete. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers or schools, but cooperation. Then, Finnish students are encouraged to think creatively and learn simply for learning’s sake. The opportunities are equal: the main idea is that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Therefore the prioritization of public schools extends to higher ed as well, as all Finnish universities are public. As a result, all students have access to the same educational resources. Talking about teachers, on the one hand, they are largely responsible for developing their own curriculum within these basic guidelines, assessing student progress, and running virtually every aspect of the children’s educational experience. On the other hand, teaching is regarded as one of the most prestigious and hard-to-master professions.
These measures make the Finnish schools very efficient: Finnish students are both well-educated and stressless.

Education-3 11.10

1) GRAMMAR — LUKE PRODROMEAU — markers of time
2) LISTENING/DISCUSSION Happy days at school?
3) SUMMARY/WRITING — Finnish schools

HOME ASSIGNMENT:

NEW TOPIC — LET’S TALK!

1) Read the texts below and be ready to discuss them. Check the new vocabulary. Underline the words and expressions that you find difficult to understand.