At Oxford

Cambridge

1. Cambridge is mainly a town of students. Cambridge University is one of the oldest universities in Great Britain. Many great men studied at Cambridge, among them Newton, the scientist, Bacon, the philosopher, Milton, the poet, Cromwell, the soldier and statesman.[1]

2. There are 19 colleges at the University now, two of them are for women students. Women students do not take a very active part in university life at Cambridge. But they work harder than men and you seldom see them outside of the classroom.

3. The students are mainly English but there are plenty of others. There is a variety of races, religions and points of view among the students of the University.

4. Wireless is of importance in university education. At home students after their day’s work can hear lectures by eminent teachers on all kinds of subjects. Every student has a tutor. The tutor plans his students’ work and discusses with them their work.

5. The story of Cambridge University began in 1209. That year several hundred students arrived in the little town of Cambridge from Oxford. Life at Oxford was very hard at that time as there was constant trouble between the people of the town and the students. One day a student accidentally killed a man of the town. The Mayor[2] arrested three other students and ordered to hang them. In protest all the students moved to different parts of the country and some came to Cambridge; and so the new University began.

Oxford is one of the world known centres of education and learning in Britain. It is not a modern city. When we walk along its clean streets we see at once that this is an ancient town. It is about eight hundred years old.

There are buildings of different architectural styles there, but there is no contrast in their size and material, because nearly all of them are built of the same soft gray limestone and have the same arrangement.

There are many students in the streets in their traditional black gowns. At Oxford University no student may call on a tutor or attend a lecture without his or her gown, therefore the students wear them in all weather, or carry them over arm or shoulder.

A British University consists of a number of colleges.

The lectures and examinations for the whole body of students are arranged by the university authorities. The colleges provide for residence and tutoring which means personal instruction of the students by the Don.

A Don is a college instructor who directs the studies of undergraduates, not more than four in number at a time.

The tutorial system of education has many advantages. The tutor is a great help to his students: he decides what lectures they must attend, recommends them books for reading, discusses and criticizes their written work and knows all about their discipline inside and outside the college. The disadvantage lies in the fact that there are many tutors with a reactionary outlook foreign to the way of thinking of the young generation. By means of personal contact the tutor may influence the political and social ideas of the students under his control.

How do the undergraduates live at Oxford? There are resident and non-resident students living in lodgings which are inspected by the college administration.

Let us go up the narrow old wooden staircase at St. John’s College, along a corridor and look into a room for 2 students.

Both of them, as the majority of the student body, are sons of rich parents. Years ago both their fathers and grandfathers studied at the same college and occupied the same room. Now their sons and grandsons live there, spend as much time on sport, wine and pleasure as their fathers did, and are members of the same club.

Since the boys are out we can have a good look at their lodging. The room is square, smallish but cosy. There is a table, 2 or 3 chairs, a pair of armchairs and a bookcase full of books. The floor is covered with a soft carpet. On the wall there are pictures, landscapes and family photographs. A bright fire is burning in the fireplace. In one corner there stands some sports equipment.

At all British Universities there are good sporting grounds for jumping, boxing, skating, running, playing football, golf and other games; but since the colleges don’t provide the students with sports equipment sport is the privilege only of the rich who have means for buying all that is necessary for any kind of sport.

Our next visit was to the residence of one of the poorer young men who belongs to the minority of the student body. He is a non-resident student, the son of a small bookkeeper. His parents belong to the average English people with average means. Since the cost of study at Oxford is very high they can give their son a full higher education only at the cost of strict economy in personal comfort and pleasure. The boy lives in lodgings. His room is not so comfortable and cosy as that of the richer students: it is smaller in size and quite plain: there are no armchairs here; no carpet, no pictures, no sports equipment.

КОНТРОЛЬНОЕ ЗАДАНИЕ № 2

I. Перепишите предложения; подчеркните в каждом глагол-сказуемое и определите его видо-временную форму и залог. Переведите предложения на русский язык. В разделе (б) обратите внимание на особенности перевода пассивных конструкций:

а)

1. There are two main means of producing small electric currents for special purpose.

2. Cavendish had actually discovered Coulomb’s law (закон Кулона) before Coulomb, but Cavendish never published his results and they were not discovered until half a century after his death.

3. During the years when Jack London was trying to become a successful writer, the socialist movement in the USA was undergoing important changes.

б)

1. His new invention was much spoken about.

2. They were given the wrong address of the laboratory.

3. This student was asked many difficult questions.

II. Перепишите предложения, подчеркните Participles I и II и укажите функцию каждого из них, т.е. определите, будет ли оно определением, обстоятельством или составной частью глагольного сказуемого; предложения переведите:

1. If produced by friction heat is usually considered as useless work.

2. Let us suppose that you are standing in a railroad station watching a passing-by freight train.

3. Electrical energy is transformed into light energy in the electric lamp.

4. Steam is usually generated in a boiler by a fire.

III. Перепишите следующие предложения, подчеркните в каждом из них модальный глагол или эквивалент; предложения переведите:

1. The analytical methods used in industrial hygiene may be divided into classical chemical methods’ and industrial methods.

2. Early in the morning the geologists were able to see where they were.

3. I never remember his address and I always have to look it up.

4. You are to wait for him at the laboratory.

5. Dynamics cannot be deduced from kinematics: we must introduce a new postulate that involves mass.

IV. Прочитайте и устно переведите 2, 3 и 4-й абзацы текста. Перепишите и письменно переведите 2 и 3-й абзацы текста:

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