The first day of your uni life-part 2

Initially the problems they face are probably of an academic nature, for example they go to lectures and they find that they can’t understand, or they can’t take notes very quickly. They have quite a lot of reading to do and don't know how to cope with it. On top of that it could be their first experience of living in another country, so they're unfamiliar with some of the systems that we have here, like registering with a doctor, and then just basically making friends - they could feel incredibly lonely and isolated. These are the problems they’ll face when starting university.

Susan: Simon Williams teaches EAP in the Language Centre at University College,
London. He believes that difficulties experienced by language learners in lectures and other academic situations occur chiefly because they just don’t have enough mental energy.

The sort of problems that non-native speakers might have are summed up in one word, and
that's “overload”. The listener is paying so much attention to decoding words that they
recognise and phrases that they recognise - it's almost like trying to do a word-by-word
translation. You can’t translate in that way. You have to get a global picture, as well as
looking at individual items. The student pays so much attention to the language that they miss
out on the content. They’re looking at the vehicle, rather than what the vehicle contains.

Susan: As well as coping with new vocabulary and lecturers who speak quickly and
with unfamiliar accents, you may find it very difficult to listen out for the main points of a lecture and take notes at the same time. So what can you do?
Get hold of some texts, perhaps over the internet, or through a library, or through journals or
magazines that might be available in newsagents, or through friends, and then study recurring
specialist words in those texts; but also look at the kind of structures the kinds of organisation
used, because different subjects typically use different organisation or genres to put things
together.

Susan: Preparation is the key. Be prepared! According to Simon Williams, students
can make their academic life much easier by getting to know specialist
vocabulary in advance. And Simon Williams advises students to obtain an
English-English dictionary, and maybe a subject dictionary - of Medicine, of
Law, of Linguistics. Listening to the radio, watching TV - these are all methods of improving both general and specialist English - as members of our World Service class will tell you.

Constant: I'm a computer engineer and so I always use internet and most of the websites are in English so I think internet is a very good way to improve your English. I think especially the reading - reading and vocabulary.
Constanza: I usually watch TV programmes in English so it helped me with listening and sometimes when I watch TV I prefer to use subtitles in English too - so you can practise together listening and reading.

Jose Arturo: Try to read books related with your subject. Even material you already know in
your language because some people can say 'oh that book, I know it, I've already read it in
Spanish three times'. You have to read it in English to see if you notice substantial differences.

Susan: During this series we’ll focus on some of the strategies you can use to improve
your listening ability and your performance in other academic situations. We’ve said already that preparation is important. Simple things like looking up
specialist vocabulary, reading the course outline, looking at the title of a lecture, for example, they can all help you predict its language and content. Here’s an
example of this from some research carried out by R. Anderson and colleagues. It illustrates that “prior information about a text” can help you to make
predictions about its content and influence your interpretation. Here, “prior
information” comes in the form of the title.

A Prisoner Plans His Escape
Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning his escape. He hesitated a moment and thought.
Things were not going well. What bothered him most was being held, especially since the charge against him had been weak. He considered his present situation. The lock that held him was strong, but he thought he could break it.


Susan: Now here’s that story again - same words - and same actor! - only the title has
changed. Notice how this new “prior information” changes your interpretation of individual words and overall content.
A Wrestler in a Tight Corner
Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning his escape. He hesitated a moment and thought. Things were not going well. What bothered him most was being held, especially since the charge against him had been weak. He considered his present situation. The lock that held him was strong, but he thought he could break it.