Scripts for Unit 1  Starting out 

Inside view 

Conversation 1

Porter  Good afternoon.

Janet  Good afternoon.

Porter  New student?

Janet  Yes.

Porter Welcome to Hertford College.

Janet  Thank you.

Porter  Can I have your family name, please?

Janet  Yes, it's Li.

Porter  Er, L-double E?

Janet  No, L-I.

Porter  And what's your first name, Ms Li?

Janet  Janet.

Porter  Janet Li... ah yes, there you are. Here are your keys.

Janet  Where's my room?

Porter  You're in Staircase 6 Room 5.

Janet  Who am I sharing with?

Porter  Nobody. You have your own room. Er...there's a Miss Santos in the room next to you.

Janet  Oh. My own room? In China we usually have several people in a dormitory.

Porter  Well, here you don't have to share with anyone.

Janet  Thank you Sir.

Porter  No need to call me sir, Miss Li. Everyone calls me Stewart.

Janet  Please call me Janet!

Porter  OK, Janet, um, can you just sign for your keys, please?

 

Conversation 2

Kate  Hi, have you just arrived too?

Janet  Yes!

Kate  I guess we're neighbours. My name's Kate Santos.

Janet  I'm Janet Li. Where are you from?

Kate  From New York. How about you?

Janet  I'm from Anshan in China.

Kate  Is Janet your real name?

Janet  No, it's my English name. My Chinese name is Li Hui. Is Kate your full name?

Kate  No, it's short for Catherine.

Janet  So do I call you Catherine or Kate?

Kate  Everyone calls me Kate.

Janet  Nice to meet you.

Kate  OK, Janet. See you later.

Janet  Bye!

 

Conversation 3

Kate  Hey! This is awesome! Look at the size of this dining hall.

Janet  Is this where we have all our meals?

Kate  I guess.

Mark  You just arrived?

Girls  Yes!

Mark  Me too. By the way, I'm Mark. Nice to meet you.

Kate  Hi, I'm Kate.

Mark  Hi Kate, I guess you're from the States.

Kate  Right! How can you tell? You're British, huh?

Mark  Yes, I'm from London. And you are...?

Janet  I'm Li Hui. I'm from China. But you can call me Janet.

Mark  Hi Janet. Welcome to England. What are you reading?

Janet  English.

Mark  How about you, Kate?

Kate  My major is law. And you?

Mark  I'm studying PPE.

Kate  That's a special Oxford subject, isn't it?

 

Outside view

Julie  My name's Julie Dearden, and I’m the Director of International Programmes here at Hertford College.

Eugene  My name's Eugene Berger, I studied here in Oxford for four years er, studying modern languages at Somerville College.

Julie  Oh, there are many Oxford traditions. Oxford is a very old university, the oldest English-speaking university in the, in the world. And so there are many traditions which are associated with the colleges, with the times of the year, and with sport, and with eating, for example.

Eugene  Each college is very different um, from um, the others, and it has its own character. Some colleges are very conservative, and some are much more liberal and have a tradition of um, kind of liberal politics. But there are also some specific traditions.

Julie  Formal Hall is when we all eat together here in college, the professors and the students. Usually it takes places at seven o'clock in the evening, and the professors sit on high table which is the table over here, and the students sit on common table, which are the tables here. But everybody eats together. It's a very beautiful evening because there are, there’s a special meal and we eat by candlelight.

Eugene  I think er, the traditions that make Oxford so unique are firstly the Oxford Union and er, secondly, May Day. The Oxford Union being a debating society where speakers come from all around the world to address the students and even allow themselves to be questioned by the students, making it a very interesting forum.

Julie  My favourite is er, May Day. And May Day is the first day of May, and we have a tradition called May Morning, and on May Morning everybody gets up very early and the students have a celebration. There is a choir which sings on top of the tower at Magdalen College and all the people of the town and all the students go to listen to the singing. So it's very nice.

Eugene  The tradition that er, was most important to me was probably Summer Eights. I was a rower. And Summer Eights is a rowing competition, held in May in the summer term. And in this competition, each college is trying to improve its place which it won the previous year and gradually work its way up the river.

Julie  When the students take exams, they must go to a special building and it's called Examination Schools. And also they must wear a special uniform, so they wear a gown like mine, a black gown, and they wear a white shirt, arid the men wear a white tie and black trousers. The women wear a white shirt and a black skirt or black trousers. And they must wear this uniform, which has a Latin name - sub fusc — and they must wear this uniform in order to take their examinations.

Eugene  I think the Oxford traditions lend character to the place and it's such an old institution, it should have traditions, but they can be very inconvenient. For example, sub fusc. This is the uniform that we are required according to the university rules, to wear.

Julie  They also wear flowers in their buttonholes, and those flowers are carnations. And they wear different colours, the students wear different coloured flowers for different examinations. So when you take your first exam you wear a white flower, and when you take your second exam you wear a pink flower, and when you take your final examination you wear a red carnation.

Eugene  So we have to dress up in a full black suit, starched collar, white bow tie and carry a mortarboard. And to write an exam in the summer heat whilst wearing all that which you're not allowed to take off is um, uncomfortable.

Julie  I really like the Oxford traditions, I think it's part of our history, and part of um, being a student or a teacher here at Oxford University.

 

Listening in

News report

Oxford University has seen a rise in the number of applicants from the state school students thanks to Harry Potter. The university says that teenagers who have followed Harry’s adventures at Hogwarts are no longer discouraged by Oxfords’ traditions because they remind them of scenes in J. K. Rowling’s best selling books. Teenagers see similarities between the traditional university and Hogwarts.

The “Hogwarts” tradition is embracing the idea of a more formal educational setting. In fact, Oxford’s head of admission says that the latest generation of students is exited about the idea of attending a school that requires student to wear long flowing robes and has a grand dining hall.

Though more state school students want to attend Oxford, spots are very limited. With over 17,000 applicants for only 3.200 spots, Oxford candidates still must work very hard to win their place at the historic university.

 

Passage 1

Interviewer  Can you tell me something about the Ivy League? You're a professor at Harvard, is that right?

Professor  That's right, yes.

Interviewer  Tell me how many universities are there? How many institutions?

Professor In total there are eight institutions: There's Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Interviewer  Ah, OK. And what's the sporting ... I believe there's some link with sports.

Professor  There certainly is, yes. Originally the Ivy League referred to the sports teams from the universities which competed against each other, especially in football, basketball and ice hockey. Now sometimes these universities, institutions, chose their students on the basis of their skills at these particular sports. But in the last 50 years, Ivy League schools have accepted a wider range of students because it wasn't possible to be both world-famous for research and also top class in sport.

Interviewer And what about their academic importance? I gather they're academically very, very important, they're very well-known.

Professor  Absolutely at the top. They're near or at the top of the USA colleges and university rankings. And they're almost always in the top one per cent of the world's academic institutions for financial resources.

Interviewer  And what does it mean socially to go to an Ivy League university?

Professor  Certainly if you've been to one of these institutions, you are presumed or assumed to be at the top end of the scale. The Ivy League institutions have a reputation for social elitism, many of the students are rich, intellectual, white Anglo-Saxon, protestants. Not all of them of course, but quite a lot of them.

Interviewer  And do you know ... why's it called the Ivy League, what's the origin of the name?

Professor  There are a number of stories, derivations, but possibly it's based on four universities, and IV, the letters IV, that's the Roman numeral for four. Another more likely story is that ivy plants, which are symbolic of the age of the universities, you know, would be grown at the walls of these universities, these institutions, they cover the walls of the buildings. The term was created by a sports journalist, I think in the 1930s.

Interviewer  Right, OK. And which is the oldest university?

Professor  The oldest goes back to the 17th century, that's Harvard which was founded in 1636. And the youngest of the institutions is Cornell which was founded in 1865.

Interviewer  And which has the largest number of undergraduates?

Professor  Cornell has the largest number, about 13,000, 13,500 undergraduates. The institution with the smallest number is Dartmouth College with a little over 4,000.

Interviewer  And what about the acceptance rate? Is it hard to get into?

Professor  That ranges from about seven per cent to 20 per cent.

Interviewer  And any famous alumni? Famous old boys?

Professor Hundreds! Hundreds of them. But I suppose worldwide, the two that would be definitely known all over the world would certainly be George Bush who went to Yale, and John F Kennedy, President Kennedy, who was at Harvard.

Interviewer  Thank you.

 

Passage 2

Andy  Did you see the film on television last night?

Jane  No, I was out. What was it?

Andy  A Beautiful Mind. It's about John Forbes Nash, the mathematician who won the Nobel Prize.

Jane  I've heard about that film, yes. He's played by Russell Crowe, isn't he? I like Russell Crowe, he's great.

Andy  That's the one, yes.

Jane  What's it about?

Andy  Well, the story begins in the early years of Nash's life at Princeton University as a graduate student.

Jane  That's one of the Ivy League schools, isn't it?

Andy  Yes, it's all set in New England, lovely old buildings, beautiful autumn colours. It's lovely to look at. Anyway, Nash meets his roommate Charles, a literature student, who soon becomes his best friend. Nash admits to Charles that he is better with numbers than people, and the main thing he's looking for is a truly original idea for his thesis paper.

Jane  So he's not interested in having fun?

Andy  Well, yes, but he's not very good with people or successful with women, that's all. But, you know, it's one of these bad experiences with people which ultimately inspires his brilliant work in mathematics.

Jane  No good at relationships, so he becomes a genius at maths?

Andy  That's about right, yes. So when he finishes his studies at Princeton, he accepts a job at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Five years later, he meets Alicia, a student who he falls in love with and eventually marries.

Jane  Ah! At last, the love interest!

Andy  Yes, but wait a moment. Nash believes that he's been asked to work by William Parcher for the US Department of Defense on breaking Soviet codes. At one point he's chased by the Russians, and it's after this that he becomes mentally ill.

Jane  I think I've seen this in the trailer to the film.

Andy  So when he's put in a psychiatric hospital, he thinks the Soviets have captured him. He's given this painful treatment which affects his relationship with his wife. And his intellectual skills. So he stops taking the medicine.

Jane  It sounds quite hard to watch.

Andy  Well, it is, but it's well acted and directed, and so, you know, there's a-bit of distance between the audience and what's happening on film.

Jane  So what happens next?

Andy  Well, then his illness returns, so he and his wife decide to try and live with it. It all gets a bit complicated, because we're no longer sure if Charles, you know, his old friend, or even Parcher were real, or if they were just people that existed only in Nash's mind.

Jane  That sounds awful. He must have been so ill,

Andy  Actually, I'm kind of giving away the twist in the story. Anyway, later in his life, while he's using the library at Princeton again, he asks his rival Martin Hansen if he can start teaching again. And so the story ends when he goes on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Jane  Well, it sounds like a great film.

Andy  Yes, you should see it sometime.