Unit  1  Lead-in and Speaking 

Part 1 Lead-In

Whether you're a first-year or transfer student, Registration Day is important and required for all new students. It's where you register for classes, meet with your academic advisor, set up your accounts and learn about all the little pieces that add up to a successful first year at the college or universtiy 

Themes: starting university, timetabling, learning styles

Passages: an article on the first week at university 

(reading); getting a timetable, good study skills (listening)

Language study: present continuous 

(introduction), present simple (listening)

Express yourself: asking for and giving spellings, 

talking about things in common (introduction)

IELTS strategies: similar and contrasting words 

(reading), referring to titles in reports (writing) 

Vocabulary

people and activities: Chancellor, admissions officer, 

course administrator, fresher, enrol, registration, tuition, 

lecture, seminar, workshop, tutorial

places: faculty, department, school, centre, unit, campus

subjects: medicine, biology, agriculture, computing, 

engineering, business, art and design, languages, 

physics, architecture

charts: bar chart, pie chart, fl ow chart, line graph, table, 

row, section, segment, column, horizontal axis, vertical 

axis, heading, sub-heading

other: term, degree

Part 2  Speaking 

Practice One

To scan is to look for specific information quickly without reading word by word. You have to  know what  you’re looking for before you begin. When you scan, look for key words, names, dates, or other specifics  that mean you have found the information you are looking for. Don’t stop to read everything on a page slowly and carefully. Instead,Scan until you come to the information you need, then read carefully.

Which of the following best states the main idea? 

 A. Scanning is reading quickly to find specific information.

 B. Before you read a passage, you should scan it.

 C. It is not a good idea to read word by word.   

 D. Scanning  is a useful reading skill.

Practice Two 

In the United States, old people who no longer have an income or who suffer from a loss of physical abilities are often forced to give up living alone. They must leave their homes and depend on someone else to give them a place to live and to take care of their physical needs:  they must either live with relatives or live in homes for the aged. This loss of independence is a major problem for the aged.

 Which of the following best expresses the main idea?

A. Old people in the United States who are poor or sick  cannot live alone.

B. Being unable to live is a serious problem for old people in  the United States.

C. Old people who are poor or sick should live with their  relatives, not in homes             for the aged. 

D. In the United States, old people who are poor are sick are  forced to live in                 homes for the aged.

Tips:   Not too general, not too specific !

Question forms:

The main idea/key point/purpose/subject matter of this passage is that _________.

From the passage we learn/can conclude that ________.

The last paragraph is chiefly concerned with _________.

What’s the best title/headline for the passage?

Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?

Skills:      Find out topic/key sentences

A radar set produces radio waves and then gives them out into space by means of its antenna. When the radio waves get to an object, they will come back to the radar antenna. The radar set then changes the radio echoes into an image. And from this image, we can find out the direction of the object and its distance from the set. How can the radar show us the distance to the object then? Radio waves go out at a known speed --- about 300,000 kilometres every second. If the radio waves come back in 1/1000 second, then they just have some 300 kilometres. So the object must be half that distance, that is, 150 kilometres away.

Which of the following orders show correctly how a radar works?

    a. The operator determines the distance and the direction   according to the image.

    b. Radio waves are sent out into space by radar.

    c. The antenna receives the radio echoes and changes them into an image.

    d. The image of an object is shown on the screen.

    A. a, d, c, b       B. b, c, d, a       C. a, b, d, c       D. a, c, b, d