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Conversation 1

Listen to a conversation between a student and an admission officer at City College.

Student: Hi, can I ask you a few questions about starting classes during your summer session? Q1

Admission officer: Sure, ask away. It starts next week, you know.

Student: Yeah, and I wanted to get some required courses out of the way, so I can, maybe I can graduate one term earlier and get out into the job market sooner. Q2

Admission officer: That sounds like a good idea. Let me pull up the summer school database on my computer here.

Student: Ok.

Admission officer: OK, here it is. What’s your student ID number?

Student: Oh, well, the thing is, I’m not actually admitted here. I will be starting school upstate at Hooper University in the fall, but I’m down here for the summer staying with my grandparents, ‘cause I have a summer job near here.

Admission officer: Oh, I see. Well.

Student: So I’m out of luck?

Admission officer: Well, you would be if you were starting anywhere but Hooper, but City College has a sort of special relationship with Hooper, a full exchange agreement. So our students can take classes at Hooper, and vice versa.Q5 So if you can show me proof, eh, your admissions letter from Hooper, then I can get you into our system here and give you an ID number.

Student: Oh, cool. So, um, I wanna take a math course and a science course, preferably biology, and I was also hoping to get my English Composition Course out of the way, too.

Admission officer: Well, all three of those courses are offered in the summer, but you’ve got to understand that summer courses are condensed. You need longer hours and the assignments are doubled up because it’s the same amount of information presented and tested in a regular term, but it’s only six weeks long. Two courses are considered full time in summer term. Q3 Even if you weren’t working, I couldn’t let you register for more than that.

Student: Yeah, I was half expecting that. What about the schedule? Are classes only offered during the day?

Admission officer: Well, during the week, we have some classes in the daytime and some at night. And on the weekends, we have some classes all day Saturday or all day Sunday for the six weeks.

Student: My job is pretty flexible, so one on the weekday and one on the weekend shouldn’t be any problem. Ok, so after I bring you my admissions letter, how do I sign up for the classes?

Admission officer: Well, as soon as your student ID number is assigned and your information is in our admission system, you can register by phone almost immediately. Q4

Student: Oh, what about financial aid? Is it possible to get it for the summer?

Admission officer: Sorry, but that’s something you would have to work out long before now, but the good news is that the tuition for our courses is about half of what you’re gonna be paying at Hooper.

Student: Oh, well, that helps. Thank you so much for answering all my questions. Ah, I’ll be back tomorrow with my letter.

Admission officer: I won’t be here then, but do you see that lady sitting at that desk over there? That’s Ms Brinker. I’ll leave her a note about what we discussed and she’ll get you started. Q4

Student: Cool.

Lecture 1 World History Class

Listen to part of a lecture in a world history class.

Professor: In any introductory course, I think it’s always a good idea to step back and ask ourselves: What are we studying in this class? And why are we studying it? So, for example, when you looked at the title of this course in the catalogue, Introduction to World History, what did you think you were getting into? What made you sign up for it, besides filling the social science requirement?

Students: Hahahahah

Professor: Anyone?

Student: Well, just the history of everything, you know like starting at the beginning with, I guess the Greeks and Romans, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, you know, that kind of stuff, like what we did in high school.

Professor: Ok, now what you are describing is one approach to world history. In fact, there are several approaches, basic models or conceptual frameworks of what we study when we do history. And what you studied in high school, what I call the western-heritage model, this used to be the most common approach in US high schools and colleges. In fact, it’s the model I learned with, when I was growing up back, oh, about a hundred years ago.

Students: Hahahahahha

Professor: Ah, at Middle Town High School up in Maine, I guess it made sense to my teachers back then, since, well, the history of Western Europe was the cultural-heritage of everyone in my class, and this remained the dominant approach in most US schools till, oh, maybe 30, 40 years ago. But it doesn’t take more than a quick look around campus, even just this classroom today, to see that the student body in the US is much more diverse than my little class in Middle Town High. And this western-heritage model was eventually replaced by or sometimes combined with one or more of the newer approaches. And I want to take a minute to describe these to you today. So you can see where this course fits in. Ok, so up until the mid-20th century, the basic purpose of most world history courses was to learn about a set of values, institutions, ideas, which were considered the heritage of the people of Europe. Things like democracy, legal systems, types of social organization, artistic achievements. Now, as I said, this model gives us a rather limited view of history. So in the 1960s and 70s, it was combined with or replaced by what I call the different-cultures model. The 60s were a period in which people were demanding more relevance in the curriculum, and there was criticism of the European focus that you’re likely to find in all the academic disciplines. For the most part, the different-cultures model didn’t challenge the basic assumptions of the western-heritage model. What it did was insist on representing other civilizations and cultural categories, in addition to those of Western Europe. In other words, the heritage of all people, not just what goes back to the Greeks and Romans, but also the origins of African, Asian, Native American civilizations. Though more inclusive, it’s still basically a heritage model, which brings us to a third approach. What I call the patterns-of-change model. Like the different-cultures model, this model presents a wide cultural perspective. But with this model, we’re no longer limited by notions of fixed cultural or geographical boundaries. So then, studying world history is not so much a question of how a particular nation or ethnic group developed, but rather it’s a look at common themes, conflicts, trends that cut across modern-day borders of nations or ethnic groups. In my opinion, this is the best way of studying history, to better understand current-day trends and conflicts. For example, let’s take the study of the Islamic world. Well, when I first learned about Islamic Civilization, it was from the perspective of Europeans’. Now, with the patterns-of-change model, we’re looking at the past through a wider length. So we would be more interested, say, in how interactions with Islamic civilization, the religion, art, literature, affected cultures in Africa, India, Spain, and so on. Or let’s take another example, instead of looking at each cultural group as having a separate, linear development from some ancient origin, in this course, we’ll be looking for the common themes that go beyond cultural or regional distinctions, so instead of studying a particular succession of British Kings or a dynasty of Chinese emperors. In this course, we’ll be looking at the broader concepts of monarchy, imperialism and political transformation.

Lecture 2 Environmental Science Class

Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class.

Professor: OK, now let’s talk about another environmental concern, soil erosion. It’s a major problem all around the world. Sometimes erosion damages soil so severely that the land can no longer be cultivated, and it’s just abandoned. That happened in a big way right here in the United States. Some of you have probably read the novel “the Grapes of Wrath”, and maybe you remember that the story took place in the 1930s during the time of what was called the Dust Bowl. Dust Bowl is a term we use to describe an ecological and human disaster that took place in the Southern Great Plains region. For nearly eight years, dust and sand blew across the area and covered everything. It was so bad, it even made breathing and eating difficult, and farmers could only look on helplessly if their crops were destroyed, and the land and their lives were ruined.

Now, there’ve always been droughts and strong winds in that region, but that was ok because the native grasses had deep roots in the ground that were able to hold the soil in place. So the wind wasn’t able to, you know, erode the soil too badly. This changed though between the 1900 and 1930. Agriculture was expanding rapidly then, and lots of farmers in the Southern Great Plains wanted to grow wheat and other crops they could sell for cash, uh, crops that would be profitable. So they ripped up much of the grassland to plant these crops like wheat which don’t hold the soil down nearly as well. At the same time, livestock, cattle, too many of them were feeding on grasses in the area, and damaging a lot of the grassland. So these animals caused even more erosion of the soil. It didn’t help that many of the actual owners of the land were not living anywhere near the area. A lot of the landowners lived way back east and rented out the land to local people who lived on the land and worked on it, but didn’t have much reason to take really good care of it. I mean, it wasn’t their land, right? The tenant farmers weren’t really interested in conserving someone else’s soil, not for the long term anyway. Also, some thought the land couldn’t be really damaged. You know that the soil was so rich and deep that it didn’t matter if the topsoil, the soil on the surface, blew away. They thought they could just plow more, but they were wrong. Good topsoil takes a long time to form. It can literally take thousands of years to create good topsoil that will grow vegetation, and a very short time to ruin it. So after only a few years of excessive plowing, the land pretty much couldn’t be farmed any more. And people moved on to other places, and let the old areas just sit there, and when they didn’t plant anything on that land, that made it vulnerable to even more erosion. So it was kind of vicious cycle you could say. Another problem, ironically, was that advances in technology were actually destroying the land, instead of improving it. A lot of farmers were using huge new tractors that dug deep into the ground, and tore up a lot of the soil. And then of course there was the weather. You know, when people look back on the Dust Bowl era, they tend to blame the drought, the lack of rain between 1934 and 1937. We can’t ignore the drought. I mean, it was the worst on record at the time, and did help bring on this disaster. But without the soil destruction, the drought alone wouldn’t have resulted in the devastation we call the Dust Bowl. It was poor farming techniques that made that happen. Since then, though, we’ve paid more attention to trying to prevent a future Dust Bowl. One thing congress did was an act of massive government effort to improve soil conservation called the “Soil Erosion Act”. Under this law, large stretches of land in the Southern Great Plains were identified as being at risk for erosion, and we’re taking active production and turn it into permanent grassland. What that did, by protecting the land from excessive farming, was to stabilize the soil. Also the “Soil Erosion Act” helped educate farmers to practice better soil conservation techniques, like reducing how often they plowed and using better equipment that would, you know, minimize damage to the soil structure.

Conversation 2

Listen to a conversation between a student and his academic advisor.

Student: Excuse me, Ms Chambers. Um, I don’t have an appointment, but I was kind of wondering if you had a minute to help me with something.

Academic advisor: Oh, sure, have a seat. What’s on your mind?

Student: Well, uh, I guess I really don’t know where to start. It’s not just one class. It’s….I’m not doing all that great. Like on my homework assignments, and in class, and I don’t know why. I mean I just don’t get it. I read the assignments and I do the homework, and I’m still not doing too well.

Academic advisor: Um, which classes? You mean like Spanish or…You’re taking Spanish, right?

Student: Oh, no, not Spanish. If it weren’t for Spanish, I’d be really in trouble. No, but it’s really all the others, psychology and sociology especially.

Academic advisor: Is it the material? What you read in the textbooks? You don’t understand it?

Student: No, that’s just it. I think I understand stuff when I read it.

Academic advisor: You don’t read….

Student: Remember, well, I remember names and definitions, but like in the class when the professor asks about the theories, what they’re all about, I never have the answer.

Academic advisor: Sounds like you’re trying to learn by memorizing details instead of picking out the main points of reading. So tell me, how do you study?

Student: Well, I, I, I mean I read the assigned chapters and I try to underline everything, like all of the words I don’t know and I always memorize the definitions but I don’t know. When I get back in class, it always seems like the other students have got a better handle on what’s in the reading. So maybe it’s just me.

Academic advisor: Oh, it’s not. Believe me. Lots of students, you know, my first year as a college student, I really had a hard time. I spent hours reading in the library, but I was just wasting time, ‘cause I wasn’t really studying the right things. I did the same sort of thing that sounds like you’re doing. Not focusing on what’s really important in the reading, but on the smaller details.

Student: Yeah, maybe. But I spent so much time studying. It seems like I should be doing better.

Academic advisor: The first year of college can be a little overwhelming, I know. Point is, lots of students have trouble adjusting at first. You know, figuring out how to study, how to use their time, you know, to your best advantage. It’s good that you do the assigned readings, but you, well, I think you’re unnecessarily underlining and memorizing. That takes a lot of time. And, well, it’s not the best use of your time. Here’s something you can do. When you read, just read the assigned sections, and then and without looking back of the text, write a summary of the key points, the main ideas in the chapter. And after you do that, it’s good to go back and reread the text. And you look for any examples you can find to support those key points. Let me show you an example of what I mean.

Lecture 3 Astronomy Class

Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.

Professor: I’ll tell you a story about how one astronomy problem was solved. It happened many years ago, but you’ll see that it’s interesting and still relevant. Two, three hundred years ago, astronomers already had telescopes, but they were not as powerful as those we have now. Let’s say they were the level of telescopes amateur astronomers use today. Tell me. What do you see in the night sky when you use a telescope like that? Quick, tell me.

Student: Planets.

Professor: Right.

Student: Even like the moons of Jupiter.

Professor: Right.

Student: Stars.

Professor: OK, what else? You think that’s all? Ever heard of nebulae? I’ll bet you have. Well, let’s just, um, put it up anyway. Nebular are small fuzzy patches you see in the sky. They look like little clouds. Many of them have a spiral shape, and that’s why we call them spiral nebulae. So astronomers in the 18th century, 18th century, when they looked through the telescope, they could see planets. They knew those were planets. The moons of Jupiter? And they knew they were the moons of Jupiter. And then they saw spiral nebulae. And they didn’t have a clue. What could those be? So some of them thought these things are cloudy and fuzzy, so they’re probably small clouds of cosmic dust and they don’t have to be very far away from us. But there were others who thought, ok, the things look small and fuzzy, but maybe they’re actually distant galaxies of stars, but we can’t see the stars because they’re so far away, and they seem so tiny. They look like dust and even the whole galaxy looks like a tiny little cloud. Which of the two theories do you think was more surprising?

Student: The galaxy one.

Professor: And why?

Student: Well, I mean that they assumed that the nebulae are not what look like at first sight. The first theory assumed that, right?

Professor: Ok, now tell me this. Which one would have seemed more likely at the time?

Student: Uh, They couldn’t tell.

Professor: Right. Two morals here. First, there can be different explanations for the same observation. And second, obvious doesn’t necessarily mean right. What happened next was for a long time, nothing. More than 150 years. No one could decide. Both hypotheses seemed plausible, and a lot was at stake because if the galaxy theory was right, it would be proof that the universe is enormous. And if the dust theory was right, maybe not so enormous. So the size of the universe was at stake. And finally in the 1920s, we came up with a telescope that was strong enough to tell us something new here. When we used it to look at the spiral nebulae, we saw, well, we are not absolutely sure, but it really looked like there were stars in those nebulae. So not dust after all, but stars. But how far away were they really? And how would you measure that? Any ideas? Laura?

Student: Well, how about measuring how strong those stars shine, because if the stars are far away, then its light would be weak, right?

Professor: Yes, but there’s a problem here. You need to know how bright the star is in the first place, because some stars are naturally much brighter than others. So if you see a star that’s weak, it can mean one of two things.

Student: Oh, it’s either far away or it’s just a weak star.

Professor: And you can’t really always tell which, but you’re on the right track. There’s a kind of star where you can calculate its natural brightness, and you guess it. We found some in the nebulae. It’s called a variable star, or a variable for sure, because its brightness varies in regular intervals. I won’t go into detail here, but, basically, the longer the interval, the brighter the star. So from the length of those intervals, we are able to calculate their natural brightness. This told us how distant they were and many turned out to be very, very far away. So we can be sure that the spiral nebulae really are very distant galaxies, which is what some 18th century astronomers guessed, but didn’t have the instruments to prove. Now one reason I told you this story is that today there are still plenty of situations when we see something out there, but we really aren’t sure what it is. Examples of one such mysterious observation would be gamma-ray bursters. We’ve known about these gamma-ray bursters for a long time now, but we can’t all agree on what they are.

Lecture 4 Art History Class

Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

Professor: Today we’re going to talk about how to look at a piece of art. How to read it. What you should look for. What aspects of it you should evaluate. A lot of people think that if you stand in front of a work of art and gaze at it for a couple of minutes, you are evaluating it. But truly reading a piece of art, evaluating it properly, is a complex process, a process that takes time. When we’re confronted with a piece of art, there’re several things we have to keep in mind. For example, its beauty. That’s where aesthetics comes in. Aesthetics is the philosophy that deals with the definition of beauty, which goes all the way back to ancient Greece. They, um, the early Greek philosophers said that beauty and art are based on imitation. Their feeling about art was that it’s beautiful when it imitates life. They thought that the truthfulness of an image, how truthful it is to life determines its value as art. Today we have a broader definition of aesthetics. Now don’t identify aesthetics as personal taste. Taste is bound by time. Taste is tied to a society, a given set of moral values usually. You may not like a piece of art from a different culture, it may not be your taste, but you appreciate its beauty, ‘cause you recognize certain aesthetic principles. Art generally adheres to certain aesthetic principles like balance, balance proportions, contrast, movement or rhythm. We’ll discuss aesthetics more in detail when we look at some pieces of art together. Another thing to keep in mind in evaluating art is that art has a purpose, generally determined by the artist. You may not know what it is. And you don’t need to know what it is to appreciate a piece of art, but it helps. For example, if you know what the artist’s purpose is, if you know that a piece of art expresses the artist’s feeling about a political or social situation, you’ll probably look at it differently. Now, besides beauty and purpose, what are the other aspects of a piece of art that needs to be evaluated? Very simple, you examine a piece of art following these four formal steps.

The first step is description. Describe physical characteristics of the piece, like this painting is large. It’s oil on canvas. Describe the object. It’s a person. It’s a landscape or predominant colors like, um, earth colors. That’s the description, ok? So you describe the piece. The next step is analysis. You’re looking at the piece for any universal symbols, characters or themes that might contain. Certain symbols are universal, and the artist counts on your understanding of symbols. Even colors have symbolic significance as you may know. And also objects depicted in a piece of art are often used to represent an abstract idea, like wheels or spheres. They look like circles, right? So wheels and spheres represent wholeness and continuity. I have a handout of a list of these symbols and images and their interpretations that I’ll give you later. But for now, the point is that after you describe the piece of art, you analyze its content. You determine whether it contains elements that the artist is using to try to convey a certain meaning. If it does, the next step is interpretation. Interpretation follows analysis very closely. You try to interpret the meaning of the symbols you identify in the piece. Almost all art has obvious and implied meaning. The implied meaning is hidden in the symbolic system expressed in the piece of art. What was he depicted is one scene, but there can be several levels of meaning. Your interpretation of these symbols makes clear what the artist is trying to tell us. The last step is judgment or opinion. What do you think of the piece? Is it powerful or boring? But I give that hardly any weight. If the four steps were to be divided up into a chart, then description, analysis, and interpretation would take up 99 percent. Your opinion is not important in understanding a piece of art. It’s nice to say “I like it. I wouldn’t mind hanging it over my couch’. But to evaluate a piece of art, it’s not critical, ok? Now you know what I mean by reading a piece of art and what it entails. Try to keep all that in mind. Next time you go to an art museum, I can tell you right now that you probably won’t be able to look at more than 12 pieces of art during that visit. Ok. Now let’s look at a slide of a piece of art and try to read it together.

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