Reading, listening and speaking practice 1. Hacking an Education. Reading article below. For details of my face to face and online courses email me englishphraathit@outlook.com Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ieltstutorBangkokNoi/ Instructions. Combining the reading and audio file you can practice your reading, listening, speaking and also learn about current issues/events. Firstly, study the reading article below; then listen to the audio. The vocabulary in the reading can be very difficult; so please use Google to check meanings. Generally, reading should be at a higher language level than listening/speaking; so my audio you will find much easier than the reading. The audio file is related to the reading. In it I will ask you questions; when you hear a question pause the audio and try to speak out aloud your own answer; then listen to my answer. Don't speak only 1 or 2 words; create long sentences; or better still, several sentences. Remember, in exams you will get far higher marks for more detail in your answers. You will need to use your own common sense and experience for some answers. Try not to use the words in the text, construct your own sentences. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Reading Article. What to do next if you're too cool for university Dale Stephens hopes to open an 'Uncollege' in London. He says knowledge is there for the taking: simply walk into a lecture. Two years ago, Dale Stephens was given $100,000 (£67,000) to skip university in America and focus on doing something in the real world instead. Soon the 21-year-old will be opening what he calls an "Uncollege" campus in London, aiming to help other bright young people to shake off the expectations of teachers, parents and politicians and do the same thing. Stephens started Uncollege as a social movement to challenge the notion that university (or college, as it is more commonly called in the US) is "the only path to success". The controversial idea netted him a big cash fellowship from PayPal founder Peter Thiel's foundation, which funds 20 exceptional under-20-year-olds every year to "do" instead of studying. This August, Uncollege will launch its first experimental programme – styled as a gap year with a difference – in San Francisco. Stephens's team is also preparing to look for premises in the UK. The numbers don't come anywhere near a traditional university, so it is not yet being perceived as a serious threat. Around 400 students from across the world have applied for the first 40 places in the inaugural year. But the organisation has 15,000 people signed up to its emails, and Stephens is confident he is tapping into a growing army of too-cool-for-uni types worldwide who want to follow a different path and need some help and encouragement doing it. "I want to live in a world where people are free to make their own choices," he says. "I think not going to university should be an option that you are not judged for. There is nothing wrong with these institutions of learning existing. What is wrong is that people go to them and pay lots of money without realising there are other ways to learn." Yet the National Union of Students is unimpressed by his rhetoric. Rachel Wenstone, its vice-president, says that insufficient resources for career and higher education advice in schools have created "a worrying gap for companies like this to tell students what they think is beneficial". The pilot programme, which costs $12,000, is designed to help Un-students – or "hackademics" as Stephens prefers to call them – to create their own support network and work out what their employable skills are. They will spend the first 10 weeks living in a shared house and learning how to find mentors and access educational resources. After this, they have $2,500 to spend on a trip abroad of their own design, which might entail anything from working on an organic farm to backpacking around India, followed by a three-month internship. They end with a personal project creating something "that someone will pay for in the real world". The website makes some sweeping promises, including a pledge to offer skills "above and beyond" any university curriculum – although exactly how this will be delivered remains somewhat vague. Stephens, who was home-educated from the age of 12, believes that information and education are out there for the taking and a university library and lecture theatre are not required. And if you want to use one, he says, try simply walking in. In his provocative new book, Hacking Your education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will, which was published last week, Stephens tells the story of a non-student who found it was perfectly easy to attend lectures and join c

• published: 13 Apr 2016
• views: 3