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Foreign Student Series: Answering Your Questions

July 29th, 2009 at 03:18am Under Education report

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

We answer some questions this week in our series on getting into an American college or university.

The first question has to do with our recent discussion of English language tests. Vo Ngoc Toan from Vietnam would like to know about the TOEIC– the Test of English for International Communication.

Graduating students and alumni at a job fair in New York

This test is designed to measure skills in English as spoken in the workplace. People may be required to take it if they apply for jobs with companies or other employers. But TOEIC scores are not used for college admission in the United States.

The Educational Testing Service administers the TOEIC. It says the test measures the language skills of people working in an international environment.

American colleges and universities accept scores from the TOEFL and often the IELTS. If you missed our report on these tests, you can find it at our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Click on Foreign Student Series.

Tahir Mahmood from Pakistan asks how to improve his English before taking these kinds of tests. Well, you can start by looking for ways to use English as much as you can. Watch American movies and TV shows and read books in English. Look for English speakers to talk to.

The Internet has a lot of free resources for English learners. Visitors to voaspecialenglish.com, for example, can read, listen and watch programs on many different subjects.

The United States Department of Education recently launched a free Web site designed to help immigrants learn English. The site is called USA Learns. The address is u-s-a-l-e-a-r-n-s dot o-r-g.

Next, a question from Turkey: Hasan Eker asks about getting a postdoctoral position in the United States. This is work generally done by a person who recently earned a PhD, or doctor of philosophy degree. The National Postdoctoral Association in Washington, D.C., has information about international postdocs on its Web site. That address is nationalpostdoc — all one word — dot org.

And, finally, we have questions from Iran, Afghanistan and Indonesia about how to pay for an education through loans or jobs. There are rules that restrict the kinds of jobs that foreign students can have while studying in the United States. But stay tuned. In the next few weeks, we will discuss financial aid as we talk about the costs of an American education.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I’m Steve Ember.

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Foreign Student Series: College, University or Institute?

March 11th, 2009 at 04:32pm Under Education report+ VOA

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Part three of our Foreign Student Series explains the different kinds of higher learning institutions in the U.S. Transcript of radio broadcast:

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Americans use the term “college students” to mean students either in colleges or universities. Not only that, Americans almost never say “going off to university” or “when I was in university.” That sounds British. Instead, they say “going off to college” and “when I was in college.”

College, university: what’s the difference? We answer that this week in part three of our Foreign Student Series on American higher education.

Colleges and universities have many things in common. Both offer undergraduate degrees in the arts and sciences, for example. And both can help prepare young people to earn a living.

But many colleges do not offer graduate studies. Another difference is that universities are generally bigger. They offer more programs and do more research.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Another place of higher education, especially in technical areas, is an institute, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet even an institute of technology can offer a wide choice of programs and activities. M.I.T. says that seventy-five percent of freshmen come there with a strong interest and involvement in the arts.

Modern universities developed from those of Europe in the Middle Ages. The word “university” came from the Latin universitas, describing a group of people organized for a common purpose.

“College” came from collegium, a Latin word with a similar meaning. In England, colleges were formed to provide students with places to live. Usually each group was studying the same thing. So college came to mean an area of study.

The first American universities divided their studies into a number of areas and called each one a college. This is still true.

A college can also be a part of a university. For example, Harvard College is the undergraduate part of Harvard University.

Programs in higher learning can also be called schools, like a school of engineering or a medical school within a college or university. You know, learning all these terms is an education in itself.

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com.

We invite your questions for our Foreign Student Series. We cannot offer any personal advice or assistance. But we might be able to answer a general question during our series.

Be sure to tell us your name and where you are. Write to special@voanews.com or use the Contact Us link at voaspecialenglish.com. I’m Steve Ember.

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