Summary for unit1 and 2

Unit 1A

Oxford is one of the world's most famous universities. It began in the 1100's. In 1999-2000 it had over 16,300 students in 35 colleges and 5 private halls. Each college has its own buildings, teachers, and students. But the university grants the degrees, not the colleges. Oxford has students from over 130 countries. Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships are among the ways foreign students may attend Oxford.

Competition for admission and financial aid is intense, but students of all backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply. Recently Oxford has won a national innovation award and formed an international distance education partnership with Stanford and Yale. Oxford is a leader in research, while also promoting good teaching with individual tutorials and small group interactions.

Unit 1B

In welcoming the new students to campus ten days after the 9-11 tragedy, the President of Stanford University encouraged them to help build a world in which such inhuman acts can never occur again. He reminded them of the help they had already received from friends, family, and others, as well as the help they would soon receive from the Stanford faculty and staff. But he encouraged them to find their own passionate sources of inspiration to develop their talents. Finally, he welcomed the students to the Stanford family, and quoted briefly from Stanford’s very first opening day welcome speech given in 1891 by Senator Leland Stanford. In that year the founder said that a university can place opportunities within a student's reach but it's up to the student to grasp and improve them.

Unit 2A

Since most students will choose to work after graduation, job-hunting is of great importance to them. They will write plenty of résumés about their education and send them to the companies they want to work for. It takes both time and energy to do so. Now, thanks to the development of the Internet, job-hunting becomes much easier. Job-hunters can find a job just by clicking a mouse on the computer. Many of them make their dream come true through the Internet.

This article describes the experiences of five people who used online sources to look for new jobs. Theresa Casebeer used the JOB-TRAK website to find an administrative assistant's job at a university. Steven Toole used the CareerBuilder website to find a marketing management position. Madeline Gragg used Yahoo! to find a job teaching English in Japan.

Nedzad Dozlic used a newspaper website to find a driver's job with a car dealership. Wendy Mello used CareerBuilder to find a position in human resources for a media-information-services company. Mello also used another website to calculate the cost of living in her new location and decide what salary to request. All these are typical examples of online job searches, since many different types of jobs can now be found this way.

Unit 2B

Louis Caldera's first job was helping his parents clean the parking lot in a shopping center three nights a week, starting at 3 A.M. He did this for two years. It was hard work and had to be done by hand. From this experience Caldera learned discipline and a strong work ethic. In high school he worked full time while taking a full load of classes.

Later he attended West Point and Harvard, and then became a state legislator and a high military official. Suze Orman's first job was as a waitress. Her customers loaned her $50,000 to start her own restaurant, but she lost the money in the stock market. Then she became a good stockbroker and eventually paid back all the money. Now she is a successful financial author(What's a financial author?).