English Daily: First Day of School

Engramme: Your Daily English Programme #48 (New Series): First Day of School (Listening B1-C1)

Hi there, engrammers! Welcome to a New Second Series of Daily English Lessons on Engramme: Your Daily English Programme, where we present you with a new post every weekday, and one on the weekend, with contents ranging from politics to culture to education and entertainment.

This is our first post in the New Series: English Daily. And we have decided to bring you the topic of school since, presumably, this week is the first - maybe second - week of school for most students in many countries around the world.

Think Before You Listen

Think about the current school you attend, or a recent/past school you attended:

a. Did your department organize a tour of the school (sometimes called an "orientation meeting") on the first day? Did you participate? What did you learn about the school in general, and your department in particular?

b. What were your expectations before you arrived at the school? What was your first impression? Have your expectations been met so far?

(Let us know in the comments' section below)

Watch and Listen

In this short video, Harvard freshmen talk about their first day experiences and what they have learned so far.

Listen and make notes of their learning experiences in the table below - the first one has been done for you (do not worry for now if you don't understand everything :)

1	The people & professors at Harvard are nice and normal
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

(see the first comment to compare answers)

Let's Practice

Many students of English have issues recognizing words or expressions in fast speech. Sometimes we know a word or a group of words: but when we encounter them in normal, everyday speech, we are unable to recognize them, not only because people speak relatively fast, but also due to the fact that words and their sounds are linked together making it difficult for the learner to hear a familiar word in combination with other words. The activity below is designed so as to help you train yourself in recognizing (groups of) words that you probably already know.

Listen again (as many times as you can): fill in the blanks with the words you hear¹:

(mouse over the colored words to see their meaning)

a. Today’s my first day of class, and as a new student here I've learned that the professors, they're really not that _______! You hear the word Harvard, you think it's going to be the scariest place ever and they're just normal and nice people. That's what I learned. b. My computer didn’t work on my first class to _____  ______. So I learned that pencil and paper will never go out of style. c. On my first day of school, I realized there is no way in hell that I'm going to take _______  ______ of class in one day because I'm halfway through it and [I’m] already about to crash. d. I learned that if I'm going to take the number 69 bus from Inman ________, I need to give it a lot more time. e. Today I learned how important it is to get out of bed even when it's rainy and dark and feels like it's after ___________. f. So today is my first day at Harvard ________ School of Education. I'm really excited. I learned that my professors are really excited about helping us. They're really _________ and they want to do everything that they can to make this experience the best. g. On my first day of school at GSE, I never ________ how validated I feel until a new group of students come in. h. All right! Well, I learned that the first day of school, that feeling that you get that we all know, very much feels like when we were in _________ school or middle or high school or in college…it's that that that little bit of angst in your ________ about what's to come, but utter excitement about who your classmates are going to be, what your teachers are going to be like, and what you can learn for the year. i. I've learned outside of class that there is a lot of good, ______ food here at Harvard. Everywhere I go there's always some little buffet or free coffee, and it's really nice when you're a ______ graduate student. j. In my first day I was asked to read an article about ‘the game of school’, and how we seemed to play this game of making good _______ and just getting by school in order to have a successful life. So on my first day, I've already had to rethink about all the education that I've gone through as a student.

(see answers in the first comment)

Over to You

In what ways can you find out more about a school you would like to apply to or attend before you actually go? (type your answers in the comments' section below)

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Congratulations! You've reached the end of the first post in our new series of everyday English lessons. For more lessons like this, please click here.

Review the Vocabulary from this post HERE

Teachers can Download a pdf Copy of this lesson for classroom use HERE

Did You Notice? If you move your mouse over the underlined words in the post, you can see their meaning and much more ;)

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1 If you watch the video carefully while you listen, you can recognize through 'lip-reading' many of the words you may not hear well.^↩