VOA慢速英语 2007 0614a

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

We continue our Foreign Student Series this week with questions from three listeners.

Thu Ya Naing from Burma wants to know how many colleges and universities are in the United States. Alexander Romashchenko in Russia wonders which university in the United States is the oldest. And Mohamad Firouzi in Iran would like to know more about Harvard University.

The National Center for Education Statistics¹ says more than four thousand two hundred colleges and universities award degrees. These include two-year schools as well as four-year schools.

 
Harvard Hall

The oldest institution of higher learning² in the country is Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was established in sixteen thirty-six as Harvard College. Massachusetts was an English colony³ at the time.

The school was named for a Puritan religious leader. John Harvard gave the college all his books and half his property when he died.

At first, Harvard had one teacher and nine students. Today it has almost twenty thousand students. Nearly four thousand of them this past year were from outside the United States.

There are fourteen schools at Harvard. They include Harvard College and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard College is the undergraduate⁴ division⁵ of the university and Radcliffe is a former college for women.

So Harvard came first. Later, in seventeen eighty, the Massachusetts Constitution went into effect and officially recognized Harvard as a university. Some Harvard materials call it America's oldest university.

 
College Hall at the University of Pennsylvania
But the University of Pennsylvania calls itself America's oldest university. Penn officials note that the Commonwealth⁶ of Pennsylvania recognized their school as a university in seventeen seventy-nine. That was one year before Harvard.

Yet the history gets a little complex. Penn considers its anniversary⁷ date to be seventeen forty. That was when the Charity School of Philadelphia was established, though it never opened. Benjamin Franklin later presented his ideas for a learning institution that included the Charity School. It opened in seventeen fifty-one and became the university.

Today, more than twenty-three thousand students attend the University of Pennsylvania. Four thousand of them come from other countries.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. Our series about studying in the United States is online at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

 

1 statistics   

n.统计，统计数字，统计学

参考例句：

• We have statistics for the last year.我们有去年的统计资料。
• Statistics is taught in many colleges.许多大学都教授统计学。

2 learning   

n.学问，学识，学习；动词learn的现在分词

参考例句：

• When you are learning to ride a bicycle,you often fall off.初学骑自行车时，常会从车上掉下来。
• Learning languages isn't just a matter of remembering words.学习语言不仅仅是记些单词的事。

3 colony   

n.殖民地；(同类人的)聚居地

参考例句：

• There lived a colony of bees on the tree.树上生活着一群蜜蜂。
• They live in an artists'colony.他们住在艺术家聚居区。

4 undergraduate   

n.大学生，大学肆业生

参考例句：

• Mr. Stone spent his undergraduate days in Columbia University,majoring in economics.斯通先生在哥伦比亚大学度过了他四年的大学生活，主修经济学。
• During this time,they are called undergraduate students.在此期间，他们被称为大学本科生。

5 division   

n.区分，分开，除法，公司，部门，师(军队里)

参考例句：

• Have you learnt division?你学会除法了吗？
• The division commander ordered that we start the attack before dawn.师长令我们在拂晓前发起攻击。

6 commonwealth   

n.共和国，联邦，共同体

参考例句：

• He is the chairman of the commonwealth of artists.他是艺术家协会的主席。
• Most of the members of the Commonwealth are nonwhite.英联邦的许多成员国不是白人国家。

7 anniversary   

n.周年(纪念日)

参考例句：

• They celebrate their wedding anniversary annually.他们每年庆祝一番结婚纪念日。
• Today is my parents'30th wedding anniversary.今天是我父母结婚30周年纪念日。