Cambridge University’s outreach initiatives to schoolchildren – Exercise

If you click on this link, you should find ‘Outreach initiatives at the University of Cambridge‘. If you arrive at a list, you may need to click on the first video (the top podcast) to watch online or download. The opening shots are of two buildings of St John’s College, Cambridge, founded in 1511, although the School of Pythagoras, in its grounds, was built around 1200 and is the oldest intact standing building in England.

Your task here is to write down the exact words you hear. You will be writing about 200 words in total.

1 How long has Cambridge University been a centre of learning?
2 What is the verb used meaning the university has fostered the development of intellectuals?
3 What phrase is used meaning some academics ‘have developed or have established among many other things’?
4 Can you write down correctly the four examples given of outstanding scientific importance?
5 Can you write down how the University of Cambridge of today is described?
6 What have recent decades seen?
7 What is important?
8 Where are university staff not sitting?
9 Why are they going ‘out there’?
10 Who are the participants delivering the outreach programmes encouraging and enthusing?
11 What is the two-fold aim common to all the university teachers, researchers, undergraduates and graduates creating the podcasts?
12 What belief do they share?
13 What does knowledge help people do?
14 How important a lesson is this for children to learn?
15 These dedicated and creative people ‘proffer by their own example what is, perhaps, the most important lesson of all’. What does it say to us all?
16 What is learning, after all?

Key and notes