Vocabulary. пройти курсы - to take, to complete courses;

зачет - credit;

пройти курсы - to take, to complete courses;

определенный - certain;

требуемый - required;

в рамках - within the framework;

зависеть от - to depend (on);

относиться к - to apply to;

требовать - to require;

семестр - term;

ходатайствовать - to ask for;

в свою очередь - in its turn;

сдавать зачеты - to get credits;

поддерживать статус визы - to hold/support visa status;

обнаруживать - to find out;

не успевать посещать - to fail to attend;

одновременный - simultaneous;

дисциплина - discipline, subject;

не под силу - to be not able to do smth.;

повлечь за собой - to be followed by;

последствия - здесь: measures;

до определенного срока - up to the fixed date;

требование - requirement;

представлять проблему - to make a problem;

сложившееся положение - existing situation;

вести к - to lead to; to be resulted in;

неуспеваемость - bad academic results

кроме того - besides;

добавлять - to add;

догнать группу - to catch up with the group;

удивляться - to wonder;

определить - to identify;

нежелательная перегрузка - undesirable overloading.

Supplementrary material

Text 1

Text 1

Life Begins at 50 for Third Age Students

The period after earning a living and raising a family is an age of discovery for students at the Third Age universities, which are growing rapidly in Britain. They find it is never too late to learn, and that intellectual stimulation can lead to better health for (he elderly.

At first glance it's the usual Cambridge scene: the light for places to park [he bicycle, the hasty greetings called across the courtyard, the scramble for decent seats next to your friends, the silence before the lecture begins. The differ­ence here i^ that the greetings are a little cheer­ier, the scramble a little more intense, the silence a little more avid, and, though you may not notice it, there are more grey hairs. The students at the new Cambridge University are all aged 50 or over.

The Wednesday afternoon lecture is the main event of the week for members of the University of the Third Age, or 'U3A' as they call it. But every day there are classes going on all over town ranging from Chinese to computers. Founded only three years ago, the new university now has more than 700 members. It was the first of its kind in Britain, but the idea caught on quickly and Third Age universities have started up all over the country.

Although Shakespeare chronicled Seven Ages of Man, the new university makes do with four. The Third Age comes when the First Age of childhood and the Second Age of earning a living and bringing up a family are over. It may well last as long as 30 years, beginning in the fifties and going on into the sixties, seventies and eighties. The belief and the hope is that an active Third Age can postpone the Fourth Age of weakness and death, squeezing that into the shortest period possible.

Thirty years is a long time to feel bored, lonely and useless; it's not nearly long enough for the members of the University of the Third Age to do all the things they want to do. Barbara Brown is a case in point. A widow and a grandmother, her life is still as busy and active as ever. 'We dash to classes and then we meet up for coffee. I'm learning French. 1 never had the time before. People say you can't learn a new lan­guage when you're old, but that's nonsense. It just depends on your drive and willingness to do it. The difference with U3A is that we feel we're using our brains. We're not superior, not at all. We're just extending our knowledge, starting again really - and it's fun.'

Students pay £10 for six months' membership of the university and for this they can go to as many, or as few, classes as they wish. There are also regular social and sporting events. One of the reasons why so much activity is possible and costs so little is that the teachers give their time free and seem to enjoy it just as much. Richard Bennett, a retired schoolteacher who takes one of the French classes, says the great joy is that everybody is motivated. There are none of those little boys in the back row trying to hide under their desks. 'Most of us who teach also learn. I'm doing cookery and music. We're doing areas of 20th-century music I'd never explored before and I'm finding out all sorts of things.'

The new university is a cooperative venture and everyone can contribute something, by teaching or learning, by delivering the newsletter or making the coffee. The university belongs to its students and they choose the classes. Many classes started because two or three people dis­covered a mutual interest, found someone to take the lead and it has grown from there. In this - and in many other ways - it is quite different to the other Cambridge University. Dr Peter Snow, who is a Fellow of Trinity College and thus knows both from the inside, was a founder member of U3A. 'We have a claim, I think, to be what some people call the true university because we insist that nobody needs qualifications to join. Nobody is paid, there are no awards, no exams, we are not agents for any outside body which wants to know whether Smith is better than Brown. All our people study because they want to - for aesthetic, literary or other reasons - and this is what a university is/or.'

The University of the Third Age is fiercely independent and has no ties with any other educational institutions. Peter Snow is adamant that it should remain so. Too much, he feels, is done for the elderly, not enough by them. Organising their own university answers part of their need for intellectual stimulation. But in France, where the movement began, they take the opposite view. There the new universities are run in, and by, the established institutions.

U3A takes its name from the Universite du Troisieme Age launched in Toulouse in 1972. Professor Francisque Costa was one of the foun­ders. He says they were moved partly by their awareness of the growing number of elderly people who were bored and lonely and partly by the fact that a law was passed requiring educa­tional institutions to do something about it. This was no mere act of charity. The French govern­ment was convinced by the research which said that as soon as people have no stimulation, stop working, and stop being interested in life around them, they decline physically. If you stimulate the brain you are physically fitter. The economic a consequences were clear: it was in the govern­ment's interest to promote the educational and cultural stimulation of elderly people because that would cost less than the health care that would otherwise be needed. Universities of the Third Age sprang up all over France and most other European countries soon followed suit. Professor Costa is delighted with the results. 'It has been proved that elderly people can progress - they can do research, they can learn languages. Even if you decline in some ways, in others you can grow - you can be more creative in old age than in your younger days.'

In Britain we seemed not to have noticed how old we were getting; that one fifth of our popula­tion - some ten million people - were in their sixties or older and that many of them were bored and lonely, desperate for something more intellectually stimulating than a game of bingo and a singsong. Now it is spreading like wildfire. They raise funds by sub­scription and donation because they don't want government funds with strings attached. Each university develops its own character and pro­gramme in response to the needs and resources of the area, and ideas are shared through a nation-wide network with its own newsletter.

The founders believe many of the new univer­sities will grow to a size of 1,200 to 1,500, which is the pattern in France. They will take on their own research projects and lobby for the needs of their own age group. Above all, they will correct the public image of Britain's Third Age popula­tion. It will become accepted that, once the Second Age is over, a new time of creativity and fulfilment can begin. Marion Dawson, who attended that Wednesday afternoon lecture in Cambridge, would have found that hard to believe two years ago. When her husband died in Hong Kong, where they had lived for some time, she felt she had lost every­thing. She came back to Cambridge and had to build a new life. But she wanted to keep in touch with her Chinese friends, to be able to read their letters without an interpreter. So she joined a Chinese class at the University of the Third Age. Now, to her great delight, she can already express her own thoughts quite fluently in Chinese. She has ventured into other U3A activi­ties and made new friends. 'It has given a pur­pose to my life again - something totally different - and I'm enjoying every minute of it.'

At Christmas, when so many older people can only look back in loneliness, Marion Dawson and her friends can look forward together - to the new discoveries and new delights that the New Year will undoubtedly bring.