English for

Moderator: Am I right in assuming that you are playing devil’s 
advocate?
Derek: Exactly.
Moderator: Thank you, Derek. Over to Ellie and Mike. Why 
do you think this question deserves close attention from the 
academic community worldwide right now?
Ellie: I’m very aware of what Derek is saying. Interdisciplinary 
curricula for undergraduates suggest that 
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disciplinary skills 
are of minor importance and, as such, can be postponed 
until later. There are two equally unacceptable extremes in 
their rationale: they either expect that undergraduates are 
already educated well enough in their core subjects or declare 
that for their purpose disciplinary skills are irrelevant. In the 
former case, students are deprived of the opportunity to gain 
knowledge and develop skills that make them competitive 
whereas in the latter case the programmes become so vague 
and indefinite that there is no way to 
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evaluate the result. 
Then it’s hard to see the value of them. 
10 
Suggested answers 
1 to share knowledge
2 to give an opinion or share a piece of information 
3 to give attention to / deal with issues
4 to make a list 
5 to contact someone
6 to include/discuss/deal with all the main issues 
7 to think that something is true without any proof
8 to tell/inform someone 
9 a number of questions
10 to take action to be certain of something
11 
Answers 
1 offer expertise
2 to get in touch with each other
3 to cover all the key points
4 to assume
5 points they would like to make
6 address
7 to put together a list 
8 let everyone in the panel know
9 to make sure 
Optional: Ask learners to cover the texts and rewrite 
them in pairs.
Speaking
12 You could appoint two or three learners as moderators 
in the next activity, or ask learners to vote for them or ask 
for volunteers. To choose the subthemes, each learner 
could write two on separate pieces of paper, you can 
collect them and find the most popular subthemes in the 
class and allocat them to groups.