Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1006, Taking a Campus Tour.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1006.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is about a student visiting a college to determine if she wants to go there.
And in order to do that, she takes a campus tour.
Let's get started.
Come on, Dad.
The campus tour starts over there.
The guide is ready to begin the walking tour.
Welcome, prospective students and your parents.
My name is Jaime, and I'll be conducting your tour today.
This tour will last about an hour and we'll be making frequent stops so I can point out some of the most important buildings and areas on this campus.
Dad, are you listening?
First, let's stop on the quad.
On your left, you'll see the administration building.
On your right are the student union and bookstore.
Let's continue.
Dad, stop checking your email.
You promised that you'd make these campus visits with me and help me make a decision about which university to attend.
We're passing the sports stadium on your left and the arts complex on your right.
Those buildings there are the dorms.
The research library is just ahead.
Dad, where did you go?
Let's stop here a moment so I can point out the science buildings and research labs.
Is something the matter?
I think I've lost my dad.
I think we'll have to take the self-guided tour.
Our episode begins with Jiwon saying to her father, Come on, Dad.
The campus tour starts over there.
Come on means hurry up.
When you are telling someone to move faster or to come with you, you might use this expression come on.
The word campus, C-A-M-P-U-S, refers to the physical location of a university.
The buildings of a university are located on a campus.
Sometimes we use that word campus nowadays when we're talking about a large company or corporation that may have many different buildings located all on the same property, all in the same area.
Sometimes those... buildings or that collection of buildings is called a campus.
But the most common use of the word campus is to refer to a college or university campus.
Sometimes we also refer to the place where you find high schools and schools for younger children, campuses as well.
This student is taking a campus tour where she is going to go with someone from the university who is going to tell her about the university and the different buildings that they have there at the university.
The person that leads the tour is called a guide, G-U-I-D-E.
Jiwon says the guide is ready to begin the walking tour.
A walking tour would be, of course, a tour that has you walking around the campus.
My guess is most campus tours are walking tours.
If you're taking a tour of a city, that would probably be a bus tour.
The guide begins by saying, welcome prospective students and your parents.
A prospective P-R-O-S-P-E-C-T-I-V-E student would be a student who is thinking about attending this university.
The word prospective Here refers to something that might happen in the future.
You might be a student at this university, so we will call you a prospective student.
The guide's name is Jaime.
He says, my name is Jaime.
And I'll be conducting your tour today.
To conduct a tour is to lead a tour, to be the leader of a tour.
This tour will last, or will take, about an hour and will be making frequent stops, so I can point out some of the most important buildings and areas on this campus.
When Jaime says the group will be making frequent stops, he means they will be pausing or stopping to talk and look at something in particular.
Instead of walking the entire hour, the group will walk maybe five minutes.
Stop talk a little, then walk another five minutes, and so forth.
The guide is going to point out some of the most important buildings and areas on this campus.
To point out is a very common two-word phrasal verb meaning to indicate something, to draw someone's attention to something important.
If you are on any kind of tour and you have a tour guide, the guide will typically mention important things as you go by them, either driving by them or walking by them.
To point out is to indicate.
The guide will be pointing out the most important buildings and areas on the campus.
Jiwon says to her father, Dad, are you listening?
Apparently, her father is not paying attention.
I should mention that typically these tours are offered to high school students who are thinking of attending that particular university.
Universities and colleges, just like any other sort of business, need to get customers.
They need students to come to their university.
So some parents take their children to these universities so that the children, the teenagers, can get a better idea about the university and the parents can get a better idea about where they are sending their child.
I never took a campus tour.
I didn't have a lot of choices about the university that I was going to attend And this wasn't a very common practice, at least when I was in high school, at least for the students that I went to high school with.
I did have some friends who went to other universities in a different part of the country that took campus tours, but it's often the more wealthy families that are able to afford the that have enough money to travel to different parts of the countries to take these campus tours.
But, back to our story.
The guide says, first, let's stop on the quad.
So we're taking a tour of the campus, and the first place the guide takes this group is the quad.
Q-U-A-D.
The quad is an area in the central part of campus that is in the shape of a square or a rectangle.
Quad is short for quadrangle.
Usually this is an area with grass in the middle of the campus that has the most important buildings around it, or some of the larger buildings around it.
A lot of campuses in the US were built and are built with this idea of having a central area, a central square that students can gather in and that can be a place for students and faculty, that is, the professors to go and sit and, well you know, waste time, which is what most students do at the university.
The guide takes him to the quad and then points out different buildings that are around the quad.
He says, on your left, you'll see the administration building.
An administration building is the building where the president of the university and the people who are running the university work or at least have offices.
The administration building in many campuses is a large building where the secretaries and the administrators, the managers of the university, work.
Administration buildings don't typically have professors or teachers in them.
There are other buildings that have offices for the professors who teach at the university.
Many large universities have more than one administration building.
The guide points out the student union and the bookstore to the tour group.
The student union U-N-I-O-N is a building for students that typically has a restaurant or a cafe, places for students to have meetings, offices for student organizations and places for students to have events activities.
When I went to the University of Minnesota, we had a student union that had a place for large meetings or dances on the weekends.
The student union had places to eat.
It had offices for the student organizations.
All of these things could be found in the student union.
It's a place for students to go and, before or after their classes, to talk and to do other sorts of activities on campus.
The bookstore is the place where you can buy the very expensive books that are used at the university for the classes.
Jiwon says to her father, Dad, stop checking your email.
Her father is apparently looking at his phone and checking his email.
She says you promised that you'd make these campus visits with me and help me make a decision about which university to attend.
Jiwon then gives us the main reason why you take a campus tour, which is to decide if you want to go to that college or university.
The tour guide continues with the tour.
He points out four other areas on the campus.
The first is the sports stadium.
A sports stadium would be a large stadium. building inside of which you play sports.
Often sports stadiums are what we would call open air stadiums, so that the building is sort of in a circle and you play the sport in the middle but there's no roof.
There's no top that goes over the place where you play the sport.
So you could have a football stadium.
You could have a baseball stadium.
You could have a soccer stadium.
More typically, you would just have one big stadium in which you would play all of these different sports.
Basketball would, of course, have to be played inside, so the stadium for the basketball team would have to be a normal building with the roof on top.
The arts complex is group of buildings where the university has their art classes.
Dorms, D-O-R-M-S, are places where the students sleep.
These are like apartments for the students.
Typically, dorms have rooms for the students, but there aren't any kitchens or cooking areas inside of the rooms.
Typically, if you are staying in a university dorm, you eat downstairs in a cafeteria or a place where they have food for you to eat.
The guide also points out the research library.
A library, as you probably know, is a place where you can go and get books.
In some large universities, such as the University of Minnesota, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Los Angeles, there is more than one library.
Often there'll be a library that is especially designed for the professors and graduate students doing research.
And so in that library you will have things like professional journals, scientific magazines, if you will, for the professors to look at and the graduate students to look at.
That's what the guide is referring to here.
Jiwon says to her father, where did you go?
She doesn't know what happened to her father, who obviously is not paying attention.
The guide then says let's stop here a moment so I can point out the science buildings and research labs.
The research labs or laboratories are places where the university has its science classes and where professors do their scientific experiments.
The guide says to Jiwon, is something the matter that matters?
Phrase something.
The matter M-A-T-T-E-R refers to a problem, something that is unusual, something that is bad, something that has gone wrong.
If someone asks you, is something the matter?
They mean, is there something wrong?
Is there a problem?
Jiwon says, I think I've lost my dad.
I think we'll have to take the self-guided tour.
A self-guided tour would be a tour in which you do not have a guide.
You do not have a leader.
You have to go on your own and look at the different things.
Jiwon thinks that she'll have to take the self-guided tour because she has to go and find her father.
And, of course, that would mean leaving the guided tour that she is on now.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Welcome, prospective students and your parents.
My name is Jaime, and I'll be conducting your tour today.
This tour will last about an hour and we'll be making frequent stops so I can point out some of the most important buildings and areas on this campus.
Dad, are you listening?
First, let's stop on the quad.
On your left, you'll see the administration building.
On your right are the student union and bookstore.
Let's continue.
Dad, stop checking your email.
You'd promised that you'd make these campus visits with me and help me make a decision about which university to attend.
We're passing the sports stadium on your left and the arts complex on your right.
Those buildings there are the dorms.
The research library is just ahead.
Dad, where did you go?
Let's stop here a moment so I can point out the science buildings and research labs.
Is something the matter?
I think I've lost my dad.
I think we'll have to take the self-guided tour.
The most important thing to point out is the fact that this script was written by the wonderful script writer, Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development.
