Pre-class Task: write the summary of the three short paragraphs or articles. Try to make it as clearly, concisely as possible.

[1]

The movement toward education by computer is developing fast. Massive Open Online Courses, called MOOCs, are changing how people learn in many places. For years, people could receive study materials from colleges or universities and take part in online classes. But such classes were not designed for many thousands of students at one time, as MOOCs are. (MOOCS Are Moving Forward , Voice of America, learningenglish.voanews.com) (57 words)

[2]

As today's bride and groom celebrate their wedding, they have every excuse for being nervous. They exchange promises of lifelong fidelity and mutual support. However, all around them, they can see that many people do not and cannot keep these promises. Their own marriage has a one in three chance of divorce, if present tendencies continue.

Traditional marriage is facing a crisis, at least in Britain. Not only are there more and more divorces, but the number of marriages is falling. Living together is more popular than before. The family is now no longer one man, one woman and their children. Instead, there are more and more families which include parents, half sisters and brothers, or even only one parent on her/ his own.

Although Britain is still conservative in its attitudes to marriage compared with other countries such as the USA, Sweden and Denmark, the future will probably see many more people living together before marriage - and more divorce. Interestingly, it is women rather than men who apply for divorce. Seven out of ten divorces are given to the wife. Also, one of the main reasons for divorce, chosen by ten times more women than men, is unreasonable or cruel behaviour. Perhaps this means that women will tolerate less than they used to. (216 words)

[3]

A third kind of thinking is stimulated when anyone questions our beliefs and opinions. We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. 

We are incredibly heedless in the information of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obvious not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We are by nature stubbornly pledged to defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, our property, or our opinion. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world at least, peace is without victory.

Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. (219 words)