Exercise 2

Once you have completed and corrected the gap fill exercise, rearrange selected sentences in order to make a complete essay. You will need to decide how information is best grouped into paragraphs. You may wish to add some linking words and phrases to improve the cohesion of the essay.

Model answer: many other combinations are possible. This answer uses seven of the fifteen sentences. There are eight sentences that are not used, but the information in these sentences is found in other sentences that are used.

The chart shows 11 reasons why first year students from overseas chose a particular university. The survey of 1,000 first year overseas students was carried out at universities in the UK. The various factors can be divided into two groups, namely those related to teaching and non-teaching related.

The top three reasons are Language of tuition, Quality of teachers, Up-to-date teaching facilities, at 95%, 90% and 90% respectively. While around 95 percent of the students gave the language of tuition as the main reason for choosing a university, only 30 percent selected modern teaching methods. Good language support at 20% is the factor which influences students least when making a choice about which university to attend.

Eighty percent of the sample mentioned the cost of accommodation as a reason for choosing a university as opposed to 75 percent for the cost of tuition.

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Model Completed Answer

Reasons for Choosing a University

The chart shows 11 reasons why first year students from overseas chose a particular university.

The survey of 1,000 first year overseas students was carried out at universities in the UK. The top three reasons are language of tuition, quality of teachers, up-to-date teaching facilities, respectively. Language of tuition comes top of the survey at 95%. Another important reason is teaching facilities. About 90% of students mentioned this as a reason. The third top reason was the quality of the staff. This also accounted for 90% of student choices. The reputation of the university was also a crucial factor. About 70% of the respondents picked this as a reason for their choice of school. Non-teaching related reasons were also important. Cost was a major factor. More than three-quarters of the students said that cost of tuition was an important reason for choosing a college. A similar number picked a college based on accommodation costs. The friendliness of a university was given as a reason by two-thirds of students. Some factors were relatively

unimportant. These included good language support, at only 20% of students, and

modern teaching methods, at 30%.

In conclusion, the reasons for choosing a particular university can be divided into teaching-related reasons and non-teaching reasons, but the most important factors are language, the quality of the staff and facilities, and cost.

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