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Comparing universities at home to the universities in the UK

In this article, you'll compare what university is like in your home country to how it works in the UK.

You’ve explored the key features of university education in the UK. Now let’s try to write about what we have learned.

One of the ways to improve our writing is to look at examples and models. Here’s an example from Omar.

Omar’s email

Omar wrote an email to his sister Farah about his experiences studying at Coventry University in the UK. Later we will read Omar’s full email but in this step, we will just look at a short extract.

Read Omar’s sentence and decide if his experience in the UK was similar or different from his experience in his home country.

When I studied at home our lectures used to have hundreds of people in them but here we only have 20.
Omar’s understanding of lectures changed when he came to the UK. Has your understanding of what happens at university in the UK changed?

Your task

If we want to write a sentence about how our understanding of lectures has changed we can use Omar’s structure to help us.
Use the following examples from Omar’s email to write your own sentence about how studying in the UK will be different from studying in your own country.
Our seminars used to be really boring but in Coventry we have to give presentations. It’s really exciting.
I never had tutorials when I was studying at home but in the UK I have them regularly. They are so helpful.
I used to be so lazy when I studied my undergraduate degree but now I have to motivate myself to learn independently and really understand my subject.
Post your sentence in the comments.
Try to read other people’s sentences and reply to them saying if your experiences are the same or different from theirs.
If you would like further guidance on how to structure your sentence, please see the helpsheet in the ‘Downloads’ section.
© Coventry University. CC BY-NC 4.0
This article is from the free online

English for Academic Study

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