“First Steps in Science 2007” in Samara Project “Television”
8th conference “First Steps in Science 2007” took place in Samara on 31st March. Students of the sixth form of the Municipal Nayanova University in Samara participated in it with the project “Television”. It is a full-scale, long-term project (in contrast to short-term projects or small-scale projects). The students had been working on it for several months.
A project is a piece of school or college work in which students do their own research and present the results. Project work helps to bridge the gap between language study and language use. It brings together into a coherent presentation the wealth of practical know-how on the subject. It requires multiple stages of development to succeed. Working on the project students have to collect information and analyse it.
Below the students write about their research work in more detail.
Raissa Borisova,
a project superviser, English instructor
Television has changed our life in many ways. According to a national survey in Russia, 82 per cent of the population gets most of their news from the television. Television is our chief pastime as well, that is why we decided to study its effect on teenagers’ life. We got to know much about the TV history, British TV and British students’ view on TV, about the great future of TV.
First and foremost we have collected our own information. We’ve interviewed 51 students of 6 form about positive and negative things of the television. We place them in the order of importance from the students’ point of view.
Second, we’ve found out what students of 6 form like to watch on TV. 51 students were interviewed.
My beautiful nanny 19,6%
Cadets 15,6%
We should live 7,8%
Cartoons 29,4%
Soldiers 7,8%
Who is the host? 7,8%
Different films 15,6%
Everything 13,9%
So, 1st place – cartoons (29,4%) 2nd – My beautiful nanny (19,6%) 3rd – Cadets, different films (15,6%)
Five students don’t watch TV at all. Two students don’t watch TV on weekdays but at the weekend. Five students watch TV “from morning till night”, i.e. the TV is on all the time, especially at the weekend. As for other students they have some favourite programmes that they watch every week.
Further, we wrote diaries “Average time per week we spend on different activities”. As it turned out, Yana spends on TV 4 hours 10 minutes; Dasha - 8 hours 35 minutes, Vlad – 10 hours. All in all, during a week we spend 7 hours 48 minutes watching TV. According to psychology children aged 10 and over should not watch TV more than 2-3 hours per week.
Conclusion: we watch TV too much! The pie chart bellow illustrates our survey.
Finally, all things considered, we have worked out our own TV programme. We called it “Teenager”. We’d like to have more facts interesting to us. We included “Children News”, “A Language Hour”, “Educational Hour”, related to the subjects we study. It is worthwhile to mention Animal, Travel, Art and some other programmes. We can’t but mention cartoons and feature films but with no violence.
Television has covered a very long way in a very short period of time. Science works miracles. Its strides know no check.
So… more channels, more choice, more clarity.
Nikita Ovsyannikov, Yana Pivovarova, Dasha Volnova, Vlad Balandin
