[originaltext] University teaching in the United Kingdom is very different a

University teaching in the United Kingdom is very different at both undergraduate and graduate levels from that of many overseas countries.
    An undergraduate course consists of a series of lectures, seminars and tutorials, and in science and engineering, laboratory classes, which in total account for about 15 hours per week. Arts students may well find that their official contact with teachers is less than this average, while science and engineering students may expect to be timetabled for up to 20 hours per week. Students studying for a particular degree will take a series of lecture courses which run in parallel at a fixed time in each week and may last one academic term or the whole year. Associated with each lecture course are seminars, tutorials and laboratory classes which draw upon, analyze, illustrate or amplify the topics presented in the lectures. Lecture classes can vary in size from 20 to 200 although larger sized lectures tend to de crease as students progress into the second and third year and more options become available. Seminars and tutorials are on the whole much smaller than lecture clasps and in some departments can be on a one-to-one basis. Students are normally expected to prepare work in advance, for seminars and tutorials and this can take the form of re searching a topic for discussion, by writing essays or by solving problems. Lectures, seminars and tutorials are all one hour in length, while laboratory classes usually last 2 or 3 hours. Much emphasis is put on how to spend as much time if not more studying by themselves as being taught.  In the UK it is still common for people to say that they are "reading" for a degree!