Speaking

You are attending a language school in England and your teacher is planning a class trip. Your teacher wants to go to the National Gallery in London. Persuade her to visit Oxford.

How about going to Oxford?

I am attending a language school in England and our teacher is planning a class trip. Our teacher wants to go to the National Gallery in London. I am afraid I can`t quite agree with her about that because in my opinion it will be boring for all students. So, I suggest going to Oxford. I think visit to Oxford will be educational, useful and interesting. I hope that she will change her mind. 

Here are the reasons why it would be better to visit Oxford. Oxford is a university city in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 155,000. It is 56 miles northwest of London. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest in the English-speaking world, and has buildings in every style of English architecture from late Anglo-Saxon.

Oxford is the world’s third-oldest university. There is no known date of foundation, but there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096. There were fights between the students in Oxford and the people who lived there in the early 13th century. Some students and teachers left the university in 1209, and made a new university in Cambridge. These two universities are now great rivals, and together are sometimes known as “Oxbridge”.

Until 1920, women were not allowed to take degrees at Oxford, although some women studied at Oxford before that time. Nowadays, all the colleges allow both men and women as students, and the number of male and female students is roughly equal.

One of the most famous teachers at the university was Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland.

It would be interesting to know that there are 38 colleges at Oxford and 6 permanent private halls. A college will normally offer the students accommodation (a room to sleep and study in) for the first and last years of their time at University. Many also offer accommodation for other years.

A permanent private hall is slightly different to a college. They were normally started by religious groups to educate their members in philosophy and theology, but some have since grown and offer a broader range of subjects.

Oxford, like Cambridge, is very popular, but there are only a limited number of spaces for students. It is therefore harder for students to get into these universities. The colleges look for the students with the best school results in the subjects for which they are applying, typically A marks on A-levels.