OXFORD SCHOOLS AND TOURISM
During the May holidays I went to the UK with two aims: to master the language better, especially the pronunciation and vocabulary, and to visit Trowbridge.

In Trowbridge DVC has good connections with the Chamber of Commerce,  and we are able to place students from our College there with several companies. This year there were students placed at Apetito, a large caterer (also based in the EU), and at The Consortium, a retailer of office supplies.
The 29th of April I took the Dunkirk ferry to Dover and drove to Trowbridge. There I had dinner with Stefan Barbaruk of the Chamber of Commerce and his wife, in the small village of Lacock, where the abbey was used as a background for the Harry Potter movies. The village itself is often used for shooting British series from around the 1900s.

The next morning I visited the students at their workplace. Since they did not know I was coming, it was a complete surprise for them and their superiors! I managed to talk to the students and met their superiors, and formed a fairly good idea of their daily tasks and projects. The superiors were very happy with the skills the boys possessed and showed. Later I visited the Chamber of Commerce for a brief visit, and I was able to locate a few bicycles DVC had bought last year; with the help of Stefan of the Chamber of course.
Then it was time to behave like a tourist and so I did. I went to Devizes and walked along the Kennet and Avon canal, where the famous narrow boats are mooring, where there are many locks in a row, all of them operated manually, and where you can drink a nice pint of Wadworth. I had dinner at the Cross Guns pub next to the aqueduct across the River Avon (a canal crossing a river!), and I was lucky enough to be able to stay there for the night.
The morning I took another walk along the canal towards Bradford on Avon in the bright sunlight.

After breakfast there I walked back and took off to one of the most important tourist attractions of the UK: Stonehenge. 
Tourists are not allowed to walk between the actual stones anymore – unless you pay a considerable amount –, but still the site is impressive and one wonders how people were able to move these massive stones. I was deeply impressed. But I visited Avebury as well, a stone circle even more impressive because it is much wider and the combination of earth works and enormous stones is quite extraordinary. Equally mysterious and equally awesome, but a completely different feel than Stonehenge.
The motorway took me to Oxford, where I was due to start my lessons on Tuesday because Monday was a Bank Holiday. I walked around the city in complete awe: I really loved the university buildings, built surrounding a square space of grass, called quads (from quadrangle). To be able to walk in and out of there underneath the entrance arch must be the highest pleasure for the students! Everywhere you go, there is a university, there is a bookshop or a library or a church or museum. And…. there are lots of bicycles! Of course I knew that, but to actually see it, is something different! After finding a place to stay for the night, I went to have dinner at a fish restaurant and visited a play at the Oxford Playhouse, Wife after Death, about the wife and friends of a man who died half a day ago; he and his life played a central part in the play, in a coffin or in an urn. This al sounds quite horrible, I know, but the play was actually quite funny and the actors were applauded rightfully.
The next morning found me in the Botanical Gardens very early, were I had the privilege of walking through the glass houses all by myself. Since I love glass houses, I had a field day! Walking through Magdalene College Park was a pleasure equally nice,  but after that I had to find my home for the next few days: my home stay family in Jericho, a suburb of Oxford within walking distance of the city centre.  My host, John, welcomed me and showed me my room. I was exhausted by all the new impressions of the last days and so I fell asleep on my bed, to be awakened by my hostess, Franky. Getting acquainted with them and their other home stay guest, Beate from Poland, was very nice; we were all in the same age group and had many things in common, so we had lots of information and stories to share. Dinner was not included with the home stay, so I went to have dinner in the neighborhood. The next day, the Bank Holiday, I started by visiting Christ Church university. This university is also the seat of the Oxford Diocese, at the Christ Church cathedral. The great dining hall, amongst other places, was a venue for Harry Potter, and rightly so! I especially liked the tower over the entrance, finished by Christopher Wren, the famous architect,  and the roof of the entrance to the Great Hall. Both are pictured here.

In the afternoon, I visited the Natural History Museum, a place I fell in love with immediately. The museum has a special build, and is not too big. Still, the information on display gives you a real insight into the earth and all the species living on it. Of course Darwin year has just finished, and so his astounding theory on the origin of species was still highlighted. Although the Natural is small in size, the amount of exhibits is rather large.  I did not have the heart or legs to visit the adjacent museum properly, the Pitt Rivers museum, also free of admission. Here you can see a large anthropological  collection, grouped in a different way museums organize their artifacts normally. Here they are placed together according to their use. So all the spears are shown in one cupboard, from around the globe; very unusual but very sensible as well.
Because of the English Breakfast I ate and the rather late, but great  lunch I had, I did not feel too hungry that evening, so I bought some sensible snacks and stayed the night in my room, preparing for the lessons.
These lessons of course were the reason for me to go to Oxford in the first place. So I was very excited when I walked into the school, to receive the introductory speech and induction, and to take a test to establish the level you are on. Only five new students started the courses that day, and we were taken through the necessary information rounds and were shown the two other buildings were classes are given. These buildings were all within walking distance from the headquarters. 
Because I was only there for a week, I was placed in my afternoon course immediately,  Language elective, and we talked about the May 1st festival in Oxford. Later we delved into schools in general, in which mastering difficult words, understanding written text and explaining your point of view were the main targets. Trying to understand the English system was one of the aims as well.
With the other new  students I managed to find a nice place to have coffee, and we were comparing notes on our first day. They were going to stay in Oxford for at least six weeks, so I was really jealous.
In the morning we had two classes of two hours, one focusing on grammar, the second on vocabulary. The teachers were always well prepared and were able to relate to the news items very well. During the grammar classes we had to give a presentation to our classmates and I choose to explain to them how BP and their experts were trying to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I was surprised to notice that the students were not finding information about the world in English newspapers or the news on television. A few of them even missed that there was en election for Parliament in that week. Also we had to make exercises to make sure that the new items we worked on, were understood very well.
The vocabulary lessons were a real treat.  Because I was there for a short time, teachers tried to accommodate me very much, and gave my questions lots of attention. So every question I had was answered immediately, and all the students were all learning at a very high rate.
During the remaining afternoon classes, Language elective, we discussed the difference between British and American English and the language English people use around psychiatric disorders. First the official words, and later the words the general public uses and a few swear words as well.
After classes and during lunch break our group of new students tried to meet frequently, and after classes we always went for a coffee or tea. My last night, Friday night, we went to the Chinese restaurant to have a meal together.
To my surprise the school did not expect me to have such a high level of English already, and they really struggled to give me the best they could in order to keep me happy. I appreciated their efforts very much, because I learned many new words and a bit of grammar as well. My main target, pronunciation, was not really achieved during school periods. Fellow students in my class, although in the highest level of studying English, had a very bad pronunciation, and were sometimes barely understandable. Asian students struggled the most with pronunciation, and I felt the teachers were not getting them to a higher level. My hope that I was able to discuss topics on a higher level than normally was not achieved. I improved my pronunciation though, just because I was in the UK, surrounded by many English speakers, and had to do the shopping and the tourist outings in the English language as well.  Being on your own is a great help too, because then you will not be drawn towards your native language all the time.
What I also learned is that the way you teach the language is very important. In that sense Embassy CES is a good school. Not only do teachers use modern tools as white boards, they also use modern methods as well. Of course groups are small (a trade mark of the Embassy schools), but teachers were able to make students work in small groups, in a large group, on different levels, with well-prepared and sensible materials. The different learning styles were addressed in each class, first we learned words that had to do with the topic, then we were talking about them, and then for instance we had to use the words to understand a quite difficult text about the topic. It was a real joy to undergo these lessons.

All in all I had a nice week at the school, and the other days I had a very nice time as well. I would have liked to talk more with people on my level of English, but the school tried to accommodate me in that as best they could. And I never thought the community of such a school was so varied, and indeed I learned a lot about other countries in the world as well.
Berna Verstappen
May 2010