Describing places

As I have often pointed out in our classes one of the skills that we have worked on both in our B2 and C1 is descriptions. Yes. Descriptions of people, descriptions of objects and, of course, descriptions of places.

The C1 students may be expected to mention quaint villages whose cobbled streets are teeming with visitors. That sentence alone would almost certainly guarantee a passing grade in an exam. The B2 level, which is obviously less demanding, still requires students to be able to come up with specific descriptions, i. e. words that can only be applied to places. Beautiful and amazing are a bit too broad. However if you say that bohemian artists used to hang out in a cafe you're using specific terms that can only be used to refer to a place (a cafe in this case).

I have recently visited Oxford and thought of you all, my dear Avanzado 2 students. There's a lot to be said about Oxford University and his many illustrious residents. J.R.R. Tolkien, for instance, was a professor at Merton College when he wrote "The Lord of the Rings". Another prominent Oxfordian author is Lewis Carroll, who wrote "Alice in Wonderland" while lecturing precisely at Christ Church College. As a matter of fact he named the Alice character after Alice Liddell, daughter of Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church. If you're interested in any of this you may want to watch this BBC documentary.

The video below is just a little reminder that I've edited together to somehow let you know that the material we cover in the book is real and the conversations we have are real. At school I'll be happy to answer your questions regarding Oxford and listen to your thoughts. So consider this clip as a conversation starter.

N.B. Technically the British Library is the largest and therefore the most important in the United Kingdom but the Bodleian Library has that literary aura of mystique that no other library has. My beloved Jorge Luis Borges spent days in its famous reading room that's why I have always regarded it as "the most important" on British soil.