British History & Culture - Symbols of Britain

Описание

A short listening exercise for the TEFL classroom about symbols of Britain.

The Union Flag or Union Jack
The famous red, white and blue ________ dates from 1801 when the Kingdom of Ireland was united with the Kingdom of Great Britain. The flag combines the flags of three countries: the red __________ of St George on a white background (England), the white diagonal cross (saltire) of St Andrew on a blue background (Scotland), and the red saltire cross of St Patrick’s flag (Ireland). There is no reference to Wales in the flag, because England and Wales were united much __________. Australia and New Zealand still incorporate it as part of their national flags.

Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge was the largest and most sophisticated bascule
bridge in the ________ when it opened in 1894. The bridge opens to allow tall ships to pass through it, and when it was built it would have been opened as many as ______ times a day, but nowadays the bridge only opens a few times a week. There is a high level walkway connecting the two towers, which allowed Londoners to cross the __________ when the bridge was up for long periods of time.

The London Underground
The first underground railway was _________ in London in 1863. The first trains were pulled by steam engines and the __________ in the tunnels made the journey very unpleasant. The first carriages had no windows, because people thought windows were unnecessary if the train was only travelling through an underground __________. The train guard called out the name of each station as the train arrived at it. The roundels with the names of the stations first appeared on underground platforms in 1908. The iconic colour-coded tube map was designed in 1931 by Harry Beck, an underground railway ____________. He did it in his spare time and was only paid £5.25 for it