What sights of London would you visit if you were to stay there for a few days?

The historical centre of London is now a relatively small area still known as the City, which covers only 1 sq. mi. Most of the financial activities are crowded along Threadneedle street, near the intersection known as the Bank, which includes the huge Bank of England complex, the Royal Exchange and the Stock Exchange.

The most prominent landmark of the City is St. Paul’s Cathedral. Old St. Paul’s was built during Norman times. It was burnt in the Great Fire that destroyed London in1666. The cathedral that replaced it, the most striking building in the City today, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who designed many of the other City churches. St. Paul’s Cathedral is a beautiful sight standing out above the other buildings. The massive dome is topped by a gold cross which glitters when the sun strikes. You may climb up the 365 steps to the dome if you wish.

The City of Westminster is situated about 2 miles upstream from the City of London, and its emerged as England’s political and religious centre of power after the 11^th century. Westminster Abby is regarded as the centre of the Westminster area. In this lovely building we can learn much about events of long ago. Most of the kings and queens of England since William the Conqueror have been crowned here, and you may see the ancient Coronation Chair. Many great men have been honored by burial in Westminster Abby, and the church is full of memorials of kings, queens, statesman, writers, scientists and explorers, all of whom have played a part in shaping Britain’s history. There are many old buildings in the Westminster area, including the Houses of Parliament, which were also rebuilt in the late nineteenth century because the original House was destroyed by fire.

Trafalgar Square is another place of interest in London. Its surrounded by finest theatres, cinemas and concert halls. The Square was built as a monument to British naval hero Viscount Noratio Nelson and his victory of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. A statue of Nelson tops a tall column.

To the west and north of Trafalgar Square there is the West End, which is usually regarded as the shopping and entertainment centre of London. It is associated with wealth, luxury and goods of high quality. Such large department stores as Selfridges, John Lewis and Marks and Spenser are located there.

Public transport in London

When we talk about London transport system the first we think is London Buses. Normal London Buses are red and double-deckers. They have a driver and a conductor.

There are two sorts of bus-stop: compulsory and request. A compulsory bus-stop sign means that all the buses stop here. A request bus-stop sign means that the bus only stops here if someone wants to get on or off. The request bus-stop sign is red.

To find out where a bus is going, look at the sign on the front or the back of the bus. Some of the places on the route and the final destination of the bus are shown here. You will find a full list of the places on the bus route on a notice at the bus-stop.

There are other types of London buses too. The red single-decked buses are called Red Arrows. They have a driver but no conductor and you will pay the same price for a short journey as for a long one. The green buses are called the Green Line. These buses cross London, but they don’t stop very often. They are mainly fop people a little way out of London and who travel in and out.

But buses don’t go very fast in the centre of London, because there is always so much traffic, so its better way to take the Underground, or the Tube, as it is called there. But don’t travel between 7.30 and 9.30 in the morning, or 4.30 and 6.30 in the evening. These are the “rush hours”

To take the Tube you have to buy a ticket from the ticket office at the station or from an automatic machine. You should keep your ticket till the end of your journey.

There are 8 lines on the London Underground. On an Underground map all the lines are different colour.

What qualities make a good teacher?

What makes a good teacher? This is a really complicated question. First of all a good teacher loves what he does. He should inspire, encourage students to learn, make lessons fun and command respect by his own example. He is able to set and keep to behavior rules when in the classroom, he encourages respect for each other in the students and above all, he gets students interested in a subject.

Being a good teacher takes skills and time. Even highly knowledgeable teacher isn’t a good one. A good teacher should understand what their students need. Some students prefer a teacher who can add pace and humor to the class, others like it when a teacher just knows his subject very well, and a teacher should adapt to all of them. A good teacher should give them ideas which can use to further their knowledge.

To be a good teacher you need to be organized, have a passion for your subject, to treat every student as a person, on an equal basis with all the members of the class. You should always take a minute or two to answer a question after classes and give everybody a chance to speak up.

Teaching is an art and not everyone is artistic.

What kind of city is London? What is its geographical position, structure, population?

London is situated on the river Thames about forty mails from its mouth. It is divided into two unequal portions by the river: the more important, with most of the chief buildings, standing on the north bank, and the south bank. The term “London” was originally restricted to the City of London proper, which has an area of only 677 acres and an estimated resident population of 4600. Westminster, for instance, was a separate community, named from its position in relation to the city. But with the growth of the capital from the eleventh century onwards, the surrounding districts were absorbed one by one to make up the vast metropolis which is London today.

London today stretches for nearly thirty miles from north to south and for nearly thirty miles from east to west. This is the area known as “Greater London”. Greater London with its nine million population includes not only the City and the County of London, but the outer suburbs. It has no definite boundaries like the County of London which was established only in 1889. Within the boundaries of the County of London there are twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs, each with its own mayor and its own council. It is London municipal authorities that are responsible for many of the public services, housing, education and town-planning.

The population of London is probably the most cosmopolitan in the world. For example, Whitechaple, in the east end of London, is a district largely inhabitied by Jewish traders and craftsmen whose forefathers began to settle in this neighborhood after the tsarist (zɑːrɪst) persecution of 1881. Or Camden Town, an industrial district in north-west London, is to be found the Cypriot Colony, both Greek and Turkish.

Add to this immigrants and refugees thousands of young people who come to London from the province every year to live and work and you will realize that it is not so easy to find a Londoner who can say, “I was born in London as were my father, my grandmother, and my grand-grandfather before me”.

Education in Great Britain

Different countries have different educational system. In Britain compulsory education begins at 5, and children attend primary school until they are 11. During this time each class of children is taught by one teacher a whole year and this teacher takes them for all subjects.

At the age of 11 most children go to a comprehensive school, where they stay until they are 16. Nobody is allowed to leave school until they are 16. Some parents, who do not want their children to go to a comprehensive, pay to send their children to a private school. The most expensive and prestigious private schools are actually called public schools.

At the age of 16 people take examinations. Most take General Certificate of Education (G.C.E.) Ordinary Levels – normally called just “O” Levels. People take “O” Levels in as many subjects as they want to.

If you get good “O” Level results, you can stay on at school until you are 18. There you prepare for Advanced Level Exams (“A” Levels). Three good “A” Level passes mean you have a chance of going on to University. British Universities operate a closed numbers system and the number of people who can study is strictly controlled. Other types of further education are offered at polytechnics and colleges of higher education. Polytechnics offer the chance to study subjects in a more practical way and many colleges of higher education specialize in teacher training.

The education, methods of teaching, traditions of Oxford and Cambridge.

For seven hundred years two universities dominated British education, and today they dominate more than ever. Oxford and Cambridge preserve an antique way of life. Oxford and Cambridge have always provided a large number of prominent secretaries, members of Parliament and of the vice-chancellors of other universities.

The Tutorial system is one of the ways in which Oxford and Cambridge differ from all the other English universities. Every student has a tutor and as soon as you come to Oxford one of the first things you do is to go and see your tutor. He plans your work, suggests the books you should read and sets work for you to do. Each week you go to him in his rooms and he discusses with you the work that you have done and sets you the next week’s work. The tutor also gives lectures.

Lectures in Oxford and Cambridge are organized not by the colleges but by the university, so any member of the university may attend. The university is merely an administrative body that organizes lectures, arranges examinations, gives degrees. The colleges are the real leaving Oxbridge and each has its own character and individuality.

Oxbridge is famous for their societies. There are dozens of them: dramatic societies, philosophy societies, political clubs of all colours, ets. The best-known society is the Union, a debating club.

In Oxford they have a man called proctor, his job is to keep discipline. The proctor can give punishment: students can be fined a sum of money, or, for a very serious offence, they can be expelled.

Students in Oxbridge wear black gowns and queer-looking caps. Some students, especially those who has just come up, wear gowns which is looked very old and even rather ragged so that people will think they has been in Oxbridge for years.

6. (For advanced students) What sights of Moscow or your home town (land) would you show to a friend?

How wonderful it is to have a foreign friend! He gives you a precious opportunity to learn a lot about a different country, its culture and language, its traditions not from books, but from a representative of this culture. Besides, friendship like this also makes you learn more about your own country to be able to present it to your foreign friend.

As for me, I have a friend who lives in the Czech Republic and is really planning to visit my place in the nearest future. So, the question of the sights which could be of interest is very actual for me. So, how will I organize his stay in Russia?

It seems reasonable to start sightseeing with my own town for he is going to stay with me. But I’m afraid I have to give up an idea like this. The matter is my small town is rather young (it is only about 50 years old). Of course, there are some parks and churches there, but you hardly find any historical places, or marvelous monuments, or old buildings with a long and amazing history there… That is why I’m going to show him mostly the sights of Moscow.

It goes without saying that the first place to visit is Red Square: it is a must! It is not only a historically significant and widely famous place, it is also the heart of Moscow and even the whole Russia! Red Square is the original Moscow, so to speak. First it was meant to serve as Moscow’s main marketplace. It was also used for various public ceremonies and proclamations and occasionally as the state of coronation for Russian szars.

There are plenty of great places of interest within and near Red Square. For example, Alexander Garden can be the next place to visit. It was one of the first public parks in Moscow. It occupies all length of the western Kremlin wall in front of the Moscow Manege. After the Neglinnaya River was encapsulated in an underground pipe, they decided to turn the former riverbed into a public park. The park was named after the reigning emperor Alexander I.

Next I would surely bring my friend to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. It is situated on the bank of Moskva River. With an overall hight of 103 metres, it is the tallest Orthodox church in the world. It has a wonderful and tragic history. After the Revolution the Cathedral was dynamited and they intended to build Palace of the Soviets instead, which was interrupted by the outbreak of the war, and the cathedral was rebuilt in the 1990s.

In fact, there are hundreds and thousands of sights and places with an interesting background and a long history in Moscow. To my mind, sightseeing here can be endless, for it is impossible to visit all the squares, museums, parks, streets which are really worth seeing. Moscow is a magic city, so I’, sure my friend will fall in love with it

10. Do you care for poetry? Who is your favoutrite poet? What make his books good reading?

I do care for poetry, of different times and different countries, but most of all I enjoy Russian poetry of the beginning of XX century. This time is called a Silver Age of Russian poetry and it is what I really take interest in.

One of my most favourite poets is Vladimir Mayakovsky. He was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwrite, among the foremost representatives of early 20^th century Rusian Futurism. He was quite a versatile man, for he tok up not only literature, but also created graphic and text satirical posters and also took interest and was engaged in politics.

He was born on 19 of July in 1893, last of the 3 children in Russian Empire (now Georgia) where his father worked as a forest ranger. His father was of Ukrainian Cossack descent and his mother was of Ukrainian descent. At the age of 14 Mayakovsky took part in socialist demonstrations for the first time in his life. After the sudden and premature death of his father in 1906, the family — Mayakovsky, his mother, and his two sisters — moved to Moscow, where he developed a passion for Marxist literature and took part in numerous activities of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; he was to later become a Bolshevik. In 1908, he was expelled from the grammar school because his mother was no longer able to afford the tuition fees.

In prison in 1909, he began to write poetry, but his poems were confiscated. On his release from prison, he continued working within the socialist movement, and in 1911 he joined the Moscow Art School where he became acquainted with members of the Russian Futurist movement.

The 1912 Futurist publication A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Пощёчина общественному вкусу)^[2] contained Mayakovsky's first published poems: Night (Ночь) and Morning (Утро). Because of their political activities, Burlyuk and Mayakovsky were expelled from the Moscow Art School in 1914.

His artistic development then shifted increasingly in the direction of narrative and it was this work, published during the period immediately preceding the Russian Revolution, which was to establish his reputation as a poet in Russia and abroad.

In the summer of 1915, Mayakovsky fell in love with a married woman, Lilya Brik, and a number of poems were dedicated to her. The love affair, as well as his impressions of war and revolution, strongly influenced his works of these years.

Mayakovsky also worked for the Russian State Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) creating — both graphic and text — satirical Agitprop posters. In 1919, he published his first collection of poems.

As one of the few Soviet writers who were allowed to travel freely, his voyages to Latvia, Britain, Germany, the United States, Mexico and Cuba influenced works like My Discovery of America (Мое открытие Америки, 1925). He also travelled extensively throughout the Soviet Union.

Some consider Mayakovsky’s poems very hard for reading and don’t care for his poetry much. I admit, his works are not reading for entertainment. He was a wonderfully deep, sensitive and very smart person. He had a marvellous, boundless soul which seems to have been so great, that the world just could not admit it for it was so small in comparison with it. His poems are all his pain, his call for movement, for progress; he seems to me to be all irresistible and uncontrolled impulse, and that makes him precious in my eyes. I admit, I don’t enjoy his poems on political topics. But as far as those poems which express him as a man, as a lover is concerned… they fascinate me.

On the evening of April 14, 1930, Mayakovsky shot himself, and it is not known yet whether theason was connected with Lilya Brik or with any other difficulties he was not able to overcome. But still, he was born a star, a university scaled person of the strongest and character and deepest soul, a great writer who was unlike all other ones.