London WebQuest

1) Introductory quiz

Find out some facts about the UK. Look at the website and answer the following questions. You will have to browse the site to find the information.

a) What is the nation's current favourite food?
b) Where is the ‘home’ of the sport golf?
c) What is the artist Chris Ofili famous for?
d) What song is sung on New Year’s Eve in the UK?

2) Group planning

The second exercise involves orientation. You have arrived at Heathrow Airport and want to travel to London Bridge. Look at the London Tube website and answer the following questions:

3) Reading comprehension

Now let’s go into one of London’s famous attractions. Go to the London Dungeon website, then go into The Dungeons Experience: London where you will find information about Jack the Ripper. Look at the text and try to put the following events in the correct order (in real time).

a) The killer was never found
b) Elizabeth Stride was killed
c) Mary Nicholl’s body was found
d) Louis Deimschutz disturbed the ripper
e) Catherine Edowes was attacked
f) Mary Nicholl’s throat was cut
g) Angry mobs attacked suspects

4) Grammar – past perfect tense

We use the past perfect to talk about an action in the past which happened before another action in the past. The second action is often in the past tense: (the police arrived). For example:

a) Work with a partner. Try to explain the difference between the following two sentences:

1. When the police arrived the killer had left.
2. When the police arrived the killer left.

b) Work with a partner. Which of the following two statements is true? How    do you know?

1. Whitechapel was a quiet place before the Ripper started killing.
2. Whitechapel had always been a dangerous place even before the Ripper      started killing.

5) Reading and history

Visit the 1940s House and have a look around the house. Compare the house to the house you live in. What differences and similarities are there? Take some notes. Is the furniture very different? Is there anything you can see or read that indicates that life in 1940 was very different from now? Discuss with a partner.

Visit the sites in order to find the authors of a number of London books written between 1850 and 1950. Now use the following links to answer the following questions. You may have to search a little.

http://www.dickensmuseum.com/

a) Charles Dickens lived at _____________ when he wrote the __________ Papers. He moved there in ______ and lived there for ______ years.

b) Which writer from the Bloomsbury group wrote a book called Where Angels Fear to Tread?

http://www.smart.net/~tak/wodehouse.html

c) The writer P.G. Wodehouse was famous in particular for two characters. What were those characters’ names?

d) What jobs did the characters do?

e) What kind of characters were they?

6) Listening

Listen to the passage and try to answer the questions below. It is not necessary to listen to all of the passage. Stop listening when you have heard enough.
a) What, according to Virginia Woolf, are full of echoes, memories, associations?
b) What is “one of the chief difficulties of writing nowadays” according to Virginia Woolf?
c) Why, in her opinion, can we not use new words?
d) What do words belong to?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/woolfv1.shtml

7) Time out

Work in small groups (three to five). You are going to spend 24 hours in London. Where will you go? What will you do? Plan out your 24 hours. Be careful that you know how to get to each place (use the Transport Map from task two).

http://www.timeout.com/london

8) London web quiz

Work in groups of two or three. The first team to answer all of the questions and get all of the information wins. Below there is a list of all the web sites used to get the information.

1. At what gate in which famous tower was the ghost of Sir Thomas Becket
seen striking a wall with a crucifix?
2. What are the nicknames of the following London football teams: Crystal Palace and West Ham?
3. What two tube stations beginning with a ‘w’ are best for going to the London Eye?
4. Name the dinosaur that lived in England in the Middle Jurassic period, who was carnivorous and could measure up to 9 metres long.
5. What is the name of the pub in the London soap opera ‘Eastenders’?
6. What is ‘Kew Gardens’ and where would you find it?