41 Universities of Great Britain
The United Kingdom is home to a vast number of prestigious universities. Every year, students begin the rigorous admissions process to attend one of these schools, including students from all over the world. To gain admission to a top university in the U. K. from wherever a student may be, students must go through the Universities & Colleges Admissions Service. The top 10 U. K. universitiesare the elite, and admission to them is very competitive.
University of Bristol
Located in Bristol, England, the University of Bristol is one of the proclaimed red-brick universities, a group of six British universities established, as civic science or engineering colleges before World War I. It consistently ranks at the top of lists published by the League Tables of British Universities. It also receives the most applications per school of any British university according to its website.
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is located in the southwest of England and has three campuses. They boast high entry standards and low dropout rates, with a great majority of students consistently reporting satisfaction with their academic experiences there, according to the university.
Durham University
Durham University, located in Durham, claims to be the third oldest university in England behind its two heavyweight institutions, Cambridge and Oxford. According to the League Tables of British Universities, it attracts a largely middle and higher class student body as an alternative to both Cambridge and Oxford.
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics, or the LSE, describes itself as the world's leading social sci ence institution for both teaching and research. It has the lowest admissions rate of any university in Britain, making it one of the more selective universities.
University of Warwick
Located in the outskirts of West Midlands, England, the University of Warwick is a research-led institution. It has high academic standards and is renowned for its research in numerous areas such as history, mathematics and business, to name a few. It also boasts many notable alumni in a diverse array of fields.
42 Oxford and Cambridge
Oxford and Cambridge are the most prestigious universities in the English-speaking world. You never say Cambridge and Oxford ; Oxford always comes first. They are often called Oxbridge.
To get the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) students have to study for three years. The students wear a special uniform daily, and full academic dress at the examinations. According to the long established tradition Latin is used at public degree ceremony.
Oxford and Cambridge universities consist of a number of colledges. Each college has its own name and its coats of arms. On the territory there is usually a chapel, a dining hall, a library, rooms for undergraduates, fellows and the master, and also rooms for teaching.
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Oxford is one of the oldest universities in Europe. It is situated at a distance of 100 km from London. It is the second largest one in Britain after London University. It dates in chronicles from 911 AD. Most colleges are made of grey stone. They have stood there for many centuries. Oxfords is an aristocratic university. Now there are 27 colleges for men, 5 for women and another five which have both ones. All the students at Oxford talk in a very superior way known as the Oxford accent, which is a bit like the BBC acent.
Cambridge is situated at a distance of seventy miles from London. It is one of the most beautiful towns in England and looks more like a country town. The Cambridge University started during the 13th century (1284). It has more than twenty nine colleges. A colledge is a group of buildings which form a square with a lawn in the centre. The colleges line the bank of the river Cam. They have beautiful college gardens with green lawns and lines of tall trees.
The oldest college in Cambridge is Peterhouse, which was founded in 1284. The most famous is probably Kings college (founded in 1441) because of its magnificent chapel and English fifteen-century architecture.
Since the year of 197o most colleges of Cambridge are mixed. A lot of famous people studied at Cambridge. They are Sir Isaac Newton, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton and Sir Charles Darwin. In Trinity College, which is a very famous, there is a statue of Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist in the world.
Sport is a part of students life at both universities. There is a great rivalry between the universities and they play all sorts of games between each other like cricket and rugger (rugby football). Also they compete at punting and rowing, which are the most popular sports. The Oxford team wear dark blue uniform and the Cambridge team wear light blue one.
Open University
The Open University (OU) is a distance learning and research[5] university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom. The university is funded by a combination of student fees, contract income and allocations for teaching and research by the higher education funding bodies throughout the UK. It is notable for having an open entry policy, i.e. students' previous academic achievements are not taken into account for entry to most undergraduate courses. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off-campus, but many of its courses (both undergraduate and postgraduate) can be studied off-campus anywhere in the world.[6] There are a number of full-time postgraduate research students based on the 48-hectare university campus[7][8]where they use the OU facilities for research, as well as more than 1000 members of academic and research staff and over 2500 administrative, operational and support staff.[9]
The OU was established in 1969 and the first students enrolled in January 1971.[10]The University administration is based at Walton Hall, Milton Keynes inBuckinghamshire, but has regional centres in each of its thirteen regions around the United Kingdom. It also has offices and regional examination centres in most other European countries. The university awards undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, as well as non-degree qualifications such as diplomas and certificates or continuing education units.
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With more than 250,000 students enrolled, including around 32,000 aged under 25[11]and more than 50,000 overseas students,[12] it is the largest academic institution in the United Kingdom (and one of the largest in Europe) by student number, and qualifies as one of the world's largest universities. Since it was founded, more than 1.5 million students have studied its courses.[12] It was rated top university in England and Wales for student satisfaction in the 2005,[13] 2006[14] and 2012[15]United Kingdom government national student satisfaction survey, and second in the 2007 survey.[16] Out of 132 universities and colleges, the OU was ranked 43rd (second quartile) in the Times Higher Education Table of Excellence in 2008, between the University of Reading and University of the Arts London; it was rated highly in Design, Art History, English, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Computer Science, Development Studies, Social Policy and Social Work and Sociology.[17] It was ranked overall as a nationally top forty, and globally top five hundred university by theAcademic Ranking of World Universities in 2011, as well as being ranked 247 for citations of its academics.[18]
The Open University is also one of only three United Kingdom higher education institutions to gain accreditation in the United States of America by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education,[19] an institutional accrediting agency, recognized by the United States Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. [20]
44 Teacher Training Sol Group of Career Colleges is the teacher training division of Sol Schools International. Since our first course in 2004, we have been a leader in training English language teachers. Our continuous efforts to keep our programs relevant and innovative is what gives our graduating teachers the renowned reputation of being acknowledged as the most able, creative and authoritative in the ESL teaching industry.
Sol Schools International offers a variety of recognized teacher training programs in Toronto and Vancouver in Canada and Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami Beach, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, and Washington D. C. in the USA. Following the standards set out by The Ministry of Colleges, Training and Universities, TESL Canada and Cambridge University, you can expect to be studying a high-quality curriculum taught by the most qualified and experienced teacher trainers.
Sol Schools Teacher Training Centers also have a special commitment to working with teachers whose first language is not English, creating career opportunities for teachers from different backgrounds and working to improve the quality of language teaching provision in the state system.
Since Sol Schools in Toronto and Miami Beach are predominant ESL schools, teacher-training students are constantly immersed with ESL learners throughout the day to give a real sense of what it is like in a school that teaches English as a second language.
Our qualified and experienced staff knows just how broad the ESL and EFL industry is, so they are able to provide you with one-to-one employment assistance after graduation. This employment assistance includes, but is not limited to resume and cover letter assistance, job contacts, contract review, visa advice and assistance and anything else you need to begin working as an English teacher at home or overseas.
Historical survey of Great Britain.Ancient Britain.
Archaeologists working in Norfolk in the early 21st century discovered stone tools that suggest the presence of humans in Britain from about 800,000 to 1 million years ago. These startling discoveries underlined the extent to which archaeological research is responsible for any knowledge of Britain before the Roman conquest (begun ad 43). Britains ancient history is thus lacking in detail, for archaeology can rarely identify personalities, motives, or exact dates or present more than a general overview. All that is available is a picture of successive cultures and some knowledge of economic development. But even in Roman times Britain lay on the periphery of the civilized world, and Roman historians, for the most part, provide for that period only a framework into which the results of archaeological research can be fitted. Britain truly emerged into the light of history only after the Saxon settlements in the 5th century ad. PRE-ROMAN BRITAIN
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NEOLITHIC PERIOD
A major change occurred c. 4000 bc with the introduction of agriculture by Neolithicimmigrants from the coasts of western and possibly northwestern Europe. They were pastoralists as well as tillers of the soil. Tools were commonly of flint won by mining, but axes of volcanic rock were also traded by prospectors exploiting distant outcrops. The dead wereburied in communal graves of two main kinds: in the west, tombs were built out of stone and concealed under mounds of rubble; in the stoneless eastern areas the dead were buried under long barrows (mounds of earth), which normally contained timber structures. Other evidence of religion comes from enclosures (e.g., Windmill Hill, Wiltshire), which are now believed to have been centres of ritual and of seasonal tribal feasting. From them developed, late in the 3rd millennium, more clearly ceremonial ditch-enclosed earthworks known as henge monuments. Some, like Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, are of great size and enclose subsidiary timber circles. British Neolithic culture thus developed its own individuality.
BRONZE AGE
Early in the 2nd millennium or perhaps even earlier, from c. 2300 bc, changes were introduced by the Beaker folk from the Low Countries and the middle Rhine. These people buried their dead in individual graves, often with the drinking vessel that gives their culture its name. The earliest of them still used flint; later groups, however, brought a knowledge of metallurgy and were responsible for the exploitation of gold and copper deposits in Britain and Ireland. They may also have introduced an Indo-European language. Trade was dominated by the chieftains of Wessex, whose rich graves testify to their success. Commerce was far-flung, in one direction to Ireland and Cornwall and in the other to central Europe and the Baltic, whence amber was imported. Amber bead spacers from Wessex have been found in the shaft graves at Mycenae in Greece. It was, perhaps, this prosperity that enabled the Wessex chieftains to construct the remarkable monument of shaped sarsens (large sandstones) known as Stonehenge III. Originally a late Neolithic henge, Stonehenge was uniquely transformed in Beaker times with a circle of large bluestone monoliths transported from southwest Wales.
From about 1200 bc there is clearer evidence for agriculture in the south; the farms consisted of circular huts in groups with small oblong fields and stock enclosures. This type of farm became standard in Britain down to and into the Roman period. From the 8th century onward, British communities developed close contacts with their continental European neighbours. Some of the earliest hill forts in Britain were constructed in this period (e.g., Beacon Hill, near Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire; or Finavon, Angus); though formally belonging to the late Bronze Age, they usher in the succeeding period.
The Roman conquest
The Roman conquest of Britain was a gradual process, beginning effectively in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, whose general Aulus Plautius served as first governor of Roman Britain (Latin: Britannia). Great Britain had already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by forces of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. In common with other regions on the edge of the empire, Britain had enjoyed diplomatic and trading links with the Romans in the century since Julius Caesar's expeditions in 55 and 54 BC, and Roman economic and cultural influence was a significant part of the British late pre-Roman Iron Age, especially in the south.
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Between 55 BC and the 40s AD, the status quo of tribute, hostages, and client stateswithout direct military occupation, begun by Caesar's invasions of Britain, largely remained intact. Augustus prepared invasions in 34 BC, 27 BC and 25 BC. The first and third were called off due to revolts elsewhere in the empire, the second because the Britons seemed ready to come to terms.[1] According to Augustus's Res Gestae, two British kings, Dubnovellaunus and Tincomarus, fled to Rome as supplicants during his reign,[2] and Strabo's Geography, written during this period, says that Britain paid more in customs and duties than could be raised by taxation if the island were conquered.[3]
By the 40s AD, the political situation within Britain was apparently in ferment. TheCatuvellauni had displaced the Trinovantes as the most powerful kingdom in south-eastern Britain, taking over the former Trinovantian capital of Camulodunum (Colchester), and were pressing their neighbours the Atrebates, ruled by the descendants of Julius Caesar's former ally Commius.[4]
Caligula planned a campaign against the Britons in 40, but its execution was bizarre: according to Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars, he drew up his troops in battle formation facing the English Channel and ordered them to attack the standing water. Afterwards, he had the troops gather seashells, referring to them as "plunder from the ocean due to the Capitol and the Palace".[5] Modern historians are unsure if that was meant to be an ironic punishment for the soldiers' mutiny or due to Caligula's derangement. Certainly this invasion attempt readied the troops and facilities that would make Claudius' invasion possible three years later. For example, Caligula built a lighthouse at Bononia (modernBoulogne-sur-Mer) that provided a model for the one built soon after at Dubris (Dover).
The Anglo-Saxon period
The Anglo Saxon period is the oldest known period of time that had a complex culture with stable government, art, and a fairly large amount of literature. Many people believe that the culture then was extremely unsophisticated, but it was actually extremely advanced for the time. Despite the much advancement, the period was almost always in a state of war. Despite this fact, the Anglo-Saxon period is a time filled with great advancements and discoveries in culture, society, government, religion, literature, and art.
The Angles were a Germanic tribe that occupied the region which is now Scleswig-Holstein, Germany. With their fellow ethnic groups, they formed the people who came to be known as the English. The Saxons were a Germanic people who first appeared in the beginning of the Christian era. The Saxons were said to have lived in the south Jutland Peninsula in the north of what is now Germany, but the fact has not been proven. They attacked and raided areas in the North Sea throughout the third and fourth centuries. By the end of the sixth century, the Saxons had taken all of the Roman territory within north-west Germany, as far as the Elbe River. The Angles joined the Saxons in the invasion of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. British resistance to the 'Anglo Saxon' invaders in the second half of the fifth century ended with the Anglo Saxon's victory at the battle of Mount Badon. After the British were defeated, though, the Angles and the Saxons continued to fight over their religion for many years. (James Campbell, Eric John, Patrick Wormald, 1991)
Before the year 596, almost everybody had strong pagan beliefs. In 596 missionaries had begun to attempt to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. By the year 650, almost all of England had converted to Christianity- at least in name. Although almost everyone claimed to be strong believers in Christ and the church, most still held on to their pagan beliefs and traditions. No matter what they believed, everyone applied their religious beliefs to their everyday life. (Geoffrey Hindley, 2006)
Everyone in the age would always wear extremely modest clothing. The common garment for a man was the robe gathered at the waist, completed by hose and soft sandals. The same was for the woman, except their dress extended to the feet. The most common materials used to make clothing were linen and woolens, though the more expensive outfits were marked by colorful dyes and exotic borders (Pelteret, 2000). Usually then men would hide short spears under their clothing for added protection.
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The Viking Invasions
THE VIKINGS have raided the territory of the EAST SAXONS, who have retired into the fastnesses of the GREAT FOREST that lies between the RIVER LEE a nd the sea that washes the SAXON SHORE on the east.
The VIKINGS have captured the treasured emblems of authority that the Leaders of the SAXONS bear with them in battle; the VIKINGS foolishly left their Longboats unguarded in the RIVER LEE and the SAXONS have carried off the staffs dedicated to ODIN that adorned the prows of the invaders' vessels.
Each army would now regain its own. With this object before them Scouts from the two armies have been sent out. The VIKINGS are encamped north of the NORTH LONG HILLS, and the SAXONS south-west thereof.
Each party of Scouts bears its colors, proudly displayed in full view of all men; the VIKINGS wear RED, and the SAXONS YELLOW.
Orders have been given to the Scouts to retrieve their own by strategy rather than by force; so not more than two go together at one time, and it is regarded as shameful for more than two to attack one man. Moreover they are honorable in all their dealings and especially with the wounded.
A separate encampment has been formed at the western end of the PLAIN that is called WHITE HOUSE; thither a Scout hies him as fast as he can with any emblem or staff that he has captured; but he goes, warily withal lest an enemy take him on the way and regain the emblem or staff and return in triumph with it to his own camp.
When the color on the arm is spoiled, the spoiler gives a token to the spoiled who, with down-cast head and averted eyes, bears it to the WHITEHOUSE CAMP and there gets healed of his wounds by a company of his own countrymen who do not take violent part in the strife until they are replaced by others who carry out the same blessed duties.
When healed of his wounds, a Scout will be given an unspoiled color to wear, and. once more he can set about his task. The LEADERS of the armies are on the watch to see how their Scouts carry themselves, or whether they do anything that is shameful, such as wearing an enemy's color, or carrying more than one emblem or staff at a time.
