ESOL citizenship video and interview transcript

Geography and History

018 Annabel Wigner (reduced sound quality)

The words removed below are the key words used most by this speaker.

armour castle collection display guns horses royal tournament tower

1. Wendy: Hello Annabel, can you tell me what your job is?

2. Annabel: I'm working in the [1] Armouries Museum as an Education Officer.

3. Wendy: OK, and can you tell me about the museum, what sort of things do people see here?

4. Annabel: Well we have a national and international [2] of arms and [3] , and by that I mean basically, sharp things that can kill you, [4] that can kill you and armours from the past and present.

5. Wendy: Great, and who put the [5] together?

6. Annabel: The [6] is very, very old. It was put together in the [7] Armouries in the [8] of London originally because the [9] had an armoury as every [10] did, but it was opened to the public 400 years ago so we are possibly the oldest museum in this country, and that's how the [11] was developed.

7. Wendy: OK, and when did it come to Leeds?

8. Annabel: It came to Leeds in 1996, because there was, there were too many things at the [12] of London, we couldn't put them out on [13] , so we needed a new home. Now we have two other homes, one is the [14] , one is a fort in Hampshire and now we have this brand new museum in Leeds.

9. Wendy: OK, and is everything in this museum from this country?

10. Annabel: No, it's come from all over the world, obviously war in the 20th Century is pretty similar wherever it's fought but in the past it wasn't. Our greatest strength from other countries perhaps is Islam, from the world of Islam, from Turkey, from India and from the Sudan in Africa. But we do have other collections, not just Islamic, there's also Japan and India and China as well, so we have a very rich [15] .

11. Wendy: And can people do things here and see things other than the collections?

12. Annabel: Well, we put arms and [16] into action every day we have 'live interpretation' and we have that in the galleries and we also have it outside in the good weather. It's a bit difficult to put the [17] out on [18] when the weather is really bad but nonetheless it's all live action at some point in the museum every day.

13. Wendy: And what do you do with the horses?

14. Annabel: Well, they come from Poland largely. They are very rare now the sort of ponies that would have, well the sort of [19] that would have carried knights in the past. They are much bigger and stronger because they would have had to have carried lots of [20] , both on their and obviously on their rider, so Poland's the only place anymore. And they have a good time here. They come over here, they have lots of good food and when they're too old to do anything in the [21] we retire them for a bit and they have a lovely end to their lives. We do sometimes have to put them to sleep and that's very sad for all of us.

15. Wendy: So, what is a tournament?

16. Annabel: Well, a [22] is about people in the past trying to win each other in mock battles, so it can be very violent. A horse goes at about 35 miles an hour, and if it meets another horse going at 35 miles an hour it's going to impact on your chest at 70 miles an hour so that is a very dangerous sport. And the education centre also runs programmes which are current for all young people in this country to enjoy and to learn something from, we try to tackle issues of the museum [23] which has to do with being written in history as winners with [24] , so we hope we do our best to turn the tide a little bit here away from the belief that it's possible to defend yourself violently, we do try and develop issues which raise the idea that we have a common humanity and should share that.

17. Wendy: Thank you.

spelling exercise >