Using Multimedia in the Foreign Language Classroom | Page 24

Appendix I

THE READING TEXT
Available from www.thetoweroflondontour.com/kids/about.html
[accessed 13 April 2005]

The Tower of London is quite large, and lots of neat things
have happened here. It was built a long time ago by a
Frenchman called William the Conquerer (that's him over
on the left) who came over to England in the year 1066 -that's almost a 1,000 years ago! He wanted to build a castle
inside of a big fort so that future kings could live here.
After he died other kings built smaller towers and walls
around the castle William had built, and all the buildings
together became known as the Tower of London.
Later on King Richard I, dug
a big ditch around it and
filled it with water from the
River Thames, and he called
that a moat. Maybe some of
you have built a sandcastle
and scooped out the sand
around it and filled it with
water. That’s what they did
at the Tower of London. This
made it a very good place for
the kings and queens to live
because their enemies
couldn't get into the fort to
attack them.
Nobody could get into the Tower of London unless they had permission from the
people who were inside. If they wanted to let anyone in they would lower a
wooden bridge on chains across the moat, and then the people could just
walk across. This bridge was called a drawbridge. If they didn't lower the
drawbridge the only way a person could get into the castle would be to
swim across the moat. Since that was usually filled with nasty smelling
water filled with garbage and old potato peelings, people didn't want to
swim across. Besides, with the drawbridge up the door was closed, so even swimming
across wouldn't really work. The moat is no longer there because it was very smelly,
and they probably didn't want people falling in (... hehehe ...) now there's just grass
where the water used to be.

23