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Video Response
Listen to six people talk about what they remember most about their high school.
- Transcript
- Audio Slide Show
- Vocabulary
Kat / Germany
My high school in Germany was really small, only about a thousand people, and it was a very close-knitcommunity. In a German high school, there are students from ten years old to twenty years old, so it's a really nice family atmosphere.
Mike / Singapore
My high school, it's an international school. Students are from ... well, majority of students are from Asia, but we do have students from Europe and from the Americas, and I like the multicultural environment. It's very nice.
Paul / England
My high school was a grammar school, which meant that we had to take an exam to get into it. It was also an all-boys school. And it's quite a prestigious school within the area, due to the entrance exam, so the academic level at the school is quite high. But also, with it being an all-boys school, there was very strong focus on sports.
Tim / United States
I went to a public high school, which is paid by local taxes, so since I had kind of a wealthier town, we had a nice school. There are a lot of art programs and technology programs and a lot of good teachers - not too many students there, only about a hundred and eighty students in my class.
Warren / Canada
Well, my high school was from Grade Eight to Twelve, so that would be about thirteen to seventeen. It was a fairly large school, mostly because there are so many grades, but each grade had a fair amount of students as well. They weren't that well known for sports or the arts; they're more of an academic school, but we did have a pretty good track and field and we had some nice basketball courts as well. My favorite thing to do there was to play in the basketball courts.
Dani / England
Well, my high school, for me, kind of has two parts, because to begin with, when I entered my high school, it was completely different to when I left. Because while I was there, they actually rebuilt it, so first, it looked kind of interesting. There were lots of different buildings, different shapes, different sizes. By the time I left, everything was kind of uniform and box-shaped, and it looked terrible.
It was a very close-knit community.
Close-knit people or groups have a stong bond. Notice the following:
- The team is very close-knit.
- Most army units are very close-nit.
It's quite a prestigious school within the area
When something is prestigious it has high status. Notice the following:
- Harvard is a very prestigious university.
- He does not have a prestigious job, but it pays well.
Due to the entrance exam, the academic level at the school is quite high.
An entrance exam is a test students must pass or score well on to get into an educational program. Notice the following:
- You need to pass an entrance exam to get in that school.
- The entrance exam is given just once a year.
While I was there, they actually rebuilt the school.
When you rebuild something, you build it again or make it better. Notice the following:
- The school was rebuilt just last year.
- The city has rebuilt the downtown area in order to attract more visitors.
Everything was kind of uniform and box-shaped.
When something is uniform, that means it exactly the same as the others in the same group. the following:
- All the classrooms in the school are uniform.
- Meals on an airplane are all uniform.
