Learning English

Christine

Hi my name's Christine. The area I live in used to be an artillery barracks - it was the Woolwich Arsenal – the place used to build lots of armouries and guns and cannons for wars back in the day. And over the last couple of years a huge supermarket chain in the UK decided to build a brand new supermarket in the centre of the town – and it's one of the biggest of the chain in the UK. So, this building, nominated as the ugliest, is actually for the local people, really practical and really useful. It's definitely better for the local economy now that it's there I think because there are more local job opportunities and it helps to regenerate the area. Outside this big building there's flats above it so more there's more places for people to live and then there was landscaping outside so now there's a big public open square which is greener and nicer than it was before – it's a big communal space. 

Adam

Hi I'm Adam. There is a local pub at the end of my street which was quite a small pub and now it's been turned into a really big supermarket. It was prettier before, the garden was really nice in the pub and now there's a car park which is worse and it's uglier than it was before.  I think the supermarket being there has made the area not as busy. It was better before because it was a local hub, it was a local community gathering where people would come and chat, and now it's worse because you don't meet anyone, there's nowhere for everyone to go and talk and nowhere for people to just come together. Looking [to] the future, I envisage something more sociable, more sociable area for people to come together in. This place would be bigger and it would mean a lot more people could come in and enjoy themselves.

Sarika

Hello I'm Sarika. My local hospital recently had a big development for their A&E, which is their accident and emergency service, so they closed a lot of different hospitals around the other areas near me, and they've made my hospital the big central A&E department and this has resulted in a lot of development going on at the hospital itself and although it's almost complete now, it's bigger but it is a little bit disorganised and it's quite difficult to know whereabouts to go in the hospital because there's still things like scaffolding up around and it makes it really hard to go around the building. But the building now looks much fresher, it looks clean and a lot more modern than it was before and it does look like a nice place to go to whereas before it looked really quite depressing from the outside. So hopefully, it should make it easier for a lot of people to get the services they need quicker so hopefully it will better for the community because it will bring lots of different people together that were normally not visiting this area and hopefully it will also be a better experience for everyone as well because they will have up-to-date facilities to use and it will make your stay in hospital a little bit more pleasant that it would normally have been.