HỌC TIẾNG ANH TRỰC TUYẾN CHO NGƯỜI BẬN RỘN

UNIT 1: HISTORICAL SITES

A. Lead-in

1. How much do you know about Con Dao Prison? Where is it?
2. Have you ever been there? If so, what was it like? Did you like it? What struck you as the most interesting? If not,
how do you imagine the place, its architecture and the people?
3. Have you ever heard about anything or anyone famous connected to Con Dao Prison?
4. Tell your group about your ideas and your experience.

B. Reading tasks

1. Now read the whole text and compare your answers with the new information in it.

Visiting Con Dao Prison “The Hell on Earth” in Vietnam

Part 1
Being acknowledged as the “hell on earth” in Vietnam, Con Dao prison located on Con Lon Island, Con Dao District, Ba
Ria Vung Tau Province is the system of prisons built by the French in order to contain particularly dangerous jails for
colonialism. So far, thanks to the efforts of people on the island together with the Con Dao authorities, they have
made this place become a tourist attraction to Vietnamese next generations and international friends visiting
Vietnam to directly explore direness of the wars and truly blowing their minds about this prison hell on earth.

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Annually in Con Dao there are about 50,000 visitors to visit and discover the beautiful island significantly closed with
hardships of Vietnamese soldiers and people from the wars. Besides the beautiful pristine beaches, attractive coral
reefs in tropical jungle, Con Dao prison is also the place to be chosen by many visitors to directly witness many tragic
historical traces of the wars. With an area of only 52 square kilometers, there are eight prisons on the island.
According to information available since the French colonial built, the prison from 1862 to 1975 detained 200,000
prisoners, most were political prisoners and 20,000 of them died at that time.

In the nineteenth century, Con Dao was restored to be a museum, where it was recorded and also evidence of the
cruel crimes committed by the French colonialists and the US henchmen. The French prison system consists of
detention centers such as Bagne I (Phu Hai camp), Bagne II (Phu Son camp), Bagne III (Phu Tho camp – Secondary
school), Bagne III Tiger Cage. Most visitors to the camps feel shivering and frightened because of the hot and stuffy
rooms and the forms of horrific and inhuman torture tools used to torture Vietnamese people.
Let’s discover the hell on earth, Con Dao prison to truly understand about the dire wars in Vietnam from the past!

Part 2
All pictures of a severe prison with byre, tiger cages, limekiln area, Ma Thien Lanh Bridge, farms, etc. appear together
with the brutality of the imperialism and colonialism when you visit Con Dao Prison. The system of Con Dao Prison
over two periods under the U.S imperialism and French colonialism consists of 127 ward, 504 “tiger cages”, and 42

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cells. There are also other prison grounds built to murder gradually prisoners and serve comprehensively all aspects
in the life of the imperialism and colonialism.
Outstanding Historical Sites Of Con Dao Prison
American Tiger Cages: The tiger cages are also call Camp 7 or the Phu Binh Camp, which were built in 1971 by
the Americans. It has an area of 25,788 square kilometers. Plus, the jail has eight zones from A to H with 384
cells. Each zone contains 48 rooms to catch the prisons one by one.
French Tiger Cages: The tiger cages were constructed by the French. They are also called the Phu Tuong
Prison Camp with the area of 5,475 square meters. It’s quite similar to a zone in which tigers are held. The
zone has 120 solitary cells divided into two rows with no roof.
Separated Cow Shed, Con Dao Island: It was constructed in 1930 by the French and had the area of 4,110
square meters split into three zones with 135 chambers. One of these three zones has 24 boxes which is a
nightmare of political prisoners because it’s where they were treated like animals and fed like pigs.

Phu Hai Prison: It is also called Prison 1 which was constructed in 1862 and restored in 1896. It is the main
and oldest prison in Con Dao. It has an area of 12,025 square meters. There are ten collective cells split into
two rows, one special cell, one rice milling cellar, one breaking stone area, and twenty stone cellars. There
are also other typical areas as dining area, club, chapel, gardens, and warehouse. In this prison, there are
wells, playground, toilets, kitchen, clinic and chapel for prisoners, but they were never allowed to use them.
All these things were constructed to cope with misleading public opinions and international monitoring
groups on human rights.

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Phu Son Prison (Prison 2): It was constructed in 1916 with the area of 13,228 square meters. There are
thirteen collective cells, one separate area with one dark room near jailers’ office and fourteen stone cellars.
There are also works of clinic, kitchen, club, and dining area.
Phu Tho Camp (Prison 3): It was built in 1928 with the area of 12,700 square meters. This prison has three
blocks of cells with one separate block (a dining area and a clinic) and two collective blocks.
Source: https://asiaopentours.net/con-dao-prison/
https://vina.com/con-dao-prison/

2. Read the first part of the text about Con Dao Prison again and answer the following questions.
1. What is Con Dao Prison’s position in Vietnam? Where is it situated? Describe the geographical features of the
surrounding area?
2. What makes Con Dao an attractive site?
3. Name some significant numbers about Con Dao Prison
3. Read the second part of the text about Con Dao Prison again and answer the following questions.
1. Name some places of historical and cultural interest in Con Dao Prison and describe them.
2. Tell your group about Con Dao. Be ready to answer some of your curious tourists’ questions!

C. Language exercises
1. Find out more about DD (short for Dresden, Germany) in the following paragraphs. Put the headings next to
each paragraph:

a) Population, b) Own product, c) Tourism, d) Area, e) Location, f)Young, g) Gastronomy, h) Environment

I. ..................... Dresden is situated in the south-eastern part of the Free State of Saxony, which borders not
only on other German regions (Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg), but also on the Czech
Republic and Poland.

II. ..................... Dresden is the fourth-largest city in Germany after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne, covering an
area of 328.31 km2 (32,831 ha).

III. ..................... At present it has about 530,000 inhabitants. Dresden has an outstanding annual increase in
population.

IV. ..................... Almost 10 million visitors annually enjoy both historical and contemporary amenities of DD.

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V. ..................... DD has about 74,000 residents who are under 18. Why is DD so good for young people? The
answer lies in its excellent education opportunities but also in entertaining ones, like going to the cinema,
theatre, concerts, relaxing at parties or doing the hobbies.

VI. ..................... DD is a green city with 62% of its area covered with trees and green spaces. It is one of the
greenest cities in Europe.

VII. ...................... DD is very near Bohemia, and has a rich culinary tradition. In the past, aristocrats enjoyed the
latest Parisian side dishes and sauces, while Neustadt citizens developed a distinctive cuisine of their own,
with crusty pastries and tart stews. Wines regionally grown along the banks of the Elbe are world famous;

VIII. ........................ DD even has its own beer, Radeberger Pilsner, which is brewed locally and can be tasted in
beer gardens along the river.

2. Look at the verbs: revive, recapture, regain, remove, restrict, . What meaning does the prefix re- give to the base
verb? Sometimes it is ‘back’, sometimes ‘again’ and sometimes it means ’push away’/’distance’. Explain the meaning
of the following verbs in the table and put them in the right column. Try and supply the nouns derived from the
verbs.

back again push away/distance verb noun

revive revival

reunite

reconstruct

recapture

reconsider

regain

reenter

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refill

recharge

reject

refund

reply

reinsert

remove

restrict

renounce

3. Use the right re- verb or its form in the sentences below.
1. We stopped at the petrol station because the driver needed to .................. the bus.
2. He’s always late coming home so I need to ................... his meal in the microwave.
3. He was severely struck by his wife’s death. I don’t think he’ll ever ......................... .
4. Have you heard? She has ............ ........ all her riches and is living in a small cottage now. How strange!
5. We decided to ............. ....... all our aims in the project. They were not appropriate any longer.
6. I’m afraid you’ll have to ..................... from smoking during the meeting.
7. Unfortunately, their proposal was ..................... by the committee due to the insufficient .
8. I’ll ....................... to your letter as soon as I get it.
9. We realised that we didn’t need the bulbs any longer so we ....................... our order by fax.
10. How thoughtlessly of me, I paid it in advance so I’ll have to claim a ....................... .
4. List some kinds of material that you know
Things and objects can be made of various sorts of material, e.g. gold, silver, enamel and gemstones, ivory, mother-
of-pearl, coconuts and ostrich eggs, or perhaps some more common material: wood, stone, brick, metal, cement,
straw, silk, cotton, calcium, plaster, water, sugar, wax etc.

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Link the objects with the material they are most likely to be made of.
Object material

bracelets cotton

rings straw

brooches gold

vases enamel

statuettes coconut

necklaces ivory

bath pads mother-of-pearl

scarves metal

bridges silk

bycicles silver

baskets gemstones

shirts stone

D. Speaking

1. Do you know any traditional products of Con Dao island? Introduce to your teacher.
2. How to get to Con Dao island?
3. What is the best time to visit Con Dao?
4. Big task: Imagine you are a guide and you want to tell visitors to Con Dao Prison about its sights, its past and its
present-day life. Search through the text or on the internet to find as much information as you need and use as many
expressions and phrases as you can in order to make your talk more interesting and more appealing. (Make a video
to complete this task, you can present the topic with a power point, a map ….)

Can-do lists after the lesson:

explaining important historical events