Listening comprehension

Read the article about Oxbridge on pages 27-30 of English Now No 99. Then watch this video about two people, a man from Oxford University and a woman from Cambridge University, each supporting their university. Try to understand what they’re saying and fill in the blanks in the transcript below.

Man, pro-Oxford: Britain and Ireland have some of the world’s greatest centres of , over 50 universities in fact, but I propose the motion that Oxford is Britain’s best .
Woman, pro-Cambridge: I oppose the motion on the grounds that Cambridge is quite clearly Britain’s best university. The Cambridge University Press is the oldest printer and in the world and the academic press.
Man, pro-Oxford: Founded in the 11th century, Oxford was the first university of Britain.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: And then, they built a !
Man, pro-Oxford: Oxford has 11 and over 11 million volumes housed on a hundred and 20 miles of shelving, which is why our English is the dictionary the world uses. We have the world’s oldest university and 47 Nobel Prize winners have studied or taught at Oxford.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: We have won 61 Nobel Prizes, a world record, and we have 15 British , including Robert Walpole, Britain’s first ever PM.
Man, pro-Oxford: You may have had but we’ve taught more; 26 British prime ministers have been to Oxford Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: Is that a boast or an ?
Man, pro-Oxford: Also, the Evelyn Waugh, Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, J R R Tolkien and Graham Greene all studied here.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: We’ve had EM Forster, Samuel Pepys, Nabokov, and J G Ballard, Iris Murdoch, A A Milne, Douglas Adams and Michael Crichton.
Man, pro-Oxford: The John Locke and Thomas Hobbes have spent time at Oxford, as have pioneers such as Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: Well, some of the world’s most important scientific were made at Cambridge, including the electron and the splitting of the atom, the cause of motion, and Darwin wrote his theory of .
Man, pro-Oxford: We educated Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the .
Woman, pro-Cambridge: We invented the world’s first computers and the .
Man, pro-Oxford: Well, we taught the actors Hugh Grant, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Burton and Rowan Atkinson and Monty Python’s Michael Palin and Terry Jones.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: Yeah well, we taught three Pythons: John Cleese, Eric Idle and Graham Chapman. Other people who’ve performed with the Cambridge Footlights include Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson and Sacha Baron. And, we won more .
Man, pro-Oxford: I propose that the motion is tied.
Woman, pro-Cambridge: Agreed.

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