Essay

Name: Ngô Thị Uyên Msv: 215714023110013
Class: LT-18
Domain: Technology
Text title: How queen Elizabeth-embraced new technologies her reign
Born in 1926, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was not originally destined
for the throne. That changed in 1936, when her paternal uncle Edward VII
abdicated and her father, George VI, took his place as king. Suddenly, the
10-year-old was heiress presumptive.
Elizabeth’s royal duties didn’t deter her from a budding interest in

technology. During World War II, the princess lobbied her father to allow
her to serve her country. He finally agreed to let her volunteer in the
Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British
Army, where she became a driver and trained in auto mechanics. It was a
pioneering move: Not only was she the first member of her family ever to
serve in the military, but the sight of a woman taking apart engines and
changing tires signaled a sea change in social and gender roles that would
continue throughout the future queen’s lifetime.
In 1952, Elizabeth ascended to the throne upon her father’s death. Now a
wife and mother, Elizabeth chose to reign under her own first name. It
connected her to Elizabeth I, whose Renaissance-era reign is now considered
a golden age of technology and science.
Her own reign was modern from the very start. The new queen’s birth had
roughly coincided with the development of television, and during planning
for her coronation she broke with tradition and allowed the BBC to broadcast
the event over live TV. It was the first coronation ever televised, and it
literally created must-see TV. More than 20 million people worldwide
watched the broadcast, which is credited with catapulting TV into the
mainstream. (See rare photos of Queen Elizabeth II from National
Geographic's archives.
A legacy of support for science

The monarch also brushed shoulders with titans of science and technology.
She met Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, and
recorded a goodwill message that was left on the moon by the Apollo 11
astronauts, whom she met in 1969. She also recognized hundreds of
influential scientists, naming primatologist Jane Goodall a Dame
Commander of the British Empire and DNA pioneer James D. Watson a
Knight of the British Empire.
During her tenure, however, the British Empire came to an end as the U.K.’s
many colonies won their independence and formed a loose coalition known
as the Commonwealth of Nations. Although Elizabeth II was criticized for
profiting from colonialism and doing too little to acknowledge, or make
reparations for, its brutal legacy, her royal patronage extended to nonprofits
throughout the British Commonwealth, many focused on medical or
scientific research. (How the Commonwealth arose from a crumbling British
Empire.)
The queen was keen on technology too, launching live broadcasts of royal
addresses, permitting royal use of the internet, and being one of the first
people to ride through the Channel Tunnel, or the Chunnel, the undersea
railway linking Britain to the rest of Europe. Elizabeth delivered one of her
traditional Christmas Day messages in 3D, and even used Instagram to share
a photo of a letter computer pioneer Charles Babbage sent to her great-great-
grandfather in 1843.
In more recent years, she embraced an environmentally friendly message,

giving her blessing to an initiative that encourages forest conservation all
over the Commonwealth and even tackling plastic use on royal estates after
working with David Attenborough—the British naturalist whom
she knighted twice—on a documentary about her forests. (See Queen
Elizabeth's record-breaking reign in 15 pictures.)
The death of the U.K.’s most durable leader is the end of an Elizabethan
epoch in the United Kingdom, over which she reigned for 70 years and 127
days. But in reality, the queen’s rule spanned multiple eras, bridging old with
new and pushing the monarchy—whose continued existence has long
been hotly contested within the U.K.—into a future that would have seemed
inconceivable at the beginning of her reign.
The monarchy she represented may be 1,500 years old, but the most recent
Elizabethan era will be remembered as one of enormous technological,
social, and scientific progress.
My team is interested in technology, so we studied vocabulary related to this
field. I have collected an article related to the topic, selecting words at the B2-C1
level that I marked. After learning about the pronunciation, and meaning,
especially the origin of these words through websites, I discovered that: out of the
15 words above, there are 6 words derived from French borrowed words,
accounting for 40 %. It's a word ending in "ion" which means "reparation". In
addition, there are three words derived from Old English accounting for 20%. An
example is the word "tackling", whose root "tackle" comes from Old English,
combined with the ending "ing". Of the remaining 6 words, 2 are from Greek,
accounting for 26%. These are words that end in "um" like "titan" which comes
from "titanium" and the word "cosmonaut" which is derived from the root "cosmo"
plus the ending "naut". Finally 4 words, 26 percent. These words are of Latin
origin, the words are related to professional and technical terms, the military...
Words with three or more syllables usually fall into words of French and Latin
origin. As a result, I can conclude that borrowed words in English account for
about 65-70 percent, they usually have a formal meaning and express the meaning
of the context in the sentence.

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Name: Ngô Thị Uyên Msv: 215714023110013

Elizabeth’s royal duties didn’t deter her from a budding interest in

A legacy of support for science

In more recent years, she embraced an environmentally friendly message,

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