Ex.15. Read the text and describe the favorite room in your flat.

My favorite room is our kitchen. Perhaps the kitchen is the most important room in many houses, but it is particularly so in our house because it's not only where we cook and eat but it's also the main meeting place for family and friends. I have so many memories of times spent there: special occasions such as home­comings or cooking Christmas dinner; troubled times, which lead to comforting cups of tea in the middle of the night; ordinary daily events such as making breakfast on dark, cold winter mornings for cross, sleepy children before sending them off to school, then sitting down to read the newspaper with a steaming hot mug of coffee.

Whenever we have a party, people graviate with their drinks to the kitchen. It is always the fullest and noisiest room in the house. So what does this special room look like? It's quite big, but not huge. It's big enough to have a good-sized rectangular table in the center, which is the focal point of the room. There is a large window above the sink, which looks out onto two apple trees in the garden. The cooker is at one end, and above it is a wooden pulley, which is old-fashioned but very useful for drying clothes in wet weather. At the other end is a wall with a large notice-board, which tells the story of our lives, past, present, and future, in words and pictures: a school photo of Megan and Kate, a postcard from Auntie Nancy in Australia, the menu from a take away Chinese restaurant, a wedding invitation for next Saturday. All our world is there for everyone to read!

The front door is seldom used in our house, only by strangers. All our friends use the back door, which means they come straight into the kitchen and then we all sit round the table, drinking tea and putting the world to rights! Without doubt some of the happiest times of my life have been spent in our kitchen.

Ex.16. Scan the texts for some particular information about the most traditional types of housing in Great Britain and in the United States.

HOUSING IN BRITAIN

In Great Britain, families prefer to live in houses rather than flats. Over 70% of people live in houses and only about 20% live in flats. About 35% of people own the houses they live in, or buy them with money borrowed from a bank or building society.

There are different types of housing in Britain.

Terraced houses are attached to each other in a long row. They are usually found in towns and cities and many were built in the 19th or early 20th century as houses for workmen. Today, Victorian terraced houses are very popular city homes. In earlier times, terraced houses were also called town houses. These have three or four stories and very large rooms, and town houses are now very expensive and fashionable.

In the 1930's a large number of semis were built. They share a central wall. Typically, a semi has a small garden in front of it and a fence divides a larger garden at the back. Semis are still built where land is expensive.

A semi-detached house is a kind of house which is joined to another house on one side only (by one wall).

A detached house has land round it. More and more modern homes are detached, although in areas where building land is expensive, the houses may be very close to each other.

Country cottages are often old stone buildings which were part of a farm. Some country cottages are very old and they may have a thatched roof. Today many people who work in the cities buy cottages so that they have a place to go for the weekend.

A bungalow is a house where all the rooms are on the ground floor. As there are no stairs, many older people dream of going to live in a bungalow when they retire.

A block of flats. In the 1950s and 1960s local councils cleared a lot of slums in the inner city areas and knocked down terraced houses in very poor areas. Block of flats or tower blocks can vary from 3-5 storeys high up to 10-20 storeys high. Each storey contains 5 or 6 flats for families. But people don't like to live in them because there are many social problems.

The country mansion. Very few of the British live in country mansions. Today many mansions are used as restaurants, hotels, old people's homes, etc.

Many British people are lucky enough to live in their own homes, and the great majority of these have a small garden. However, housing is a problem in many cities. Many young people have to live in, or share, small one-room flats called bedsitters, and the homeless are still a problem.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1511