Buildings and rooms

Games

[1] Cover the right-hand column.

I have a room in a small semi-detached house. Two of my friends live in mansions. What sort of accommodation do (did) these people have, or what might they be living in at the moment?

Cover the right-hand column again.

I spend a lot of time in my bed-sitting room (bedsitter). In which room might it be a good idea to look for these people?

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Practice

Note the areas, rooms and sections in the buildings shown below. Answer the following questions.

1 Which buildings are they?

2What happens in the various parts of them?

3Where would you expect to find the people listed below?

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Two of the buildings on the previous page were, of course, shops. Shopping habits, like everything else, have changed a lot in the past twenty years. It was not long ago that names like Hypermarket, Department Store, Boutique, Cash and Carry, Discount Store, Do-It-Yourself Supplies, Takeaway Food had little or no place in our high streets.

My grandfather still refuses to shop in any of these places. Cover the right-hand column and say where you think he would go to buy the following things.

[3J Write or act out what you would say while showing the people mentioned around the buildings below.

1new students around a boarding school

2new guests around a hotel

3new employees around a factory

4new prisoners around a prison

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Furniture and household

Reading

Over the next day or two, read through this rather strange application form, noting how the couple describe the house in question and its furniture. As you read, answer the question below.

Ifthe couple decided to sell the house next month, which ofthese features could they say that it had?

Application Form XYB / 43Z Sect. 51

To Join The Yuppies' (Young Upwardly-Mobile) Neighbourhood Scheme Remarks:

(Please state briefly below any qualifications and/or experience you have to support your application.)

When my wife and I moved into our present house, it was little better than a slum, completely unfurnished apart from a few bits алеї pieces which the former occupant had either forgotten to or - more likely - decided not to take with her. (These included an enormous sideboard that weighed a ton, a chest of drawers with its only remaining door hanging off, an ugly bookcase with all its panes of glass cracked, and abrokennineteenth-centurypianostool.)

The floors then werejust bare boards with one or two mats and strips of lino. We now

have fitted carpets in every room except the bathroom (where we have special long-lasting tiles at over £20 per square foot,) and the kitchen (polished parquet

floor), plus several sheepskin rugs in the reception rooms. On arrival, we found most of the interior decorated with faded, flowery-patterned wallpaper, peeling at the picture rail. We have painted throughout in magnolia (windows and sills wine-red or stripped pine) except in the lounge, where we have had hessian hung. A few tasteful reproductions and a number of old German prints (all expensively framed ) are on the walls, along with some carefully selected posters in the children's rooms.

Numerous structural alterations have been carried out, notably the conversion of the old garden shed into a second bathroom, complete with bath, basin, bidet and

W.C. (lambswool-covered lavatory seat and press-button flush) and the extension of the conservatory to make a sun lounge - with window seats all around it — leading on to the newly-laid patio. The roof, meanwhile, has been completely renovated, slates giving way to tiles, double glazing has been fitted on all windows, and the old fireplaces have been blocked up, except in the lounge which has retained its grate and mantlepiece for the old-world image it creates. In terms of heating, we have graduated from electric fires to gas fires, convector heaters, storage heaters and recently to full gas-fired central heating with extra-large boiler and double radiators, each with its own thermostatic control.

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We have also made dramatic improvements in the kitchen. The old installations were ripped out last year and in their place came: a new sink unit with mixer tap and double drainer, a line of smart cupboards all along one wall and two rows of shelves along the other, a split-level cooker, eye-level grill, double oven - you name it, I think we've got it. Upstairs, the old iron double bed we inherited has been replaced by elegant twin beds with interior-sprung mattresses and continental quilts (duvets), of course. Our children, Alexandra and Charles, have recently moved out of their bunk beds and into single beds in separate rooms; these have been specially equipped with a desk, blackboard and easel, and toy chest. All bedrooms have built-in wardrobes now and my wife has her own personal dressing table.

Our more expensive purchases, apart from the above, include:

a leather upholstered lounge suite comprising a four-seater sofa - or should we say settee? - and two armchairs. (We remember with horror the year we had to make do with a studio couch plus a few pouffes and cushions.)

a solid wood table and set of matching dining room chairs, plus a microwave oven. a new shower unit in the master bathroom, plumbed in of course, so that no unsightly pipes are visible.

new stereo equipment, colour TV, a video recorder, home computer and cocktail cabinet.

It may interest you to know, finally, that we have made a formal complaint about the ghastly tallboy and divan that our neighbours have had standing in their back garden for nearly six months. (Our garden, incidentally, has been recently landscaped and completely transformed: gone is the vegetable patch; in its place a neat lawn and flower-beds.) All our (new) friends say we have done a wonderful job on our property. One or two have invited us to join the amateur dramatic society and they are even giving us the names of private schools in the area.

I hope you will consider our application favourably.

Signature:

Date:

Practice 1

Write or discuss the answers to these questions.

1What do you like and what don't you like about the place where you live?

2What things would you like to have done to improve your room, flat or house?

Describe, in as much detail as possible, the most beautiful bedroom you can imagine.

Describe the poorest-looking house you remember being in.

Write or act out the conversation in a furniture shop between you and the sales assistant, as you try to decide what to buy for your new flat.

Write instructions to leave with the removal men who are helping you to move house. Tell them where everything is at the moment and where you would like it in your new home. Warn them about any particularly important or fragile articles.

Write the opening of the speech that you make as a tourist guide showing groups of visitors around the state room(s) of a palace, castle or large country house near your home.

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Furniture and household

Write the opening paragraph of your latest short story, in which you describe your feelings as you revisit the house in which you grew up, now much changed.

Game 1

Cover the right-hand column. On the left are listed the uses of some rectangular pieces of material that no household should be without. Guess what they are and then check your answers in the right-hand column.

Practice 2

Think for a moment about how important some of our household gadgets and devices are to us.

1Ifyou had to live without two ofthe following, which ones would you choose to leave behind?

Game 2

Look carefully at the pictures on the next page. In them there are tools, appliances, items of crockery and cutlery. Under each of them are four names. Only one of them labels the picture correctly. Decide which it is.

Then make sure you know the other words given in each group as well. Draw each of them and then try to give the English word for each drawing without looking at the book. Alternatively, write a sentence to show the meaning of each word.

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Furniture and household

Answer the questions. Then make sure that you know the meaning ofall the words that are not the correct answer.

1 Which of these four instruments wouldn't be of much use to a carpenter? a vice a stethoscope a set square a saw

2 Which of these tools wouldn't interest a metal worker? a tuning fork a file a wrench a lathe

3 Here are four instruments we can look through:

a telescope binoculars opera glasses a microscope.

Which would you use:

ato see more clearly what that ballerina looks like?

bto study the markings on the leopard over there? с to have a good look at Venus this evening?

d to examine a drop ofyour blood?

Leaving aside mysterious inventions like lie-detectors, the test tubes and bunsen burners ofthe chemistry laboratory, the surgeon's scalpel, the dentist's drill and the fireman's hose, here is one more picture. What is this? Is it:

Study and practice

Here are some more instruments and gadgets that measure things for us. Cover the right-hand column, and see ifyou can give their names. Then check your

answers.

What is it that tells you:

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Furniture and household

[2] Finally, in this section, let's think about containers and holders. It's amazing how many there are in and around a house. On the left below you will see a list of them. On the right are examples of their different types. Some of them combine into one word, others remain as two words. Cover the words on the right and try to think of as many as you can for each container. Then check your answers.

Remember that we might put:

flowers in a vase. candles in a candlestick. water in a bucket.

money in a purse, wallet, safe or piggybank.

Practice 3

Write or give a partner detailed advice on each of the following situations.

1 His/Her garden looks a complete mess.

2Не/She has no idea what to take with him/her on his/her camping holiday.

3None of his/her doors close properly because of the carpets.

4Не/She has always kept all his/her crockery, cutlery and kitchen utensils in one big cupboard. Не/She has just bought some new kitchen units and has no idea where to put things so that they are easy to find.

Explain which odd jobs around the house you enjoy and which you hate. Give your reasons.

Describe how housework and people's attitudes to it have changed over the past thirty or forty years.

What bits and pieces are elderly peoples' houses full of in your country? Describe in some detail the objects in their sitting room, the spare room, the loft, the garden shed etc.

Write a letter of complaint to the shop where you bought a set of tools recently, almost none ofwhich work properly.

Write, in dialogue form, a conversation in a furniture shop between an inquisitive customer and a knowledgeable assistant.

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[7]Write the list of wedding presents you want to circulate in advance to your guests. (This 'ordering" of gifts is customary in Britain. It avoids your being given six toasters and a hundred and ninety-two wine glasses.)

•Add any other words about furniture and household appliances as you meet them.

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