Match the type of a house with its definition.
A) a very tall modern city building.
B) a small simple building with only one or two rooms.
C) a house made from blocks of hard snow or ice.
D) a structure with a round or pointed roof used as a home by some Native American tribes in the past.
E) a very large strong building, built in the past as a safe place that could be easily defended against attack.
F) a small house with one floor.
G) the official home of a person of very high rank, especially a king or queen.
H) a small house in the country.
I) a vehicle that a car can pull and in which people can live and sleep when they are on holiday.
J) a type of house that is divided into two parts, so that it has two separate homes in it
Igloo, castle, bungalow, caravan, skyscraper, duplex, palace, wigwam, hut, cottage
Go through the table and look up the words you don’t know in your dictionary.
Style: traditional, modern, apartment/flat, (semi) detached, terraced house, cottage, villa, 1/ 2/3 storey building, castle
Location: village, city, centrally located, residential area, close to the shops, in the suburbs, on the outskirts, isolated, in the country
Size: small, tiny, spacious, large, huge, average, family-sized, 1-/2- bedroomed
Cost: cheap, low-priced, overpriced, expensive, economical
General description: cosy, comfortable, secure, luxurious, well-maintained, fully furnished, airy, noisy, cold
Use the words to describe your house.
4. Practise the words and phrases that have to do with the places where people live. Read and translate the following texts. Describe a place where you lived, where you live now and where would you like to live.
a. I grew up in a red-brick terraced house in Manchester; a classic two-up, two-down, with a lounge and dining room on the ground floor and two bedrooms on the first floor. At times, there were six people in our household: my parents, my grandparents, my sister and I. Later, I moved to a tiny bedsit (now you’d say a studio) — a single room with a separate bathroom. the four-bedroom semi where I live now seems like a mansion by comparison
b. Well, I don’t live in a castle. I live in a condo. I bought my beautiful small apartment five years ago when I moved to San Francisco. There are six apartments altogether, in the condominium, a fairly modern building in a quiet side street, and all of us owners get along really well. It’s a shame you can’t say the same about our cats
c. I’m an architect, and I specialize in planning low-energy houses. My current project is a modern three-storey family home in a residential neighbourhood. It’s made entirely of wood and glass. There are solar panels on the roof, and the windows face south and have triple glazing. People already built well-insulated houses hundreds of years ago. My own home is a 200-year-old cottage with a straw thatched roof, so it’s cool in summer and warm in winter.
5. Complete the sentences with words from the opposite page.
a) A ____________________ is an area covered by a roof at the entrance to a house.
b) Your home and all the people who live in it are your ____________________.
c) In the US, a condo or ____________________is an apartment or a building containing apartments owned by the people who live in it.
d) Some windows have ____________________that you can close to keep the light out.
e) A house that is protected against heat and cold is ____________________.
f) Windows that have ____________________have three layers of glass.
g) A ____________________ is a vertical window that projects from a pitched roof. h) In a ____________________ area, there are lots of houses and not many offices or shop
The floor of a building at ground level is called the “ground floor” in the UK and the “first floor” in the US. Complete the table with some more British- and American-English terms.
British English American English
| a) a set of rooms for living in b) a house with only one level c) a house joined to another house by a shared wall on one side d) a house in a row of houses that are all joined together |
flat, bungalow, duplex, row house, apartment, semidetached house, ranch house, terraced house
Number the phrases to order these types of housing from the largest (1) to the smallest (5).
a) a bedsit in a tower block
b) a five-storey town house
c) a three-bedroom semi
d) a one-bedroom thatched cottage
e) a two-up, two-down terraced house
Look up the word house in a dictionary and find out...
• the pronunciation of the verb to house;
• the meaning of the adjectives housebound, houseproud and house-trained;
• the difference between a householder and a housekeeper. Try to make example sentences using these words.
UNIT II. MY HOME IS MY CASTLE