Reading A House

Reading house
Submitted by TE Editor on 18 November, 2011 - 08:51
Theme: Buildings and lifestyles, personal taste.
Lexical area: Buildings, features of buildings and decoration
Cross curricular links: History, Geography, Art.

Instructions for language assistants in italics

Classroom materials

Introduction
A good selection of pictures of houses from the UK would greatly enhancethis lesson. Interiors of houses might also be useful for the discussions and activities relating to taste.

Sources for pictures are estate agent’s websites which have photos of interiors and exteriors with a description of rooms. House magazines or the property supplement of a Sunday broadsheet could provide visuals and adverts Try to get a picture of some loft/warehouse developments to supportthe reading text.

1. Describing houses
You can introduce this topic in a variety of ways
* Focus on the title ’Reading houses’ How could you ‘read’ a house? What might this mean?
* Bring a selection of pictures of houses in the UK and ask students to describe them and say which ones they like
* If you have higher levels you can discuss the cross cultural aspect in more detail. Housetypes can depend on climate.

With all levels run through each feature round the class after the students have discussed in pairs. Bring in personal contributions which will help students talk about their own homes in the following exercise: Do you think shutters are important? Why do you have shutters? Do you prefer sleeping in total darkness or with a bit of light. Most houses haven’t gotshutters in the UK but people like curtains or blinds at windows. Do you have curtains in your home? Have you got a garden? Do you ever eat outside? How often?

Task 1 Describing houses
People live in lots of different places. Sometimes the type of house tells us about the people who live there and sometimes it doesn’t. Different countries have different types of houses.
* Which of thesefeatures do you think are an essential part of a home? Which are not essential?
a garden | more than one bathroom | a dining room |
a balcony | a kitchen | lots of space |
a swimming | a fireplace | shutters |
a garage | central heating | a beautiful view |
a patio / terrace | carpeted floors | a basement / family room |
* Can you match these words describing types of houseto their definition?
apartment | flat | penthouse |
bungalow | loft apartment | detached |
castle | semi-detached | studio |
cottage | palace | terraced |
* a small house in the country (cottage)
* a house with no stairs, on one level. (bungalow)
* a house which is part of a bigger building (Am. English apartment)
* a house which is part of a bigger building(Brit .English flat)
* a house which is not joined to another house (detached)
* a house which is joined to another house on one side (semi detached)
* a house which is joined to other houses on two sides/ a house which is part of a line of houses (terraced)
* a house which was built to keep the inhabitants safe (castle)
* a house which was built for rich or grand people (palace)* a house which is on the top of a tall building (penthouse)
* a house which was an industrial building (loft apartment)
* a small one-roomed flat (studio)

2. Describe your home
Get your students to work in pairs and describe their own homes. Prepare lower levels carefully. Use your own home in the UK and any pictures if you have some. Elicit questions: bedrooms
* Pre teachnecessary vocabulary for low levels and leave prompts to help them on the board: old, modern, rural, in a town, in the countryside.
* Students could also do a describe and draw activity. Put students in pairs. They must ask for enough information to draw a plan of their partner’s house. They should only look at each other’s drawings at the end For lower levels this task would need guidance and...