Reading house | Teaching English | British Council

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 enhance this 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 support the 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. House types 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 got shutters 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 these features 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 house to 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 teach necessary 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 review of key prepositions like next to/in front of/on the left/right.
The describe and draw can also be done with a whole class working with you. Give a basic floor plan of your flat/home. Describe it as a dictation or invite questions like: Where’s your bedroom? Is there a dining room?

Task 2. Describe your home
Ask and answer questions about your home.

Number of rooms?
Type of house?
Features?
Location?

3. Read and find out
Read out the first questions and then give out the text for students to read. Once you have given them time to read check their answers. Then get them to work in pairs to work through the true false statements.

Task 3 Read and find out
Read the text and answer these questions

What type of house is being described? (Loft conversions in warehouses and factories)
What are the key features of this type of house? (Space and a good view)
Where can you find these homes? (In the centre of Britain’s largest cities, on the river or canal. You can explain about Docklands in London, the Quayside in Newcastle)

Reading houses

Look at a house from the outside, and you can guess what type of people live in it. Well, perhaps this is not always true. Some people can live in unusual houses. Some people live on boats, in tree houses or in tents.

For example, imagine you are in an old part of an industrial city in the UK. Cities like London, Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle. There is a river, or a canal, which was important for transport in the past, before the railways were built. There are a lot of enormous buildings near the water. They were built in the 19th century. They must be industrial places to store things for import or export.

But…look more closely! There are expensive cars parked outside some of these buildings. And on the corner of the street there is a French restaurant, with a wine bar opposite. And just round the corner there is a shop with beautiful furniture. And here are more shops…Who buys these things?

Answer: the people who now live in these old buildings. Old warehouses like these offer two things that are difficult to find in modern houses: space, and a view.

Over the past 10 years, more and more architects have converted buildings like this into apartments, which have big rooms, high ceilings… and often a terrace which looks onto the water.

So, the old parts of many of Britain’s industrial cities now have a new life. They are not dead anymore, with empty warehouses and disused factories. You can buy factory space and make yourself a home in it. And the people who live in them can walk or cycle to work.

Or…with so much space. They work from home with a computer and a modem! Buildings don’t always tell us about lifestyles immediately. So, next time you see an old station, a deserted church or a village school in Britain, look carefully for the clues. You may get a surprise. Is this true in your town too?

Are these sentences true or false?

These buildings were built recently. (False)
They are very spacious. (True)
Britain’s city centres do not have people living in them. (False)
Some people in Britain live and work in the same place. (True)
Some people in Britain live in churches. (True)

4. Houses in your country
The amount of language generated here depends on the language level. Lower level groups can write four sentences in pairs and then compare with the whole class. Do a couple of examples on the board with the whole class before they start: The historic centres of cities in my country are very important. Many buildings are restored and people want to live in flats in the old centres .

Higher levels might use these pointers for discussion or could be put in small groups or pairs to develop a written paragraph or an oral presentation on the topic.

Task 4 Houses in your country
Describe the types of housing available in your country/area.

What are the main features?
Do people live in the centre of cities or towns?
Are there any unusual houses?
Historic houses?
Have the types of houses changed in the last 50 years?

5. Your ideal home
You could use some pictures of unusual homes or very different interiors to warm up this exercise. Ask students for their reactions: What do you think of this room? Do you like modern furniture like this? Would you live on a boat? Why not?

If students are intermediate level and up you could give them a selection of pictures to discuss in small groups before they tell each other about their ideal home. If you find students are enthusiastic about this task it could be followed up with a written description.

If a class know each other well you can even play this as a guessing game. Each student secretly writes a short 2 -3 sentence description of their ideal home. Read them all out to the group: Whose ideal home is this?

Task 5 Your ideal home
Describe your ideal place to live.

Would you rather live alone or with lots of people?
In a town or a rural area?
In a flat, a house or something more unusual like a boat?
Do you like old buildings or modern ones?
Is there anyone in the class with the same taste as you?

6. Changing rooms: your taste
If you can get a picture sequence showing a room decorated in different ways (see House magazines) it will help explain the concept.

Task 6 Changing rooms: your taste
In the UK there are a lot of very popular TV programmes about houses. One programme, called ‘Changing rooms’ is very popular. One family or couple take a room in another family’s house and they change the look of the room. Sometimes they change it completely, changing the furniture and the style. Sometimes the people who live there are very happy with the new room, sometimes it does not suit their taste and they don’t like the changes at all.

Sometimes you can guess a person’s taste, their interests and even their job from looking at a photo of their living room.

What type of taste have you got?
What other types of things can show a person’s taste?
Describe 4 or 5 things in your bedroom which can help explain your taste:

7. Discussion: Flying the nest
Depending on the age and interest of your students, this task could lead to discussions about going away from home to study, life on a campus or in a hall of residence/flat share, parental control, economic independence. It can be helpful to ask at which age your students feel they are considered an adult in their country? This does not mean the legal age of consent / voting but the perceived age of ‘maturity’. This can influence how many people live apart from their parents.

Use your own experience in this discussion but be careful to make it clear that this is not necessarily true for all British students. More and more students and young people in the UK are choosing to stay at home into their 20s for economic reasons.
Note that in some cultures it is unusual to move away from your family to study or to seek out an independent life. Refer to popular programmes like ‘Friends’ if they are shown in your host country.

Task 7 Discussion: Flying the nest
Discuss these questions with your partner

At what age do people usually leave home in your country?
What are the main reasons?

Do young people share flats or houses?
Do you think this is a good idea?

What might be the advantages of leaving home at 18 to share a flat with friends?
What are the possible disadvantages?

Internet links

Look in the design section for a good selection of interiors and room styles. Links to ‘changing rooms’ and lots of photos.
www.bbc.co.uk/homes

The Royal Institute of British architects.
www.architecture.com

Loft developments and background to regeneration of urban spaces.
www.urbanspaces.co.uk

Excellent images
www.locations-uk.com

By Clare Lavery

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