Describing My House - Elementary / Pre-intermediate - Useful Language
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Describing my house - Monolog(ue) to practice object descriptions in the present tenses
This podcast episode is dedicated to my Elementary students where I work (public language education, course 2010-11), for their brilliant work this year.
In this episode you will learn about how to put together a well-built monologue on a topic, and how to use place and time language items, among many other things!
This episode shows you how you can describe your house, paying attention to:
1. textual structure: introduction – body – ending, and
2. language range (riqueza): using different language items, like... prepositional phrases (on the left), prepositions, verbs "there be" and "have", verb "be", phrases like "you can find", "you can see", "too" and "also", Saxon Genitive and possessive adjectives & pronouns, colors, numbers, vocabulary for houses and relationships, and so on! Some students this year expanded their language range in this monologue by including language items that they had studied in previous learning moments, like: saying what people living in their house do (occupations), talking about their habits or routines, to include frequency adverbs or time expressions, mentioning their likes and dislikes (like + -ing forms), or including expressions like "I love it", using connectors like "so..."
0. Introduce your activity:
I’m going to speak about my house
I’m going to tell you about my house
I’m going to describe my house
1. Start with an introduction, some general ideas.
I live in a flat, with my partner and a friend from Canada. My flat is on the second floor.
2. Body: Then describe your house using the spatial approach:
When you go in, you can find a hall. On the right, there is a kitchen. Opposite the entrance door, there is a sitting room and on the left there is a corridor to the bedrooms and the bathroom.
The kitchen is small, but it’s OK for us. In the kitchen, there is a window. Its curtains are yellow. There is a cooker (UK) / a stove (US) and a washing machine. Opposite there is a fridge and a sink. In the middle, there is a white table and two white chairs. Oh, there are some cupboards, too! for pots and pans, dishes, and so on.
Next to the kitchen, there is a sitting-room and a dining-room. On the left, you can see the dining-room. There is a glass table and four black iron chairs. There is a piece of furniture with glasses and DVDs, and there are some pictures on the walls. On the right, you can find the sitting-room. It has a burgundy sofa and two green armchairs. Opposite the sofa is the TV set. I go to sleep in front of the TV after lunch! There are some plants and there is a big window. This room has a lot of light. I love it!
The first room is my office. There is no bed / There isn’t a bed. It has three bookcases and a lot of books. There is a desk and there is a personal computer on the desk. There is a printer, too. There is a CD player and a lot of music CDs. There are a lot of pictures -- family photos and photos with friends.
Next, on the left you can find P’s office. P is my partner. He is a teacher. He loves reading, so he has a lot of books. He loves playing the guitar, too – the Spanish guitar. There is also a computer.
The third room is our bedroom. There is a double bed, an in-built closet, a long mirror, and two bedside tables with small lamps. There are no pictures on the wall. It’s very simple.
Opposite this bedroom, there is a bathroom. It doesn’t have a window / It has no window and the walls are brown. I don’t like this. So I use orange towels! There is a toilet, a wash-basin, a bath tub and a mirror. It’s OK.
At the end of this corridor you can go upstairs. There is an attic. It’s very big and it has a lot of light. There are two single beds, for friends. There is a toilet, too. There is a computer and a music equipment. There are a lot of books and music CDs. Finally, there is a cupboard for the vacuum cleaner/hoover and for my painting equipment. I love painting!
3. Finish with some comment or evaluation:
Finally, my neighbors are OK. They sometimes make a lot of noise, but they also help us.
I love my house, but it isn’t mine! I’m renting it!