Exercise4.

Look at the adjectives below. Give Russian equivalents. Decide with your partner which of them you can use to describe yourself, your nearest, close and distant relatives.

Active, calm, capable, careful, charming, cheerful, clever, efficient, hard-working, helpful, intelligent, interesting, kind, lively, loyal, open-minded, nice, patient, polite, practical, punctual, serious, sincere, sympathetic, tactful, trustworthy, wise, witty, selfish, generous, creative, careless, lazy, charismatic, non talkative, tolerant.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is your short name?

2. What colour is your hair? What about your eyes? Describe your appearance.

3. What are your favorite colours?

4. How often do you buy clothes? What do you wear to theatres, cinemas, bars, parties, concerts? When do people wear formal clothes?

5. Do you think much about clothes?

6. Explain in your own words what we mean when we say that someone is an open-minded person?

7. Are you the baby in your family? Would you like to be a child again?

8. How many cousins do you have?

9. What is «family privacy»?

10. Some parents try to shield their children from unpleasant realities like illness, death, financial loss to protect them from emotional pain. Do you agree or not? Why? Why not?

11. Do you always feel you are a respected member of the family?

12. Did you love hearing «bedtime stories» when you were a child?

13. Do you really miss your family when you are away?

14. What does «generation gap» mean?

15. How do your parents show an interest in your University life/private life?

You will read & translate a text about accommodation. Then tell your partner about your flat. My flat

I live in Arkhangelsk. The district I live in is right in the centre of the town. So it’s very quick to get to from my University. It takes me 20 minutes to go on foot. I think it’s very convenient for studies. I live in a block of flats, in a flat on the seventh floor of a building. I like living high up because a lot of light comes in. And I never take a lift to the seventh floor because I develop my muscles. That is why I sometimes have muscles ache.

Actually, our flat isn’t very big. It’s about 45 square meters. It is centrally-heated. There is a living room which I share with my younger brother Boris. There is a sofa-bed, where I sleep and a bed where my brother sleeps. We also have two desks in the room. I have a computer on my desk. I usually download something from the Internet: films, music etc. We’ve got a TV, which is nice, with about 20 different channels. My brother sometimes spends half of a day in front of a television or spends a lot of time playing computer games. Then we have six blocks of shelves which are full of books on oil, geology and chemistry. I’m a student of Oil and Gas Institute and I have to read much to be a high qualified specialist.

The other room is my parents’ bedroom. There is a brown wall-to-wall carpet, so the room looks quite nice. They also have yellow curtains that match the carper. There is a bed next to the window and a wardrobe. They really like their room.

We like our kitchen. There is a table in there where we usually eat breakfast and dinner. It’s got a lot of shelves with plants, a cupboard, and a stove, a washbasin with taps for hot and cold water. The kitchen is quite high-tech. It has a microwave oven, a sandwich maker, and many domestic electric appliances to help with the cooking. Our family arranges a relaxed evening meal once a month when we share our problems. I am sure it is important to talk about our everyday life and plans with the parents.

Then we’ve got a bathroom. There is a nice setup in the room. It has black and white tiles on the floor, so it looks like a chessboard. It is really funny. It has a bath, a toilet and also a washing machine. There is a big boiler to heat up the water.

There is always a very nice family atmosphere in our flat. My mother knows how to give the place a homely atmosphere.

My grandparents live in the country, so I’ve lived there. I know the difference. I think it is really nice to go to the country for a break. But on the other hand, I do get bored if I am there for a long time.

I often think about my ideal flat or house. I would like to have a house, ideally with a garden. I’d also like to have a nice view of the river or of the sea. I like rooms with different shapes which have may be one wall which is a little bit rounded. I’d like to have the attic in my house.