Home and Household, Housing and Living

Maturita topic 6, general part, at Cambridge B2 First level. The specific part of this topic is The Czech Republic (geography) and Places of Interest in the Czech Republic.

What to talk about

• your home – type of house or flat, rooms, your own room
• living in a town vs. in the country
• types of housing in the Czech Republic and in Britain
• buying vs. renting, the cost of housing, moving out from parents
• your dream home; smart homes

Model answer

I live with my family in a three-bedroom flat on the fourth floor of a block of flats on the outskirts of… It isn’t very big, but it’s comfortable and cosy. There’s a living room with a balcony, a kitchen, a bathroom, a separate toilet, my parents’ bedroom and two small rooms – one for me and one for my sister. My room is my private space: I’ve got a bed, a desk with my computer, a wardrobe and shelves full of books and games. I’d like to redecorate it soon, because the walls are still the colour I chose when I was ten.

The advantage of our flat is its location – there’s a supermarket, a park and a bus stop just round the corner, and I can get to the city centre in fifteen minutes. On the other hand, the walls are quite thin, so we can sometimes hear our neighbours, and there’s no garden.

In the Czech Republic many people in towns live in flats, often in prefab blocks built during the communist era, while in villages people live in detached houses with gardens. In Britain the most typical home is a terraced or semi-detached house with a small garden, and most British people prefer houses to flats. Another difference is that in Britain people often move house several times in their lives, while Czechs tend to stay in one place.

The biggest problem today is that housing has become very expensive. Young people can’t afford to buy a flat without a mortgage, which they then pay off for thirty years, and even renting is expensive in big cities. That’s why many young Czechs live with their parents until their late twenties, which is much later than in Britain or Scandinavia. I’d like to move out when I start working, probably into a shared flat with friends at first.

My dream home would be a modern house near a forest, not far from a city, with a big garden, a home office and lots of light. As an IT student I’d also like it to be a smart home, where I could control the heating, lights and security with my phone – and of course it would have solar panels to save energy.

Vocabulary

Grammar worth showing

• there is / there are and prepositions of place: There’s a desk next to the window, opposite the bed.
• second conditional for your dream home: If I had enough money, I would build a house by a lake.
• comparatives: Renting is more flexible than buying, but in the long run it’s not as cheap.

Useful phrases

• What I like most about my home is…
• The main drawback is that…
• Compared with Britain, Czech people tend to…
• In the long run, …
• My dream home would be…

Speaking practice

Part 1 – about you

Part 3 / 4 – discussion