Before Reading
1 Do you live in a house or an apartment?
2 Take a look at the pictures, the title, the subtitle and the source of the following text. Then, match the columns below.
a. The pictures show
☐ marvellous houses across the world.
b. The first picture shows
☐ the inside of a building in China.
c. The second picture shows
☐ families outside their homes.
d. The text is from a book that shows
☐ a traditional type of Chinese residence.
3 Mark the words you expect to find in the text below. Use the Glossary, if necessary.
☐ house ☐ building ☐ America ☐ wall ☐ floor
☐ bedroom ☐ kitchen ☐ home ☐ beach ☐ igloo
Reading
Now read the text below to check your predictions.
China
Living Together in a Circle
Deep in the mountains, there is a round building called a tulou. It is surrounded by a thick dirt wall. It is in the Fujian province of China. There are about three hundred people living in this tulou. It is very lively inside. Looking up, you can see a round circle of sky.
the tulou has four floors. There are four communal staircases, and more than 200 rooms of about the same size. On the first floor, there are kitchens all in a row. The second floor has warehouses, where the harvest and the farm tools are kept. The long hall is where the children play. The third and fourth floors have bedrooms that are also used for study. Parents and children share one room.
Adapted from: KOMATSU, Yoshio. Wonderful Houses Around the World. California: Shelter Publications, 2004, p. 6, 8.
