Students Book

For your portfolio
Write
a Read through the composition quickly.
What is the writer’s favourite place?
b Read the composition again.
1 What aspects of the room does the
author focus on? What do these things
tell us about the author?
2 The author asks two questions. What is
the effect of these questions?
c To make your descriptive writing more
interesting, make notes about the object
you want to describe. Then experiment
with different ways of combining
this information until you reach the
sentence you are most happy with.
Read the notes and combine the ideas
to make sentences. Look back at the
text and compare your sentences.
tiny beach in Cornwall / family
vacations / summer holidays –
went on for ever
grandparents’ cottage in the country /
garden with lots of flowers / birds
singing all the time
posters on wall / mostly pop stars /
change them every few months
d Choose three objects. Use this
technique to write a couple of
sentences about each one.
e Write about your favourite place in
the whole world. Describe it and say
why it is special to you.
My favourite place
There are many places that are special for me:
a tiny beach in Cornwall where we used to spend
family vacations during the endless summer
holidays; my grandparents’ country cottage with
its garden full of wild flowers and birdsong; a
photo in my geography textbook of a mountain
scene in Switzerland, which I’ve only ever visited
in my daydreams. All of these places have been
special to me in their own way at various times
in my life, but there is one place that has always
been there for me, a place that I visit every day –
my bedroom.
On the surface, my bedroom is pretty much like
any other bedroom. It’s got a door, a window and,
of course, a bed. It’s an unusual colour, though:
bright red, like the red of a big, juicy tomato.
I had a huge argument with my parents about the
colour. They wanted me to paint it green because
it would be good for my concentration.
I told them red would be good for my imagination.
I won and they even let me paint it myself. That
was fun. Of course, another reason I love my
bedroom is because it’s where I keep all my
things. I generally like to keep them all over the
floor and under the bed – something else my
parents and I occasionally disagree over.
What else can I tell you about my room? There
are posters on the wall, usually of pop stars, that
tend to get changed every few months. There’s
a small desk and a chair beneath a window that
overlooks the street below. Looking out of the
window, I can spend hours watching the world go
by while I pretend I’m working. And that’s really
all there is to say about it. So why do I like it so
much? Well, because it’s mine. It’s a place I can
escape to whenever I want. A place where I can
be alone with my thoughts or share a joke with
friends while we listen to music. It’s the place
where I do most of my thinking and have most of
my ideas.
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UNIT 12