23 March 2023
Imagine a teacher says the following to you during an English speaking test:
Tell me about where you live. Can you describe your living space?
Today's report will explore ways to answer such a question. We will talk about nouns, verbs, and prepositions that can help us give a detailed, clear answer – and earn a good score on the test!
Let's start with some important terms and ideas.
Nouns
In an earlier Everyday Grammar report, we explored how you can talk about where you live in general terms. We learned about how to talk about a neighborhood or a part of a city.
In today's report, we will explore how to talk about the exact place where you live.
When we talk about where we live, a number of nouns, verbs, and prepositions become important.
The nouns are limited in number. There are three important nouns we often use to talk about living spaces: house, apartment, and room. We will explore more about these nouns later.
Verbs
In terms of verbs, we often describe living places in two ways.
We use verbs to show how we pay for the living space. Important verbs related to finances include own, rent, or share.
So, we might say, "They own their house," or "she rents her apartment," or "we share an apartment."
We also use verbs to describe the contents or objects of the living space. Important verbs related to objects or contents include have.
So, for example, a person might say, "The apartment has three rooms."
We can also talk about the exact objects in a room with have. For example, a person could say, "The bedroom has a bed, a fan, and a desk," or "The bathroom has a shower, a sink, and a toilet."
Prepositions
Finally, we arrive at prepositions. These are short words that place nouns in space.
When we talk about living spaces, the preposition "in" is probably the most important.
We say, "I live in a house," or "I live in an apartment," for example. When we talk about objects or locations, we often say, "...in the kitchen..." or "...in the bathroom..." or "...in the bedroom..."
So, a person might say, "The stove is in the kitchen," or "A sink is in the bathroom."
Putting it all together
So, we have three important ingredients for talking about our living spaces – nouns, verbs, and prepositions. How do we put all of them together?
Let's start with something we heard at the beginning of our report:
Tell me about where you live.
You could respond to this by saying, for example:
I live in a house.
Or
I live in an apartment.
Or
I rent a room in a house.
Or
I share an apartment.
Or you might say:
I own a house.
Expand
Now consider how might you answer the following:
Tell me about where you live. Can you describe your living space?
You might say:
I live in an apartment. The apartment has four rooms: two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room. I share a room with my sister.
Or you might say:
I rent a room in a house. The room has a bed, a desk, a closet, and a bookshelf.
Closing thoughts
Today, we explored some ways to describe a living space. There are, of course, many other ways to do so. You might use other nouns, verbs, or prepositions. But as a starting point, the small set of nouns, verbs, and prepositions we talked about today can be very useful.
Let's end this report with a homework assignment. Write to us about a living space. It can be either real or imaginary. Try to use some of the terms that we explored today – but be sure to use some new ones too!
You can send your work to learningenglish@voanews.com .
I'm John Russell.
*house itself is very general and can refer to anything from a very small, simple structure to something that is very large.
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Words in This Story
shower – n. a device that produces a spray of water for you to stand under and wash your body
sink – n. a wide bowl that has a faucet for water and a drain at the bottom and is usually positioned in a counter or on a pedestal
toilet – n. a large bowl attached to a pipe that is used for getting rid of bodily waste and then flushed with water