Dialogue. A friend of yours has got tired of his/her room and wants to renew the interior. He/She asks you to give a piece of advice.

PART 3

TEXT 1

Read the text.

Where dreams begin

The Sparkles Hotel in Blackpool, England is a family hotel with difference. What makes it stand out from all the other hotels in town, is that each room has its own individual theme. There is the Cinderella lounge, where the chairs are silver slippers and the Lost City of Atlantis dining room, especially designed to be the perfect place for you to enjoy your fish and chips. Every detail in every room of the hotel, even the bathrooms, has been carefully chosen to give it a fun and unique atmosphere.

In fact so much work has gone into making each of the sixteen rooms special, it is difficult to believe that just one year before it opened the hotel was a run-down building with a huge hole in the roof. After replacing the roof and planning a whole new interior, the owner, aptly named Mrs. Sparkle, began to totally transform the place. She says, “It was really hard work redecorating each room, making the curtains, painting the walls and restoring old furniture; but it was fun as well.” Now that the work is finished and each room has its own make believe theme, she has no doubt that it was definitely worth the effort.

Mrs. Sparkle always dreamt about living in a doll’s house and she is very happy that she has been able to turn this fantasy into a reality. “Now I just want to be able to provide a place where other people’s dreams can come true too,” she says.

There are certainly some amazing rooms to pick from. Guest can choose to stay in the Teddy Bear’s Picnic room, the Barbie room, the Ruined Castle room, the Dinosaur room, the Chocolate room or even the African den, which is designed to make you feel like you are deep in the jungle complete with toy monkeys and animal prints. All the rooms are stocked with toys and books so your children won’t get bored, even if the English weather let’s you down.

In addition to the fantastic guest rooms, Sparkles has much to offer its young visitors. Every time you book a room you can be sure that entertainment, most of which is organised by Mrs. Sparkle herself, is included in the package. To give busy parents a break in the morning, there is the games hour in the Sparkle’s den, a large play area, and in the evening, puppet shows and story-telling mean that there is never a dull moment.

Sparkles Hotel offers a fantasy world for the whole family to enjoy. So if you want to give your children a holiday to remember or even to relive your own childhood dreams, Sparkles is the place for you.

to stand out –выделяться

lounge –салон, гостиная

slippers -тапочки

aptly –удачно, метко

amazing -изумительный

to pick from –выбирать

den –берлога, логово

print –отпечаток

to let down –подводить

entertainment – развлечение

puppet –кукольный

dull – скучный

to relive – пережить снова

2. Find the English equivalents in the text:

семейный отель с отличием, собственная индивидуальная тема, гигантский, трудно поверить, идеальное место, здание в ужасном состоянии, усилия определенно того стоили, кукольный дом, претворить фантазию в реальность, мечты могут осуществляться, быть глубоко в джунглях, игрушечные обезьяны, заказать номер, включать в себя, час для игр, кукольные представления.

3. Answer the questions:

1. Where is the Sparkles Hotel?

2. What type of hotel is it?

3. Why does it stands out from all the other hotels in town?

4. How many rooms are there in the hotel?

5. What kind of rooms are there?

6. What room is especially designed to enjoy fish and chips?

7. What room makes people feel like they are deep in the jungle?

8. What has every detail in every room of the hotel been carefully chosen for?

9. How much time did it take her owner to create such an atmosphere?

10. Was it only hard work to redecorate the hotel?

11. Why is Mrs. Sparkle happy?

12. What is her dream now?

13. Who organised most part of entertainment?

14. Why are children never bored in the Sparkles Hotel?

15. Whom is for?

16. Would you like to stay at the Sparkles Hotel? In what room? Why?

4. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A-F for each paragraph:

For children of any age

A dream world for everyone

The transformation

A varied choice

No ordinary hotel

Where dreams come true

TEXT 2

Read the text.

My home is my castle

How would you like to live in a castle, a tree house or even underground? This might not be as unusual as you think. It seems that these days more and more people want to live somewhere special and out of the ordinary, and if they can’t buy what they want they are quite prepared to build it from scratch.

For John Mew and his wife Josephine, their home really is their castle. They have built their own English castle in the Sussex countryside. The building is brand new with all the luxuries you would expect from a house that cost more than $350,000 to build. However, when you first see it from the outside it would be easy to think that you are looking at an ancient monument. The building has a lot of the features of a traditional castle, including a keep, a moat and a drawbridge. “My choice of house is somewhat eccentric and building it was very hard work, but we’ve got the perfect place to live,” Mew says. Although some would say that the building is impractical and may be cold in harsh British winters, he certainly has got a unique and spacious home.

If you don’t look carefully, you might not even see the home that Jonathan and Shanon Ridd built at all! That’s because the house is a converted underground water tank. The only thing that can be seen from the surface is a door leading into the hillside. “We’ve never wanted to live in an ordinary house,” Shanon says. “Living below ground means that our home is quiet and very cosy – none of the usual draughts. It doesn’t damage the local surroundings and has very low fuel bills. Some of our friends find it dark and feel shut in when they first visit, but they soon get used to it!”

a castle -замок

underground –под землей

from scratch –с нуля

luxury -роскошь

ancient –древний, старинный

a feature -черта

a keep –главная башня

a moat -ров

a drawbridge –подъемный, разводной мост

harsh- суровый

spacious -просторный

draught -сквозняк

fuel bill –счет за отопление, электроэнергию

shut in –зд. в заточении

2. Find the English equivalents in the text:

необычный, быть вполне готовым, ожидать (предполагать), легко подумать, традиционный, выбор, суровая зима, уникальный дом, совсем, бак для воды, единственный, удобный, привыкнуть.

3. Choose the most suitable answer:

1. More and more people build their own home

a) so that they can live underground

b) so that they can have exactly the home they want

c) because it is cheaper than buying a new house

d) because they want all the modern luxuries you find in a new home

2. John and Josephine Mew

a) know that their choice of home is unusual

b) found that creating their dream home was easy

c) wanted to live like people in traditional castles

d) converted an ancient building into a modern house

3. What do Jonathan and Shanon Ridd say about their house