Pre-reading

1. Before you read, get the general idea by looking at the title and subheadings. You can also read the first paragraph. This is called previewing a text.

2. Always try to connect the things you already know with the things you are reading.

& Reading

Do you know much about this topic? Read to see if you learn anything new. Put a check (4) in the margin next to the things you already know and a cross mark (8) next to the information that is new.

Inside Homes Around the World

Walk inside a home in a new country, and it can look and feel so different! One big difference is the organisation of the inside, or interior space. For example, rooms in a house are usually separated by walls, but not always, and in the same ways.

The use of walls and doors

In many parts of the Arab world, people like to have homes with very large spaces, and they avoidpartitions. Anthropologist Edward Hall explains that Arabs like to be together, so they don’t look for privacy in separate spaces in the home.

Hall claims that Germans, on the other hand, like privacy. They have thick walls and heavy doors in their homes. And these doors are often closed. But in the USA, doors in the house (and at the office, too) usually stay open. When a door is closed, it is probably for a private conversation, or for study, resting, sleeping, dressing, or sex. Some modern homes in the USA and other places have no walls at all. This arrangement is an ‘open floor plan’.

A special kind of wall

The walls in traditional Japanese and Korean homes areunique. They are semi-fixed walls, or partitions. These are made of light wooden frames covered with special paper. The partitions are movable, so that rooms can be used for different purposes, such as sleeping, talking, or studying.

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