Letter 8 a: My hometown and my region

 

General In this letter you are going to tell your partner about your own country. Some people have strange ideas about other countries, especially when they do not know them very well. They say, for instance, that the Dutch eat cheese every day and the English always wear bowler hats and fight at football matches. Of course, this is not true. We call these "views" stereotypes. Content Try to introduce to your partner your town (your village) and your region and by doing so use your knowledge. Tell her/him about the sights, what life is like here and so on. Don’t forget to write also the additional information

Build your letter

Here are some sentences to help you:

As you know, I live in …, a town/a village in …
(Name of the town) has got approximately … inhabitants and is situated … metres above the sea level in a/an ... area.
I like /I don’t like living in ..., because ....
I like it much/not much ...
I would like ....
I would never like ..., because …
I know …/ I don’t know …

Here are some questions, which can help you complete your sentences or going on with your letter.

1. What is the name of your town/village?

2. In which region is it situated?

3. Do you like living in your town/your village/your region? Why?

4.  What do you think is beautiful/not so beautiful?

5. How could you improve the negative aspects?

6. What is there important, beautiful and interesting to see?

7. What does your town/village offer? What can you do here?

8. Which public facilities are here?

9. Do you know what tourists think about your area?

10. Would you like to live in another town, another village?

11. Where would you never live? Why?

12. How do you imagine the town/region where your partner lives?

Words

industrial area	calm	to visit, to go to see	opposite
crime	old	to do sightseeing	next to
climate	wonderful	to admire	over
landscape	spacious	to enlarge	across
shops	marvellous	to go on	below
power station	fertile	to renovate,	behind
waterfall	lively	to renew	above
surface	summer-like	to express an opinion	straight ahead
school district	protected	to take snapshots	near
unemployment	full of, rich in	to protect	in
pedestrian zone	quite	to walk	at
pollution		to flow	on
monuments		to enjoy	in front of
municipality, community
sports field
population
prejudice
mayor
inhabitants
car parks
green space
palace

 

After writing this letter you and your partners can:

1. gather information about your partners' town/area, read them carefully and ask questions/curiosities you have;
2. collect useful links of your town/area and publish or email them to your partners so that they can explore your town/area
3. prepare a leaflet (booklet) about your town/area called "Our town/region viewed by the eyes of class...":

• choose from the letter you wrote your partner one thing you like and one thing you dislike about your town/area
• create illustrations (either photos or drawings) for these two things
• all the pupils in your class will be represented in this booklet through his/her sentences as well as the illustrations to go along with them

4. build web pages about your partners' town/area with the info gathered during a chat:

• prepare a questionnaire about your partners' town/area

• organise a chat session or two sessions between your partner's class and yours

• answer your partners' questions and ask them the questions you need to build web pages about their town/area

5. You can organise videoconference about the topics mentioned above, if you have that technical possibility.