End of Year Test (Reading)

My bedroom

In today’s post, I want to tell you about my bedroom. A few months ago, I was bored (1)   my bedroom so I asked my parents if I could decorate it. The colours were (2)   – they were the same as when I was a little girl and I really hated them. We have (3)   heating in our house so I decided to paint the radiator red. I painted the walls light blue and put up posters of my favourite rock (4)   . I also put up an absolutely (5)   poster of my favourite actor – it’s like she’s actually in the room with me! I’m really into (6)   so I’ve also got some of my pictures up – I think they look great.

The whole room looks fantastic and I’m not (7)   any more when my friends come into my bedroom.

My unusual hobby

16-year-old Bridget Peters writes about her hobby, making soap sculptures

I have a slightly unusual hobby – you probably only use it to wash your face or hands, but I make small sculptures out of soap. I’m a bit of an expert these days, having read about it in many different books, and I’ve even managed to get several friends interested in doing it. I didn’t even know people made sculptures from soap until I found a short online film about it by accident and thought it was something I’d like to try. More people are becoming interested these days and a documentary has even been made about it.

It’s especially popular in a country called Thailand. They often make sculptures of flowers there so I decided to try that. Although I’ve seen sculptures of many other things since, like birds, flowers seemed like the best thing to start with. I wasn’t expecting my first sculpture to be brilliant, but I surprised myself with how good it was. I felt more confident about trying other things after my family told me how good it looked. It took quite a long time, and I didn’t really have the right tools, but I enjoyed making it.

After lots of practice, I became quite good and had my fi rst exhibition when I was fifteen. It went extremely well, even though the place where it was held was rather small. I made some nice posters with photos of my designs on, and put them up wherever I could. So although very few people had heard of soap sculpture, they could see exactly what it was. The posters worked, because lots of people came. We’d only just finished putting the sculptures in place when the first people arrived.

Lots of people ask me why I don’t try making sculptures using stone or metal. It’s never really attracted me, though. I prefer learning by doing rather than going to classes, so I can’t see me ever doing a degree in sculpture but I’d love to show people how to create the kinds of things I make. Everything I do is small, because soap is hard to work with once it goes past a certain size. Whatever happens, I’m sure I’ll love my hobby for years to come.