Streets and roads

Do you know what a 'kerb' is? Do these exercises and learn what it and other words related to streets and roads mean.

Are you ready to take your vocabulary to the next level?

Join thousands of learners from around the world who are making great progress with their English vocabulary with our online courses.

Find out more

Discussion

What are the streets and roads like where you live?

Try another vocabulary lesson

Language level

B1 English level (intermediate)

There are here a lot of junctions, mostly with traffic lights. We almost have signposts around so that it is almost impossible to get lost.Kind police officers are always in the area., so it is safe.

In the big cities traffic is a terrible. Many cars, many people go from somewhere to somwhere. During rush hours you can hear a lot of klaxon and probably you can feel like you will crazy yourselves. Many local manager advices us that do not drive at rush hours if we don't have emergency situation.During rush hours we can use subways, buses, trams and, trains.

Where I live there are various streets with roundabout, signposts and traffic light. Is very common to see roundabout anywhere because are more safer than traffic lights. We have a main road called M30 which cross for the centre of city.

I can see none of these around my house. :)

Don't you traffic lights in your neighborhood? Don't you see any signpost in your town? I thought that traffic lights are in the street in the whole world.

Thank you, dariowins. Well, Yes, there are traffic lights in my town, but I'm not quite sure how big a neighborhood is. I thought it meant less than 2-3 books. Traffic lights are not all around in my neighborhood. :)

There are many beautiful streets in my town such as Al-Tarrar Street, Jamal Street, Airport Street, I love beside the Fifth road we can cross the roundabout safely and enjoy by driving on it. it is the nicer road and safeier

In my area there are two main roads, one leads to the motorway. There are few beautiful streets near my house.

Where I live, roads are really narrow. I live in campaign so you don't have much visibility and you have to be carefull and drive slowly because you can easily cross tractor or animals. Furthermore, the roads don't always have cement so sometimes, there are hollows in them.

Recently, my city is changed completely, the roads improve and lots of bridges were built, but still have a problem with people crossing because cars are driven on speedily and there is no places for people crossing. also in my city , there are roundabout like El Tahrier Square and it is easy to get lost because the street have poor signpost .

The road where my house is situated, is a closed road , so there are not many cars driving on, only those of my neighbours. Along the street there is the pavement where you can walk and there’s no crossing or traffic lights. Before entering the street there is a signpost on the left side of the road, indicating that there is a closed street. It’s a very safe place therefore no police officer is needed in place.

I live on the corner of a junction with no traffic lights and cycle lane. So if you'd like to ride a bike, you get to ride among busy cars. It is quite not safe. And also, there is no police officer to control the traffic. You have to be careful, when you cross the road. The more the road is clear, the more chance you will be in danger cause most of the drivers never drive in limited speed.

There are no roundabouts where I live. The streets are not very large, and there are lots of junctions with traffic lights and crossings. Police officers are always driving cars or motorbikes, if you see them standing on the street, it is because something is happening, but that's very rare. It is really easy to get lost in this city, because streets are very similar, fortunately, there are signposts everywhere that help you to find your way.

I'm living in the small village so we've roads and streets very well are completely empty so much that it isn't have traffic lights in the city, and we've few junctions, signposts and crossing, and the police officers are in everywhere in the city.

I live in a small town in the countryside called Sumaré. It's really hard to get around because of the bad traffic signs. Crossings are fading, for example. Most drivers are very disrespectful. It doesn't matter if you are walking or driving, you have to be very patient.

Hy, my name is Julián, i'm from Paute, Ecuador. where live my streets is bad, not is paved, apart is very dusty and the state not make nothing.

Here, we have a lot of traffic and streets are very busy. Not always clean because which is a shame sometime. On the road, we have everything to drive safely such as traffic lights, signposts, highways, cycle paths...but people don't follow them all the time ...and we called that accidents...!!

Well, the streets in my neighborhood are dirt and very large, although thanks to the mayor of my canton; I have already begun to cement the streets and the truth is that they are very beautiful

They are really bad and dirty.. Every where you can find people walking among cars as there are no pavements to walk on and the streets are narrow and u may get hit by a side mirror of a car if u are not curios enough.. you may go crazy or get angry when u dive during the rush hours as the public transports wanna drop off people among the traffic jam and u wanna get home .. another bad thing is that in some places the drivers dont respect the lanes and the may change their street lanes abrutly to reach faster than you .. DRIVING HERE IN EGYPT IS SOME SORT OF DIGGING IN THE ROCKS !!

I live in a lonely street. The street is along a domitory and there are no houses in the other side.

They are motorway having a crossing, traffic lights, kerb, pavement, signposts with junction and roundabout, supervises by a police officer.

We ought to comply with traffic rules for safe journey.

There are good streets and roads in my city, also you can see a lot of signposts and traffic lights which instruct all drivers. Sometimes I see a police officer on the road who help drivers when the traffic light is not working.

Hello everyone, i live in a countryside so the roads aren't too crowded. There are many traffic lights and signposts to instruct everyone. Unfortunately, many drivers don't follow the rules so there are many accidents

Both sides of the road are fill up with parked cars and pavements are with vendors like almost all streets in yangon where I live. Most drivers do not want to stop or wait at crossing while pedestrians crossing the road.

I think, the road in my city is like a place to drive on, as any place in the world motorway is for cars and pavement is for walker, all of the others like signposts, traffic lights and police officer are to help peoples, cars and manage the traffic processing.

I live in a middle town so there is not a lot of traffic here and it is easy to drive: there are a lot of signspost to know where are the main places in the town and it is not necessary police officer to drive traffic. The streets aren´t crowed so you can walk with calm to every posts in the town. Also, the streets at the town centre are almost for pedestrians.

Do English speaking people say "signals" instead of "traffic lights"??

Hello Rafaela1,

I think 'signal' is used in US English, while 'traffic light' is used in the UK.

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Thank you Peter, I'm wondering if other English speaking countries (Australia, NewZealand, South Africa, Canada...) use "trafiic light" as well. ;)

this material is helpful how can i get in pdf

Hi sabag,

I'm glad to hear you liked the material. I'm not sure if a pdf version is planned for this page but one may be added in the future. In the meantime, you could screen print or copy and paste into a word processor document.

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

In my country, Iran, there are good roads and streets, not excellent not bad. Unfortunately, drivers do not follow the rules, so there are a lot of car accidents.

In my country, streets are very dangerous, you can dead trying to cross them. Many times, drivers do not respect the law and police officers are so corrupt.

My city is Barcelona . We have a very well distribution of the streets which is very well known in the world .This plan is known as PLAN CERDA so is very easy to drive and walk by there.

Hello teachers, The vocabulary section here is extremely useful. However, I noticed that you use strictly British English in most (all) instances. For example, here in Streets & Roads, in the US and Canada they spell "kerb" as "curb", and of course they would call a "junction" an "intersection" and a "pavement" a "sidewalk". Given that your students are from around the globe, would a "middle ground" solution be to state "kerb/curb"? Thank you!

Hello sunsetlover,

As the British Council we generally focus on British English, as you say. We have considered including some examples of the kind you suggest but it can make the pages rather cluttered, with multiple alternatives in many places.

We have several pages addressing the differences between British and American English:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/british-english-and-american-english

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/general-english/video-series/how-to/how-to-understand-the-differences-between-british-and-american

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Understood. Thank you for the links Peter.

Hi sir, I have reviewed and realized that ,you are right. There are two pictures that have new mean ,like junction and motorway. Thank you very much,

Hi teacher, It seems there are some wrong pictures in this lesson(Streets and Roads).I mean those aren't matched with their names. Thanks

Hello mdaivid,

I've just completed the task myself and the words and pictures match correctly. Which one did you think was wrong?

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

I’m living in Paris where we can find the most beautiful avenue of the world. Today, cars are not welcome in the city and the Mayor hope , they will disappear one day totally. Then, there will be no more traffic lights or crossings. Pedestrians and cyclists will be safe.

Streets and roads

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

Discussion

Language level