Ordinary Spoken English [antikvár]

At last I've got a pen-friend who lives in England! I got his letter by the morning post last Tuesday. It all happened like this. But you don't know who I am and what I am. I'm Fedya Prokopov, a pupil at school No. 7. I'm sixteen and I'm in the ninth form. Somé of my classmates have got pen-friends in Poland and Bulgária, but I don't know these languages and I'm not keen to correspond1 with people whose language I can't speak. We study a lot of subjects in the ninth, but geography and English are my favourites. I enjoy geography lessons and I'm going to become a geographer. Not a geography teacher but a traveller. Though a good many discoveries have been made this century, there are still plenty of blank spots2 on the map, enough work for the rising generation.3 I've got a small library of my own and all the books are on the life and work of great travellers. I've read these not only once but time and again.4 Everyone knows M. I. Kalinin's words about the necessity of mastering5 foreign languages so I'm not going to repeat them here, but I'm sure a traveller needs to-speak many of