Expand your vocabulary 2

1. Match the following words to the definitions:
            latent, catalyst, accomplice, stagnant, morose, arbitrary, rebut, paramount, servitude, facilitate

• n. a person who takes part in a crime - ..............................
• adj. unreasonable; based on one's own wishes or whims without regard for reason or fairness - .............................
• n. a substance that causes or hastens a chemical reaction; any agent that causes change - ................................
• v. to make easier, assist - .............................
• adj. hidden, present but not realized - ...............................
• adj. having a gloomy or sullen manner; not friendly or sociable - ..............................
• adj. chief in importance, above all others - ...........................
• v. to offer arguments or evidence that contradict an assertion, to refute - ...........................
• n. slavery, forced labour - ........................
• adj. not running or flowing, foul from standing still, inactive, sluggish, dull - ...........................

 2. From the words in the previous exercise, choose the one that best completes the following sentences.

• When he was suddenly deprived of everything he valued in life, the poor man became extremely gloomy and _________ . 
• After the opposing speakers had both presented their cases, they were allowed time to _________ each other's arguments.
• Though they had been there all along, Grandma Moses did not discover her ___________ artistic talents until well into her seventies. 
• In large areas of the huge swamp, there were ________ pools of water covered with unmoving masses of green slime.
• Even though the youngster did not actually steal he vehicle, he acted as one of the thief's ____________.
• The helpful librarian did much to __________ the research for my term paper.
• In certain industrial processes, __________ speed up the desired reaction by lessening the amount of energy needed to produce it.
• No matter what make of automobile you have, it is of ___________ importance that you learn to drive safely before you use it.
• Many people came to the New World after they had been sentenced to terms of penal ____________ for crimes they had committed. 
• In guaranteeing the right to "due process of law", the Constitution protects Americans against ___________ arrest and imprisonment. 

3. From the words in the previous exercises, choose the one that is opposite in meaning to the following words and expressions. 

• cheerful, jaunty, buoyant - ...................
• freedom, liberty - .................
• secondary, subordinate - ......................
• to confirm, corroborate, substantiate - .................
• to hamper, hinder, obstruct, impede - .....................
• reasoned, rational, objective - ......................
• flowing, running, fresh - ....................
• exposed, evident - .................... 

You will find the Key in the first comment.

Expand your vocabulary 1

1. Match the following words to the definitions:
        succumb, slapdash, reprimand, prattle, opaque, militant, incorrigible, exodus, brazen, annihilate

• adj. given to fighting; active and aggressive in support of a cause - ...............................
• v. to give way to superior cause, yield - ...........................
• adj. not letting light through; not clear or lucid; stupid - ............................
• v. to destroy completely - ......................................
• v. to talk in an aimless, foolish, or simple way; n. baby talk - ..............................
• adj made of brass; shameless, impudent - ..............................
• adj. careless and hasty - ...........................
• n a large-scale departure or flight - .............................
• adj. not able to be corrected, beyond control - ...........................
• v. to scold, find fault with; n. a rebuke - ............................

2. From the words in the previous exercise, choose the one that best completes the following sentences.

•  If we are going to use this space as a darkroom for photography, we must have a completely __________ covering over the window.
• The doctor warned the relatives that if the patient's condition deteriorated any further, he would __________ to pneumonia.
• The fact that you cannot control these small children does not mean that they are ____________ 
• "If you spent more time and effort on your essays, they would cease to be such ___________ affairs," my older sister wisely observed.
• Her friends call her "Motormouth" because she has a remarkable capacity to ___________ on endlessly about the most trivial matters. 
• Fighting is considered such a(n) ____________ violation of the rules of a game that the offending players are usually severely penalized.
• It is an unfortunate fact that the ____________ attitudes of the kaiser and his cronies helped make World War I inevitable.
•  Mom and Dad said nothing when I failed the examination, but the disappointed looks on their faces hurt more than the most severe __________.
• The second book of he Old Testament is named for the story it recounts of the _________ of the Israelites from the land of Egypt
• It is a frightening fact of modern life that we now possess the weaponry to ____________ not only our enemies, but all humankind. 

3. From the words in the previous exercises, choose the one that is opposite in meaning to the following words and expressions. 

• an immigration, influx, arrival; an entrance - ..............................
• to praise, pat on the back - ............................
• painstaking, meticulous, thorough, in-depth - ................................
• docile, tractable, curable, reparable - ...............................
• deferential, respectful, self-effacing - .............................
• to foster, promote, encourage, nurture - ............................
• to overcome, master, conquer - ..............................
• transparent, clear, bright, perceptive - .................................
• unassertive, peaceable, passive - ..............................

 You will find the Key in the first comment.

Writing with style - Parallelism

      In an interview a TV presenter once said that he preferred reading texts which were "melodious" and balanced. One technique that students can use to make their writing melodious, stylish and graceful is called Parallelism or also parallel structure or parallel construction. 
      Let's consider the following sentences:
                
1. The old woman was smart, polite and gave money to the poor.
2. She was beautiful but a spoilt child.

    Something is wrong with them, right? - They aren't very easy to read because the rhythm is broken. Now let's change them:

 1. The old woman was smart, polite and generous.
 2. The child was beautiful but spoilt.
   The tone of the second pair of sentences is different - they are easier to read, smoother, more melodious and more balanced.
So parallelism takes place when expressions that are similar in content are similar in function. 

Here are some more examples of parallel constructions: 

This animated film is full of fun, adventure and comedy.

At night you could hear voices chatting in the darkness and insects buzzing in the tress. 

As he worked overtime and because he came up with innovative ideas, they gave him a promotion. 

This product is cheap to buy and easy to use. 

He spoke slowly and confidently.

I felt that this was just one more in a very long series of fundamentally cheerful, well-ordered, pleasantly uneventful days. ( Bill Bryson) 

With life as short as it is, with so many pressing demands on our time, with so many books of information waiting to be read, why should we spend precious time on works of imagination? (L. Perrine, Story and Structure)

On the one hand, they may want schemes and intrigues, mixed identities, disguises, secret letters, hidden passages and similar paraphernalia. On the other hand, they may demand fights by land and sea, dangerous missions, hazardous journeys, hair-breadth escapes. (L. Perrine, Story and Structure)


For exercises on parallelism, go to:  http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarexercises/a/completionparallelism.htm

Decaying housing estates

Dictation - upper-intermediate/advanced

         Housing estates with crumbling walls, leaking roofs and broken windows are a common occurrence in the country. Some lie empty. Others are inhabited, as indicated by their façades decorated with satellite TV dishes and colourful arrays of washing.
The empty buildings are the remains of state housing projects built for employees of factories and the families of officers in military bases. When the factories and the bases shut down, the people left. Some of the blocks of flats remain empty to this day.
        Others, however, attracted destitute and homeless families, usually Gypsies. Some of the derelict apartment blocks are, theoretically, municipal property rented to poor citizens. The majority were built for the Gypsies, who were forced to settle after the 1960s. Suffering from high unemployment rates after 1989, most of the inhabitants were unable to pay their utility bills and token rent. Most city councils ignored the problem for years. The results are ghettos where poverty, crime and ethnic tensions are the norm.
      There is another type of decaying houses, which you notice because of their elaborate turn-of-the-19th Century façade. Such buildings are usually monuments of culture, and their piteous condition is entirely intentional. As a matter of course, their owners want them demolished and replaced by some flashy new business centre, yet another shopping mall, or block of flats. The only way to achieve this is to leave the building exposed to the elements and hope it collapses. To rephrase Stalin: no monument of culture, no problem. 

Sand

(Dictation - upper-intermediate/ advanced)       

         Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, ‘You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass.’ Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows.

         Much as I admire sand’s miraculous ability to be transformed into useful objects like glass and concrete, I am not a great fan of it in its natural state. To me, it is primarily a hostile barrier that stands between a car park and water. It blows in your face, gets in your sandwiches, swallows vital objects like car keys and coins. In hot countries, it burns your feet and makes you squeal and hop to the water in a fashion that people with better bodies find amusing. When you are wet, it adheres to you like stucco, and cannot be shifted with a fireman’s hose. But – and here’s the strange thing – the moment you step on a beach towel, climb into a car or walk across a recently vacuumed carpet it all falls off.

        For days afterwards, you tip astounding, mysteriously undiminishing piles of it onto the floor every time you take off your shoes, and spray the vicinity with quantities more when you peel off your socks. Sand stays with you for longer than many contagious diseases. And dogs use it as a lavatory. No, you may keep sand as far as I am concerned.

After Bill Bryson "Notes from a small island" 

The Great Stone Face

(Dictation - advanced)

     Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good people dwelt in long-huts, with the black forest all around them, on the steep and difficult hill-sides. Others had their homes in comfortable farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton factories. The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift of distinguishing this natural phenomenon more perfectly than many of their neighbours.

     The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on a perpendicular side of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the outlines of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another.  

After Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne