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You must be quite happy and feel relieved, for you are just a tiny number of the two billion learners of English worldwide, ready to grapple with the mysteries of the English language. I know what you’re thinking: this is not new. Every year is the same. We start in September or October and we are supposed to upgrade until next June enough for us to pass a test, which seems to be the condition for improvement.
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Yet, a bit of help would come in handy. Here are some hints. Suggested answers to the exercises in the sheets below (which can be magnified by pressing ctrl and rolling the mouse wheel) - after the page break.
Key to exercises
A1d 2b 3b 4 a
5 the most common twenty words in written English are (in order
starting with the most frequent): the, of, to, in, and, a, for, was, is, that,
on, at, he, with, by, be, it, an, at, his; and in spoken English: the, and, I,
to, of, a, you, that, in, it, is, yes, was, this, but, on, well, he, have, for
(Source: David Crystal, The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Language, second
edition, CUP, 1997, p. 86.)
B 1 Some possible answers:
a)
a royal
palace, the royal family
b)
to dissuade
someone from doing something
c)
a popular
king / to crown a king
d)
up to my
ears in work
e)
independent
of someone / an independent country
f)
get married
to someone
2
a) scissors
- only used in plural; if you want to count scissors, you have to say, for example,
‘two pairs of scissors’.
b)
weather -
uncountable
c)
teach, taught,
taught; teach someone to do something; teach someone French.
d)
advice -
uncountable; a piece of advice; verb = to advise (regular).
e)
lose, lost,
lost (irregular)
f)
trousers -
only used in plural; if you want to count trousers you have to say, for example,
‘three pairs of trousers’.
3
a) The ‘b’
in subtle is silent, as it is in comb, tomb and lamb too.
b)
The final
‘e’ in catastrophe is pronounced as a syllable as it is in apostrophe.
Catastrophe has 4 syllables.
c)
The stress
is on the first syllable in photograph, and on the second syllable in photographer;
it is on the third syllable in photographical. The ‘rule’ is that the stress in
long words in English very frequently falls on the third syllable from the end
of the word.
d)
The ‘w’ in
answer is silent. The final syllable is a schwa sound and the ‘r’ is not
usually pronounced in standard British English, unless it is followed by a
vowel, e.g. Answer all the questions ...
4
guys is
informal, persons is formal (most commonly found in legal documents) and people
is neutral
5
Some useful
phrases from the text:
periods of contact, foreign languages, sets of words, add greatly to, to
express (subtle) shades of meaning.
If you have
included other phrases from the text that seem useful to you, then that is fine
too.
D Research into language learning can help you to
prepare a sensible vocabulary learning plan. What you plan to do will, of
course, depend very much on your own circumstances.
You cannot realistically aim to learn as
many new words a day if you are working a full day at something else as if you
are doing a full-time English course. In general, however 10 to 20 words a week
is probably a reasonable aim.
It does not matter where you try to learn
vocabulary but it seems to be better to do a little on a regular basis rather
than a lot infrequently. Research also suggests that it is a good idea to
revise your work on a very regular basis - once a week, perhaps, but do not
revise only the words that you’ve learnt in that week. Look back over your work
of the previous month(s).
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