Two birds with one stone: listening and vocabulary

11th December 2021

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Outside of the classroom, students will often be using English with other non-native speakers. Therefore, it is good practice to listen to people speaking English to see how much, or how little, you understand.

With that in mind, here’s a short video on extending your vocabulary, learning ‘low-frequency words’, or better words. However, the instructor is from India and has an accent. To test your understanding, try listening first, then look to check if you are correct:

New Vocabulary

Instead of using ‘very’ + adjective (I am very tired), use a single word:

Try to use ‘sagacious’, ‘exquisite’, ‘colossal’ and ‘spacious’ EXAMPLES:

The classrooms in Block D are ……….. (big, plenty of room)

The furnishings are perfect, they are ………. (very tasteful)

Building an underground train network is a ………… undertaking (very big, challenging)

The old man was ………. People came to him for advice. (very clever, wise)

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Adult Speaking Class, Level 2: collocation writing.

16th May 2020

Writing exercise 

At the end of the previous blog, there were some everyday collocations that moved away from the basic verb + phrase format (e.g. take a break / make sure / get away with murder).

To help them sink in (make you remember), here a chance for you to practise using them.

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Rewrite the following business email to your senior manager in France, using the following collocations for the bold sections:

Adequate supplies to meet demand 

Revised edition

Cause insurmountable difficulties 

Major turning point

Set realistic aims

Dear M Delarue

I have some good news from the HCM office which I think represents a change in the company and how we do things and what we can expect to do in the future.

We have stopped using the old business model because when we tried, it made many, many problems that we were unable to solve, no matter how hard we tried. Now we are seeing real and tangible progress.

Our main concern now is to make sure we have enough products to fill all the orders for all of our customers. We need to plan ahead; as Marketing Director, I am on the look out for new markets to break into.

Two areas spring to mind:China and India. It is our intention that we become market-leader in those territories but we must not wish for too much too soon as there are many factors that stand in our way, such as infrastructure and logistics.

Finally, could you please send us the newest, latest copy of the company handbook, as our one in five years old and is out of date and does not have the latest facts and figures.

Sincerely

Mr / Mrs / Ms / Dr …

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