exercises 385

CPE CERTIFICATE IN PROFICIENCY ENGLISH
PAPER 3 ENGLISH ON USE
EXTRA PRACTICE WORD FORMATION


WORD FORMATION EXERCISE 1.“ Go Figure “ ( geoffrey m. miller )

"Maybe we should ask a ........................................1 “ ,I suggested. PHYSICS
"Yeah", replied my new friend Paul. "or a mathematics professor or ...............................2 like that." SOME

We had just finished dinner and were waiting for the nurse to come and take our trays away
In addition to making new friends, another benefit of being .........................................3 HOSPITAL
is that it gives people time to think about things we wouldn't ..........................4 ORDINARY
think about. In this case, it was "Highly ..................................5 Events and The Way PROBABILITY
They Seem To Happen All The Time."
Paul shared a story about a friend of his from college who went to China for a semester.

"She was ...........................6 in a cafe in Beijing, when in walks another American girl. SEAT
They got to talking and it turns out they knew each other.", Paul exclaimed. "They lived on the same block when they were little. Hadn't seen each other since."
"What are the odds of that happening?", I wondered.

We asked the nurse to check with the other patients to see if any of them might have a mathematics degree. Meanwhile, we tried to figure it out ................................. 7 OUR
and came up with some fairly .........................................8 numbers. REMARK

We made a valiant but ...................................9 attempt at calculating the odds FRUIT
of two .............................10 friends bumping into one another in China. CHILD
Two people meeting in the same cafe at the same time would mean they ......................11 have to WILL
be there within the same half hour, and..............................12 , say, twenty WITH
feet of each other. We figured how many twenty foot squares there were on the
......................................13 areas of the earth and the number of half hours that HABITAT
had passed in the twenty years since they had seen each other. We had worked ourselves into a mathematical frenzy and were just about to take the number of half hours, to the power of the number of twenty foot squares, when then nurse had to come and sedate us.

As I drifted into .....................................14 sleep, I realized that calculating the odds PHARMACY
of Paul and I being in the same hospital room at the same time were far too ...........................15 ASTRONOMY
to be attempted by amateurs.

WORD FORMATION Exercise 2 WHY ENGLISH IS SO DIFFICULT!

TAKE INTO ACCOUNT IRREGULAR PLURAL NOUNS!!

Why English Is So Difficult! We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes;
but the plural of ox became ..............................1 not oxes. OX
One fowl is a goose, but two are called ....................... 2 , GOOSE
yet the plural of moose should never be meese.You may find a ....................... 3 mouse ALONE
or a nest full of.......................... 4 ; yet the plural of house is houses, MOUSE
not hice. If the plural of man is always called....................... 5 , MAN
why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?
If I spoke of my foot and show you my two...........................6 , FOOT
and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are............................ 7 , TOOTH
why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be.................... 8, THESE
yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose
. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.

Some reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English
1) The bandage was .............................. 9 around the wound. WIND
2) The farm was used to produce...........................10 . PRODUCT
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the .........................11 furniture. POLAND
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to
...........................................12 the present. PRESENCE
8) At the Army.........................13 , a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum. BASIS
9) When 14 ............................... at, the dove dove into the bushes. SHOOT
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The 15 ............................. was invalid for the invalid. INSURE
12) There was a row among the 16 ............................. about how to row. OARS
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the 17 ..................... are present. DOE
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with.............................. 18 , the farmer taught his sow to sow. PLANT
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got.......................19 . NUMB
19) On ............................20 the tear in the painting I shed a tear. SIGHT
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22) I spent last evening ......................................21 out a pile of dirt. EVEN
Screwy pronunciations can mess up your mind! For example... If you have a rough cough, climbing can be tough when going through the bough on a tree!





ANSWERS / CLUES

EXERCISE 1 GO FIGURE Clue 1. Physicist 2. Someone 3. Hospitalized 4. Ordinarily 5. Improbable 6. Sitting 7. Ourselves 8. Remarkable 9. fruitless 10. Childhood 11 will 12 within 13 habitable 14 pharmaceutical 15 astronomical
Exercise 2 WHY ENGLISH IS SO DIFFICULT! CLUE 1. OXEN 2. Geese 3.LONE 4 Mice 5 . Men 6. Feet 7. Teeth 8 those 9. Wound 10 produce 11 Polish 12 present 13 BASE 14 SHOT 15 insurance 16 oarsmen 17 DOES 18 PLANTING 19 number 2 0 Seeing 21 evening