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English Detective #19, Great Ideas for Better Cities: August 13,2013 August 13, 2013 |
![]() Your First Clue: Vocabulary we’ll Emphasize in this Issue
community, distribution, immigration, incidence, license, manual, mediation, mutual, nuclear, occupational, protocol, resident, simulation, specified, transmission, undertaken, utility, violation A few notes about the new vocabulary:
‘Immigrants’ are people who leave their country to go to a new one. (A migrant is someone who travels, as migrating birds fly between their summer and winter homes. An emigrant is someone who travels FROM (ex- is shortened to e-) his or her old home or country. In the 1840s-70s many pioneers emigrated from the American East Coast or Midwest to Oregon and California.) The U.S. Congress has been debating American immigration policy again. It has been a controversial subject in the U.S.-- as in many countries-- for at least 150 years. ‘Incidence’ is how often something happens. An ‘incident’ is one happening or event. ‘Incidental’ describes an event that is related but less important-- not the speaker’s main focus. “The accident broke his leg. While trying to move out of the road, he suffered other incidental cuts and bruises.” We use ‘incidentally’ almost like parentheses (...), to add a comment that’s not important and maybe not closely related to the subject. To ‘simulate’ is to pretend: to appear to be or to feel something without it really being true. When a child misbehaves in a funny way, his parents may simulate anger (because they want him to understand that the action is unacceptable), even though they may actually think it’s funny. People more often simulate love they don’t really feel. Airlines use flight simulators to train pilots, and businesses may also use simulations to train their managers. Two quick notes on different forms of words from earlier newsletters: ‘Conventional’ means way that most people do things. If someone is ‘unconventional,’ they often behave in different or unexpected ways. Public transit is the buses or subways that help people get from one place to another. Getting the whole story: this issue’s reading/listening practice:
Brilliant Designs to Fit more People in every City Charter Cities Here's Voice of America on Green Cities. Follow the Clues (Vocabulary Practice):
Here's the crossword (or right-click to download), and the answers are here. Test your Deductions
Try this Academic Vocabulary Test. Coming in the next issue: Cultures at Risk In case you missed these: Earlier issues of English Detective have articles on a number of topics, plus practice with over 200 words from the Academic Word List. You can check them out with the link to the back issues page below (or find what words were practiced each issue here. Yje most recent issues are here. P.S. If you’re not already getting English Detective, you can subscribe by completing the form here. (It's free!) |
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