Worked examples and guided exercises - Vocabulary

Example 1: Word families. Build the word family of "act":

Noun: act, action, actor, activity. Verb: act. Adjective: active. Adverb: actively.

Example 2: Collocations. Common collocations with "make" and "do":

MAKE: make a mistake, make a decision, make progress, make an effort, make friends.

DO: do homework, do exercise, do a favour, do the washing-up, do your best.

Example 3: Phrasal verbs. What does "give up" mean?

Give up = stop doing something. "I gave up smoking last year." Other common phrasal verbs: look after (care for), find out (discover), turn on (switch on), carry on (continue).

1. Build word families for: educate, create, imagine, communicate, decide.
2. Make or do? a) ___ a mistake. b) ___ your homework. c) ___ a phone call. d) ___ the dishes. e) ___ friends.
3. Match the phrasal verb to its meaning (postpone / search for information / return something / find the answer / leave the ground): a) look up. b) give back. c) put off. d) work out. e) take off.
4. Write sentences using: get on with, look forward to, run out of, come up with, put up with.
5. Prefixes: add un-, dis-, re-, or mis- to make new words (not all are opposites): happy, agree, write, understand, like, do.
6. Suffixes: add -tion, -ment, -ness, -ful, or -less to form new words: enjoy, care, sad, improve, create.
7. False friends: what do these Spanish-English pairs really mean? a) actual/actually. b) sensible/sensitive. c) éxito/success.
8. Compound nouns: combine words to make compound nouns (e.g., sun + glasses = sunglasses). Make 5 more.
9. Context clues: guess the meaning of underlined words from context in 3 short sentences.
10. Write 5 sentences using 5 different phrasal verbs with "turn" (turn on, turn off, turn up, turn down, turn into).