3

Vocabulary
In coursebooks vocabulary is typically 3.1 Sets and Sequences
introduced in sets and carefully
Learning the Alphabet 36
contextualised. However, constraints of Learning Vocabulary Sequences 36
Number Dialogues 37
space often mean that there isn't sufficient Reciprocal Lexical Tennis 37
Students ‘Become’ Words 38
practice of new items that come up or
Bilingual Word Lists Game 38
opportunities for extension. Using the Collective Picture 39
A Word's Associations 39
coursebook as a starting point, Sets and Irregular Plurals in Movement 40
Sequences gives more ideas for working Are We Related? 40
Sit Down if You Have the Word 41
with vocabulary sets, and Revising and Revising Vocabulary Sets 41

Stretching Vocabulary includes activities 3.2 Revising and Stretching Vocabulary

to get students to consolidate and extend Miming Vocabulary 42
what they know. Variations on ‘Simon Says’ 42
Designing Words 43
What it is and What it isn’t 43
Auctioning Collocations 44
Pre-teaching Vocabulary 45
Placing Sentences in Space 45
Exploring Word Meanings with Rods 46
Paraphrasing Phrasal Verbs 46
Synonyms Exercise 47
Synonym Reversal 47
Vocabulary Enrichment Letters 48

35
 Vocabulary Sets and Sequences

Learning the Alphabet Learning Vocabulary Sequences

Level beginner to lower intermediate Level beginner to lower intermediate

(You need a class of 25 + for this activity.) Materials none
Materials none
1 Give the students a list of the months. Drill the
This is a good activity to do with primary students. twelve words chorally.

1 ‘Letter’ each student from A to Z. If you have students 2 Get half the class to say the English word chorally
left after assigning each letter of the alphabet, and the other half to say the words in L1 in response.
introduce a few more ‘vowel letters’ and include a
couple of ‘joker’ students, who can represent any 3 Ask for a student volunteer. In turns, ask and answer
letter. like this:
You: January + 2?
2 Spell out a word, for example, ‘elephant’, and ask Student: March. July – 3?
the students with those letters to line up in the You: April. June – 1?
correct order. Then ask them each to say their letter Student: May.
loudly and clearly and return to their seats.
4 Get the students to practise like this in pairs.
3 After several rounds with you leading, ask the student
with the letter B to call out a word beginning with
their letter. The students line up next to them and Variation
spell out their word. Continue with C, and so on. You can do this kind of vocabulary practice with
vocabulary sets that are in fixed linear order, using the
Acknowledgement: I learnt this technique from a same question and answer technique. For example:
Munich secondary teacher, Irene Jakobsen. ● Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ...
● 1, 2, 3, 4 ...
● 6, 12, 18, 24 ...
Variation
● a, b, c, d, e, f ...
Another way to get students to memorise the alphabet is
by chanting the letters rhythmically.
Acknowledgement: This idea comes from Mindgame, a
1 Pair the students and demonstrate the activity with vocabulary CD Rom (Fletcher de Téllez I, Clarity, Hong
one student: Kong 2000).
Student: a b c d
You: d c b a
Student: b c d e
You: e d c b
Student: c d e f
Make sure that you both chant the letters rhythmically.

2 Get the pairs to work their way through the alphabet

as demonstrated.

3 Circulate, helping with the pronunciation of the

harder letters.

Acknowledgement: This is one of the exercises from A R

Orage’s On Love and Psychological Exercises (Samuel
Weiser, 1998).

36
 Sets and Sequences Vocabulary

Number Dialogues Reciprocal Lexical Tennis

Level beginner Level lower to upper intermediate

Materials none Materials none

If you find there is not sufficient attention given to 1 Choose two teams of three students. Bring them out
numbers in your coursebook, this is a useful drill. to the front of the class, facing each other.

1 Get the whole class chorusing in twos up to one 2 The first team ‘serves’ by shouting out a family word,
hundred: for example, ‘uncle’.
‘two, four, six, eight, ten ... ninety-six, ninety-eight,
one hundred.’ 3 The other team returns the serve by shouting ‘niece’
or ‘nephew’.
2 Tell them to chorus in twos down from one hundred
to zero. 4 Award a point if a team gets one correct answer
within three seconds. If they manage to get two
‘one hundred, ninety-eight, ninety-six, ninety-four ...’
correct answers within the time limit (i.e. niece and
nephew), they get two points.
3 Ask each student to shut their eyes and do this
silently.
5 The team that has returned the serve now serves, for
example, ‘mother’. The other team comes back with
4 Pair the students and ask them to work backwards or
‘child’, ‘son’, ‘daughter’ or ‘baby’.
forwards, as follows:
Student A: one hundred 6 After four or five rounds, change the teams and play
Student B: nought until they have thoroughly explored this set of words.
Student A: ninety-eight
Student B: two
Student A: ninety-six Variation
Student B: four Play the same game with animal males and females:
Student A: ninety-four vixen / fox
Student B: six, and so on. bull / cow
bitch / dog
5 Individually, students do both sides of the above
Or with reciprocal verbs like:
‘number dialogue’ in their heads.
lend / borrow
win / lose
give / take

See Collins COBUILD English Grammar (Collins

Cobuild, 1990) for more ideas.

37
 Vocabulary Sets and Sequences

Students ‘Become’ Words Bilingual Word Lists Game

Level elementary to advanced Level elementary to upper intermediate

Materials none Materials 20 small pieces of card for each student

1 Choose one student to be ‘secretary’ and write up all 1 Ask the students to work individually and copy
the words recently learnt from the coursebook from a twenty words from the bilingual word lists in the
given lexical field (for example, fruit and vegetables). coursebook onto small cards. Tell them to copy each
The secretary writes all the words the class can word onto a separate card and put the mother tongue
remember. translations on the back of the cards.

2 Ask the class to come up with a few more words in 2 Pair the students and ask them to sit facing one
their mother tongue(s) which can go up on the board another.
in English.
3 Student A places a card down on the table, either
3 Ask the students to decide which vegetable or fruit way up, and student B has to shout out the
they feel like being at the moment. translation. If student B is quick enough and gives the
correct translation, they add the card to their pile. If
4 Tell the students to get up and mingle, explaining to student B is too slow in giving the answer, or gives a
different people which fruit / vegetable they are and wrong answer, then student A takes the card back.
why they chose this particular one.
4 Student B now puts a card down on the table and
Variation student A has to give the translation.
Use other lexical sets. For example:
The aim of the game is get all the opponent’s cards.
● colours
● musical instruments
● types of building Variation
● types of land The students can play with any number of contrasting
● metals items:
● the main nouns and verbs used to describe a trial / ● synonyms
courtroom. ● opposites
● adverb / adjective pairs, for example:
good / well, noisy / noisily
● adjective / verb pairs, for example:
to prefer / preferable, to eat / edible
● irregular verb infinitive / simple past, for example:
to teach / taught

38
 Sets and Sequences Vocabulary

Collective Picture A Word’s Associations

Level elementary to upper intermediate Level elementary to upper intermediate

Materials 30 slips of paper for writing items of Materials sheets of paper / notebooks
vocabulary, notebooks
Preparation
Preparation Give the students a list of ten to fifteen new words to
Select a set of concrete nouns and verbs from the last learn from the current unit in the coursebook. Ask them
three units of the coursebook. Write about thirty of these to think what associations they have with each word
words on slips of paper. and to draw a simple picture for each one.

1 Hand out one slip of paper to each student and 1 Group the students in fours and ask them to explain
explain that you are going to ask the class to draw a their pictures and the link to the word.
collective picture on the board.
2 Draw half a dozen associative pictures for these
2 Ask each student to come up to the board and draw words on the board, using associations of your own.
the word from their slip of paper. The idea is to get Ask the students to guess what your association is in
all the items into a coherent picture. The picture for a each case.
verb will be picture of the verb happening. Do the
exercise without speaking. Don’t intervene – let the NOTE: Sharing associations allows the English words to
students produce the collective picture they want. soak into the students’ minds.

3 Ask the class to name all the things in the picture

and their parts. Get students to write the words in.

4 Individually, the students copy the drawing and the

words.

5 Allow time for feedback on how building the picture

felt. At low levels, let this happen in the mother
tongue.

39
 Vocabulary Sets and Sequences

Irregular Plurals in Movement Are We Related?

Level beginner to advanced (depending on Level elementary to upper intermediate

irregular plurals practised) Materials sheets of paper / notebooks
Materials none
1 In their notebooks or on a sheet of paper, ask the
Preparation students to rule three columns on their page with
Select a dozen irregular plurals that have come up in these headings:
recent units. Correct Sometimes Correct Incorrect

1 Get the students to push their chairs and their 2 Tell the students you are going to dictate sentences
desks / tables to the walls or take the students to about family relationships. Some will be correct,
an empty space. some will be sometimes correct and some will be
incorrect. They should write the sentences down in
2 Ask them to form two parallel lines facing you. The the appropriate column.
two columns of students should be equidistant from
the side walls of the room. 3 Dictate these sentences:
● My father’s brother is my son.
3 Explain that they will be working on irregular plurals.
● My name is Mary and I am my aunt’s niece.
One column is the ‘singular team’ and the other
● My mother is my sister’s mother. (sometimes
column is the ‘plural team’.
correct because of half-sisters)
● My husband’s father is my father-in-law.
4 If you shout out ‘MOUSE’, the singular team dashes
● My brother’s daughter is my niece.
across to touch their wall. The members of the plural
● My first cousin is my father’s or my mother’s
team try to touch the members of the singular team
brother or sister’s child.
before they reach their wall. If you shout out ‘MICE’,
● My wife’s son by a previous marriage is my son-in-
the plural team runs for their wall and the other team
law.
tries to tag (touch) them. Students who have been
● My great-grandfather is my dad’s or my mum’s
touched join the other team.
grandfather.
● My wife’s mother is my mother-in-law.
5 When you start playing the game, build up
● My wife’s brother-in-law is my brother.
excitement by lingering on the initial sound to the
● My sister’s off-spring are my nephews and nieces.
word for several seconds, like this:
● My parents’ siblings are my uncles and aunts.
MMMMMOUSE! ● My identical twin is my aunt’s nephew or niece.

NOTE: If you have a sleepy class, this activity is sure to 4 Group the students in fours, and ask them to
wake them up. If you have a restless teenage class, this compare their placings of the sentences.
activity provides a release for their pent-up physical
energy. 5 Go through all the sentences with the whole class.
Make sure they understand new items of vocabulary.

Acknowledgement: This exercise is an adaptation of

‘Family Strips’, to be found on pages 58-59, in Teaching
Adult Second Language Learners (McKay H et al,
Cambridge, 1999).

40
 Sets and Sequences Vocabulary

Sit Down if Revising Vocabulary Sets

You Have the Word
Level elementary to upper intermediate
Level elementary to upper intermediate Materials none
Materials none
Preparation
Give the students a list of twenty to thirty words from a
Preparation
particular set. If the vocabulary area is ‘means of
Go back over the last ten to fifteen units of the
transport’, for example, your list might include:
coursebook and pick out all the words for possessions
and / or things you have. For example: tricycle camel
fighter plane BMW
bicycle younger sister
horse bullet train
canoe computer
car suburban train
skis a cold
bike ferry boat
Don’t collect more than thirty words.
Ask the students to study the list for homework.
1 Tell the class to stand up. Explain that you will shout
1 Get the students to sit in a circle with one too few
out a word and if they have that thing or person, they
chairs for the number of students. The space inside
should sit down.
the circle needs to be clear.
2 After shouting out each word, get everybody back on
2 Tell the ‘extra’ student to stand in the middle of the
their feet.
circle and shout out, ‘Anybody who has been on a
jetfoil, change seats!’ As some of the students move,
Variation the ‘extra’ student gets himself a seat, thus leaving
I have used the ‘sit down’ technique with all sorts of someone else chairless. This student now leads the
vocabulary sets: game.
● With adjectives that describe feelings. Students sit
down when I hit on their here-and-now feeling. For Variation
example: Students can revise vocabulary from previous units by
lonely bored re-contextualising it like this:
eager exhausted If you remember where ... came, change places.
tired raring-to-go
The student who becomes ‘it’ can then challenge any of
● When I get to their bedtime last night: the others who moved to prove that they really
a quarter past eight nine o’clock remember the context. If the person he chooses fails,
half past eight a quarter past nine that person becomes ‘it’, the chairless person.
a quarter to nine

● When I say a food they dislike:

Acknowledgement: I learnt this technique from Jim
Wingate.
gnocchi sea food
carrots bread
spinach rice
kimchi

In all of these, I ask students, once they sit down, to stay

seated.

41
 Vocabulary Revising and Stretching Vocabulary

Miming Vocabulary Variations on ‘Simon Says’

Level beginner to advanced Level lower intermediate to advanced

Materials none Materials none

Preparation 1 Do this activity when your coursebook unit focuses

Give the students a list of thirty to forty words that have on ‘make’ and ‘do’. Explain to the students that they
come up over the last few units and ask them to revise are to obey Simon and to disobey any direct order.
them for homework. For example:
You say: Simon says, ‘Make your bed!’
1 Ask one student to come out to the front and mime (students mime making a bed)
one of the words. You whisper the word in their ear. You say: Simon says, ‘Do your homework!’
They go on miming until someone in the class shouts (students mime doing homework)
the word out. You say: Make a cake!
(students stand absolutely still)
2 Repeat this procedure through the thirty words with
different students. Whisper into the ear of some Anybody who obeys a direct order, and disobeys
students words that have already been mimed. Simon, is out of the game.

2 Once you have completed a round of conventional

NOTE: The technique is particularly interesting at higher ‘Simon Says’, tell the students they are to follow
levels where you are dealing with abstract nouns. A these rules:
student miming the word ‘revocation’ (as in the
● ‘Simon says...’ students obey normally
Revocation of the Treaty of Nantes) has a real job on
● ‘O’Grady says...’ students obey, doing the action
their hands!
as fast as they can
● ‘Henk says ...’ students do the opposite of what
is ordered, for example, they
‘unmake’ the bed.
● Direct order students do absolutely nothing
Anybody who gets the rule wrong, and obeys
O’Grady slowly, for example, is out of the game.

3 Allow the students to show the class what their

opposites were (under ‘Henk says’), getting them to
name these opposites in English. Write the words up
on the board.

Variation
This game is excellent for practising any group of action
verbs. For example:
● stare, peek, ogle, look, glance
● run, stumble, walk, limp, jump, hop, walk backwards,
tip-toe
● grin, laugh, guffaw, giggle, titter, belly laugh

It is also good for practising parts of the body:

● Touch your nose, elbow, ear, belly-button ...

42
 Revising and Stretching Vocabulary Vocabulary

Designing Words What it is and What it isn’t

Level beginner to lower intermediate Level lower intermediate to advanced

Materials sheets of paper / notebooks Materials copies of Definition Sheet below

1 Ask the students to work individually and retrieve Preparation

twenty words that they have half forgotten from two In lesson 1, pair the students and give them copies of
or three units back in the coursebook. (If you are the Definition Sheet. Ask them to find out what the
doing unit 10, ask them to go back to units 6 and 7.) definitions are. For homework, ask them to write
‘definition sheets’ of their own for six words they think
2 Pair students and ask them to ‘design’ the words on their classmates may not know, from the next six units in
the page in front of them. For example, a student the coursebook.
might write ‘ladder’ like this:
r
e
Definition Sheet
d
d
1
a Grammar Clue: verb, noun
L Length Clue: three letters
Meaning Clue: a synonym of pig
3 Ask the students to get up, mingle and share their Rhyme Clue: rhymes with ‘agog’
designs with each other.
Collocates / Combines with: to go the whole _______ ,
_______wash
Acknowledgement: I learnt the designer idea from Mitch
Legutke at a workshop in Hessen, Germany, in the early What is it? _____________________
80’s; Morgan and I used it in Vocabulary (Oxford, 1986).
2
Grammar Clue: past participle, adjective
Length Clue: six letters
Meaning Clue: disappointed /
stomach taken out
Rhyme Clue: rhymes with ‘jutted’
Collocates / Combines with: absolutely _______
What is it? _____________________

1 In lesson 2, group students in fours and ask them to

work on their classmates’ definition sheets.

2 Write all the new words on the board and check that
everyone understands them.

NOTES: The answers are 1 ‘hog’ and 2 ‘gutted’.

Revising what has been covered and pre-visiting the
‘right hand part’ of the coursebook is central to using the
materials well.

43
 Vocabulary Revising and Stretching Vocabulary

Auctioning Collocations

Level upper intermediate to advanced

Materials copies of lists of collocations and
non-collocations, hammer (optional)

Preparation Variations
Look through the unit you have just finished, the current a You can auction a mixture of correct and incorrect
unit and the following unit, and pull out twelve to sentences from the students’ homework, as suggested
fifteen strong collocations. Suppose you have picked in Grammar Games (Rinvolucri M, Cambridge, 1984).
out, for example:
b After working on a given structure, for example, the
● essential tools present perfect, you can auction a mixture of
● similar techniques sentences like this:
● to walk down a street
● I am here for five days. (correct, if the reference is
● virtual world
future)
For half the collocations chosen, create parallel non- ● I am here since five days. (incorrect)
collocations. For example: ● I’ve been here for five days. (correct)
● like techniques ● I am here from five days. (incorrect)
● to walk down a forest c To teach new vocabulary, give the students a list of
Now you have fourteen real collocations from the units bilingual vocabulary with some of the translations
and seven or eight non-collocations. correct and some incorrect. Here is a Spanish versus
English list:
Spanish English
1 Assume the role of a showman. Explain that this is a
‘collocations auction’, and the students are going bid mermelada marmalade (should be ‘jam’)
in pairs. There are over twenty items on sale: some periódico newpaper
are genuine and some are fakes. Each pair of cuaderno exercise book
auction-goers has $10,000 to bid with. librería library (should be ‘bookshop’)
In this auction, the students only buy the correct
2 Pair the students. Give out copies of the list and ask translations.
the pairs to decide which phrases they want to buy.
Run the auction with all the razzmatazz you can Acknowledgement: I found auctioning being used in
muster, using language like: 1970’s values clarification work and adapted it for
language work. I discovered the idea in A Practical
... beautiful collocation, flows off the tongue,
Guide to Values Clarification (Smith M, University
priceless, what am I bid for virtual world? Lady in
Associates, La Jolla, California, 1977).
blue there at the back, two hundred dollars ... two
hundred and fifty! Gentleman in front here, two
hundred and fifty ... Any advances on two hundred
and fifty, on two hundred and fifty? Going ... going ...
GONE! (hammer comes down)

3 After selling off an item, briefly tell the group

whether it is genuine or fake. But be sure to sell off
the fakes with as much conviction as the authentic
items.

4 At the end, make sure that everybody knows which

are the good collocations and which are false ones.

44
 Revising and Stretching Vocabulary Vocabulary

Pre-teaching Vocabulary Placing Sentences in Space

Level lower intermediate to advanced Level lower intermediate to advanced

Materials list of definitions Materials photocopies of reading passage, scissors
for students, A3 sheets of paper
Preparation
Look through a reading passage in the coursebook and 1 Tell the students to read the passage individually and
select twelve words that you think most of the students ask about any difficult lexis.
won’t know. Prepare twelve sentences that define or
contextualise each of the words. For example: 2 Ask the students to cut the passage up into sentences
● ‘BSE’ is the scientific term for mad cow disease. or phrases.
● Bees ‘swarm’ when they move from one nest to the
next, they move as a black cloud or ‘swarm’. 3 Tell them to draw a ground plan of their house or flat
on the large sheets of paper. They must use all the
1 Dictate your defining or contextualising sentences to space.
the students. They should only write down the
words, not the rest of the sentence. Read each 4 They now place each of the cut-up sentences on the
sentence twice. appropriate part of their ground plan. For example, a
phrase like ‘looking forward to hearing from you’
2 Ask the students to read the passage. might go by the telephone or on a desk in a study.
‘We are now more vulnerable to asteroids’ might go
3 Read the sentences a third time. near the living room window, because it is from here
you can see the sky best.
4 Ask the students to read the passage again.
5 Group the students in fours and ask them to explain
their placings.
Acknowledgement: I learnt this technique several years
ago from Gudrun, a teacher working in Oslo. 6 Allow time for general feedback.

NOTE:For a similar exercise dealing with vocabulary, see

Vocabulary (Morgan J et al, Oxford, 1986).

45
 Vocabulary Revising and Stretching Vocabulary

Exploring Word Meanings Paraphrasing Phrasal Verbs

with Rods
Level lower intermediate to advanced
Level lower intermediate to advanced Materials copies of rewritten reading passage
(This activity works with classes of up
to 25 students.) Preparation
Materials Cuisenaire rods Take a reading passage from the coursebook that the
students worked on two weeks ago and that presents a
good number of new phrasal verbs. Rewrite the passage
1 Take a short list of words you would like to revise
replacing the phrasal verbs by Latinate equivalents or
from a recent unit in the coursebook. Ask the class to
semi-equivalents.
gather round a table so they can see the rods clearly.

1 Hand out copies of your version of the reading

2 Get four students to come and squat round the table
passage. Ask the students to read it with their
so they do not block the others’ view. Give them an
coursebooks shut. Ask them if they notice any
abstract word like ‘respect’ and ask them,
changes.
individually, to depict the word, using rods.

2 Tell the students to replace all the Latinate verbs with

3 Ask them to explain their rod arrangements to the
the original phrasal verbs.
class. This can be done in L1.

3 Ask one student to read the passage aloud to the

4 Send the four students back into the group and bring
class, with all the phrasal verbs restored.
out four more. Give them another word, for example,
‘oppression’. They use rods to symbolise the word
and explain their four arrangements to the class. NOTE: EFL coursebooks are odd in the way they often
present the phrasal verb later than its Latinate equivalent.
This order reverses the way a native-speaking child
NOTE: An Arab student expressed ‘respect’ with a very
learns language: a seven-year-old will say:
short rod right next to a very tall rod. A Dane in the
same class expressed the same words by placing two ‘Mummy was going to the dentist tomorrow, but she put
rods of nearly equal height some distance from each it off.’
other. What clear cultural statements!
The verb ‘to postpone’ would sound remote and
difficult.
Acknowledgement: I learnt this use of rods from Simon
Marshall, a Pilgrims colleague.
Acknowledgement: I learnt this technique from Christine
Frank, author of Challenge to Think (Oxford, 1982) and
Grammar in Action Again (Prentice Hall, 1987).

46
 Revising and Stretching Vocabulary Vocabulary

Synonyms Exercise Synonym Reversal

Level lower intermediate to advanced Level lower intermediate to upper intermediate

Materials none Materials sheets of paper / notebooks

Preparation Preparation
Choose one of the structures being taught in the current Go through the last unit’s reading passage and write in
unit and produce a long, embedded sentence including as many synonyms as you can: For example:
the structure. Give synonyms for the main content-words She walked down the broad avenue
in the utterance. Suppose you are teaching delexical 1 wide
verbs, the sentence could look like this:
until she came to the intersection.
They were drinking in the bar when she crossroads.
having a drink
gave an amused laugh at someting he had 1 Dictate the text, with synonyms, to the class. Tell the
laughed with amusement students that their task is to take it down as it was
made a comment on and gave his hand a squeeze; originally.
commented squeezed his hand;
2 Tell the students to compare their hand-written texts
they were both silent for a while,
with the text in the book.
each bit,
taking occasional sips of their wine, before going 3 Get them to list the words and their synonyms on the
occasionally sipping their wine board.
off to have a swim.
swim.

1 Nominate five or six students round the class to read

the sentence aloud. They can choose either of the
binary alternatives.

2 Rub out one of the lexical verbs, for example,

‘commented on’.

3 Ask a student to read the sentence, using the

delexical equivalent, ‘made a comment on’.

4 Now rub out the delexical equivalent as well. The

next student reads the sentence with the delexical
equivalent which is no longer on the board.

5 Work your way through all the binary alternatives

this way until the students are ‘reading’ the full
sentence from a half-empty board.

NOTE: For a useful list of such verbs, see Collins

COBUILD English Grammar (Collins Cobuild, 1990).
1
The term ‘delexical’ is applied to a verb in a verb-noun combination in
which the noun carries the meaning and the verb is a kind of ‘empty
auxiliary’. For example:
He took (delexical verb) a step towards Jack.

47
 Vocabulary Revising and Stretching Vocabulary

Vocabulary Enrichment Letters

Level lower intermediate to advanced

Materials Cuisenaire rods

Preparation 1 Give each student a copy of your letter and ask them
You will have your own personal reaction to the to choose which of each word pair they prefer.
readings and the listening activities in the coursebook. If
a particular unit annoys or interests you, write the 2 Ask a student to come to the board and write up all
students a letter setting out your reaction and using the word pairs.
some of the vocabulary from the unit. In your letter, give
the synonyms of some of the words you have used. 3 Ask all the students to come out and tick each of the
Supposing your letter is about a listening on the royal words they like better than its synonym.
family, it might look like this:
4 Ask round the class about particular preferences.
Dear Everybody,
All, 5 As homework, each student replies to your letter.

I wonder what you felt about the passage

text

about the UK royal family. I felt it was

British

a bit yukky. The author seems to think they

rather writer

are wonderful people. I don’t agree. In my

marvellous I disagree.

view the royals are a costly burden to the

an expensive

country. I think the Queen should abdicate

step down

and the UK should join the family of republics.

Britain has abolished the old Lords,

done away with

so why not the monarchy?

48