Mr Kelly's Cambridge Proficiency Blog: February 2017

Thursday 16 February 2017

Gerunds and Infinitives

To consolidate your understandings of gerunds and infinitives, follow the link below for a range of activities:

Wednesday 15 February 2017

A film magazine is running a series of reviews of movies that people enjoyed watching as a child and would recommend for children today. You decide to send in a review in which you describe a movie you enjoyed and the attractions it had for you as a child. You should also explain why you feel it remains relevant for children today.

Write your review (280-320 words).

Aim to include examples of the following:

2-3 inversions
2-3 complex conditional structures
2-3 passive voice structures
2-3 gerunds and infinitives

CPE Listening: Part One

Extract One

You hear a consultant in communication talking about business meetings.

1. What is the consultant doing when he mentions mobile phones at meetings?

a) Criticising the overuse of technology

b) Explaining how they can boost a person's image

c) Warning against making them visible

2. What advice does he give about talking at meetings?

a) Comment on all points made.

b) Avoid answering questions impulsively.

c) Offer strong closing contributions

Extract Two

You hear an ecologist, Todd Howell, talking about his new educational organisation 'Green Adventure'.

3. Todd believes that the public's concern about climate change

a) is increasing rapidly.

b) is becoming too simplistic.

c) is being undermined by commercial interests.

4. When talking about introducing ecology to schoolchildren, Todd reveals

a) his amusement at their naive answers.

b) his delight in their straightforward reactions.

c) his concern about the content of the curriculum.

Extract Three

You hear a photographer talking about the art of photography.

5. What approach is she advocating?

a) gaining inspiration from paintings

b) ensuring photographs have a clearly-defined subject

c) selecting seemingly trivial subjects

6. Why does she mention globalisation?

a) to lament the decline in strong local images available to photographers

b) to suggest that it enhances the fascination with certain photographic images

c) to remind photographers of the need to work to the highest standards

Wednesday 1 February 2017

Use of English: What you need to know

Part One: Multiple Choice Cloze

Idiomatic expressions
Phrasal verbs
Collocations
Binomials

– Binomial pairs joined by and (neat and tidy)

– Binomial pairs joined by or (take it or leave it)

– Binomial pairs with alliteration (safe and sound)

– Rhyming binomial pairs (wear and tear)

– Binomial pairs joined by other words (back to front)

Similes

Part Two: Open Cloze

Pronouns/Relative pronouns/Reflexive pronouns

– who, whom, which, whoever, whomever, whichever, and that

– Myself, herself, himself

Articles and Determiners/Quantifiers

– Specific determiners:

• the definite article: the

• possessives: my, your, his, her, its; our, their, whose

• demonstratives: this, that, these, those

• interrogatives: which

– General determiners

• a, an, any, another, other, what

– Quantifiers:

• all, any, enough, less, a lot of, lots of, more, most, no, none of, some

Conjunctions and linking words or phrases

– but, for, so, yet

Prepositional phrases and phrasal verbs

– at home, in time

Collocations

Part Three: Word Formations

Forming verbs and nouns
Forming adjective and adverbs
Less common prefixes
Forming compound words

Part Four: Key Word Transformations

Comparative structures
Expressions/common lexical patterns
Phrasal verbs
Conditionals and formal structures

The link below takes you to a detailed list of the key CPE grammar points listed above. Make sure you fully understand, and are able to make use of, each of them.