I. Read the text and determine the subtitles of it

III. Define the main sentences in the text to make a brief summary.

II. Make up a vocabulary of new words.

IV. Give translations to the following words and word-combinations:

conventional academic subjects, A-level exams, entry to university, interview, exam grades, higher education, supervision, vocational studies, drop-out rate, full-time, grant, living expenses, accommodation, campus, to encourage, a part-time job.

TEXT 6

Vocabu­lary of American Youngsters

Editors of the American Heritage dic­tionaries are trying to pep up the vocabu­lary power of American youngsters and their parents.

They have compiled a list of 100 words which, they hope, every high school graduate should know. The list is not ex­haustive, but the words are a benchmark against which high school graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a command of the language.

Undoubtedly, everybody needs to have at their disposal tens of thousands of words. On average, a two-year-old child actively uses about 500 words and a five-year-old child up to 3,000. At about the age of 13 there is often a jump to 20,000.

The average educated adult knows and can potentially use at least 50,000 words and some university graduates possibly can double this number. These are not used all the time but words such as ‘butterfly’, ‘crocodile’ and ‘igloo’, for example, could easily be retrieved if needed, even though they are unlikely to come into conversation every day.

However, words are not like beach shells to be collected or even flowers to be picked and pressed. They are always learnt in a context. Of course, just knowing words and how to put them into a sentence is only part of the whole process. A teenager would be unlikely to use the word ‘pho­tosynthesis’ without some knowledge of plant biology. The words on these lists are inseparable from the general knowledge that surrounds them.

All this brings us back to the Amer­ican word list. Is it a waste of time? Yes, if readers are simply asked to learn the words by rote, without any context. No, if they are presented with these words in a sen­tence or, better still, asked to look them up: good dictionaries include an example of the words they are listing in sentences.

Even if they are put into sentences, are they the right ones for a British readership? Well, yes and no. Some on the American list are fine – words such as ‘irony’, ‘nanotechnology’, ‘omnipotent’, ‘parameter’ and ‘respiration’. A few, such as ‘notarize’, have a distinct transatlantic flavour. Others, such as ‘yeoman’, seem to be of interest mainly to historians.

However, the American list is low in a number of areas that are of strong in­terest to many people in Britain. Hardly any words that have come into the English language from the immigrant population have been included.

Medical and scientific terms are also thin on the ground in the American list. Furthermore, the world of com­puters needs to be better represented with words such as ‘byte’ and ‘cyberspace’.

Once started, it's hard to stop. The English language now has easily more than half a million words and that's in Britain alone. If English from around the globe were added in, it might even double.

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