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C2 Proficiency: Key Word Transformation Training #2

This is an exam preparation activity for students taking the C2 Proficiency exam. Students learn some fixed expressions that may come up in part 4 of the reading and use of English paper and also practice their paraphrasing skills. Download the handout below:

I recommend using my first key word transformation training exercise first.

Use the first 12 slides of this quizlet set to test students’ memories of the fixed expressions from the first training activity. You could then give them this doc of 15 of the key word transformations as homework or spaced repetition at a later date:

Then hand out the new worksheet. First students work in pairs to paraphrase the expressions in bold and come up with notes to help them remember the expressions; this could involve taking a note of a dependent preposition or a verb pattern (gerund/infinitive). Monitor and check students’ understanding of the expressions. Then students turn the paper over and attempt to recall the expressions with the help of the key words. Finally, students recall prepositions from the expressions as these can often trip students up. Also, the second point in a key word transformation question can often come down to a dependent preposition.

You could use this quizziz game to test their memory of the prepositions at a later date.

Student Handout

Look at the expressions in bold. Discuss the meaning with your partner and make notes to help you remember them.

• The film fell short of my expectations I’m afraid.

Meaning………………………………………………………………………………. Notes ………………………….

• Tickets are probably sold out but there’s no harm in call ing to check.
• My son took absolutely no notice of my advice and spent all his birthday money on video games.
• It seems that there’s little prospect that they will be able to win the championship now.
• It was a really interesting lecture that gave us food for thought.
• His injury had a serious effect on his ability to earn a living.
• Giles can be relied on to help out if you’re in a spot of bother.
• It never occurred to me to ask Jenny for help with the car, I didn’t know she was an engineer.
• He was given a life sentence for murder.
• Sadly, her career has always taken priority over her family.
• The printer is apt to disconnect from the wifi network, it has a mind of its own.
• The specials menu is subject to change on a daily basis.
• Julia’s command of German is extraordinary , she nailed the presentation.
• For the first month of membership you will be exempt from pay ing delivery fees.
• In the winter months it’s cold beyond belief so bring warm clothes.
• Let’s go out! I ’m in the mood for danc ing tonight.
• The audience showed their disapproval of the comedian’s routine by booing loudly.
• Martin has his hands full now that his wife has given birth to twins.
• Thank you so much for the loan. I have every intention of pay ing you back ASAP.
• You ’re putting your life in jeopardy every time you drink and drive.
• By the look of his facial expression, I’d say that he didn’t take your criticism well.

Now look at version 2. Work with a partner, try to recall the expressions using the key words to help you.

• The film wasn’t as good as I thought it would be (SHORT) I’m afraid.

……………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………………….

• Tickets are probably sold out but we might as well call (HARM) to check.
• My son completely ignored (NOTICE) my advice and spent all his birthday money on video games.
• It seems that there’s not much chance that (PROSPECT) they will be able to win the championship now.
• It was a really interesting lecture that made us think (FOOD).
• His injury seriously affected (EFFECT) his ability to earn a living.
• Giles will always (RELIED) help out if you’re in a spot of bother.
• I never thought of asking (OCCURRED) Jenny for help with the car, I didn’t know she was an engineer.
• He was sent to prison for the rest of his life for (SENTENCE) murder.
• Sadly, her career has always been more important to her than (PRIORITY) her family.
• The printer has a tendency to (APT) disconnect from the wifi network, it has a mind of its own.
• The specials menu can sometimes change (SUBJECT) on a daily basis.
• Julia speaks German extraordinarily well (COMMAND) , she did the presentation very well. (N…)
• For the first month of membership you won’t have to pay (EXEMPT) delivery fees.
• In the winter months it’s so cold you wouldn’t believe it (BEYOND) so bring warm clothes.
• Let’s go out! I feel like dancing (MOOD) tonight.
• The audience complained about (DISAPPROVAL) the comedian’s routine by booing loudly.
• Martin is very busy (HANDS) now that his wife had the (BIRTH) twins.
• Thank you so much for the loan. I will definitely pay (EVERY) you back ASAP.
• You ’re endangering your life (JEOPARDY) every time you drink and drive.
• If you look at (BY) his facial expression, I’d say that he didn’t take your criticism well.

Preposition Check

The second point in a key word transformation can often come down to the preposition. Can you remember the prepositions in these expressions?

• The film fell short ….. my expectations I’m afraid.
• Tickets are probably sold out but there’s no harm ….. call ing to check.
• My son took absolutely no notice ….. my advice and spent all his birthday money on video games.
• It was a really interesting lecture that gave us food ….. thought.
• His injury had a serious effect ….. his ability to earn a living.
• Giles can be relied ….. to help out if you’re in a spot of bother.
• It never occurred ….. me to ask Jenny for help with the car, I didn’t know she was an engineer.
• He was given a life sentence ….. murder.
• Sadly, her career has always taken priority ….. her family.
• The printer is apt ….. disconnect from the wifi network, it has a mind of its own.
• The specials menu is subject ….. change on a daily basis.
• Julia’s command ….. German is extraordinary , she nailed the presentation.
• For the first month of membership you will be exempt ….. pay ing delivery fees.
• In the winter months it’s cold ……… belief so bring warm clothes.
• Let’s go out! I ’m ….. the mood ….. danc ing tonight.
• The audience showed their disapproval ….. the comedian’s routine by booing loudly.
• Martin has his hands full now that his wife has given birth ….. twins.
• Thank you so much for the loan. I have every intention ….. pay ing you back ASAP.
• You ’re putting your life ….. jeopardy every time you drink and drive.
• ….. the look of his facial expression, I’d say that he didn’t take your criticism well.

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Paraphrasing Exercise

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This resource discusses how to paraphrase correctly and accurately.

Directions: On a separate piece of paper, write a paraphrase of each of the following passages. Try not to look back at the original passage.

1. "The Antarctic is the vast source of cold on our planet, just as the sun is the source of our heat, and it exerts tremendous control on our climate," [Jacques] Cousteau told the camera. "The cold ocean water around Antarctica flows north to mix with warmer water from the tropics, and its upwellings help to cool both the surface water and our atmosphere. Yet the fragility of this regulating system is now threatened by human activity." From "Captain Cousteau," Audubon (May 1990):17.

2. The twenties were the years when drinking was against the law, and the law was a bad joke because everyone knew of a local bar where liquor could be had. They were the years when organized crime ruled the cities, and the police seemed powerless to do anything against it. Classical music was forgotten while jazz spread throughout the land, and men like Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie became the heroes of the young. The flapper was born in the twenties, and with her bobbed hair and short skirts, she symbolized, perhaps more than anyone or anything else, America's break with the past. From Kathleen Yancey, English 102 Supplemental Guide (1989): 25.

3. Of the more than 1000 bicycling deaths each year, three-fourths are caused by head injuries. Half of those killed are school-age children. One study concluded that wearing a bike helmet can reduce the risk of head injury by 85 percent. In an accident, a bike helmet absorbs the shock and cushions the head. From "Bike Helmets: Unused Lifesavers," Consumer Reports (May 1990): 348.

4. Matisse is the best painter ever at putting the viewer at the scene. He's the most realistic of all modern artists, if you admit the feel of the breeze as necessary to a landscape and the smell of oranges as essential to a still life. "The Casbah Gate" depicts the well-known gateway Bab el Aassa, which pierces the southern wall of the city near the sultan's palace. With scrubby coats of ivory, aqua, blue, and rose delicately fenced by the liveliest gray outline in art history, Matisse gets the essence of a Tangier afternoon, including the subtle presence of the bowaab, the sentry who sits and surveys those who pass through the gate. From Peter Plagens, "Bright Lights." Newsweek (26 March 1990): 50.

5. While the Sears Tower is arguably the greatest achievement in skyscraper engineering so far, it's unlikely that architects and engineers have abandoned the quest for the world's tallest building. The question is: Just how high can a building go? Structural engineer William LeMessurier has designed a skyscraper nearly one-half mile high, twice as tall as the Sears Tower. And architect Robert Sobel claims that existing technology could produce a 500-story building. From Ron Bachman, "Reaching for the Sky." Dial (May 1990): 15.

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What's paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing involves expressing someone else’s ideas or thoughts in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Paraphrasing tools can help you quickly reword text by replacing certain words with synonyms or restructuring sentences. They can also make your text more concise, clear, and suitable for a specific audience. Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic writing and professional communication. 

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Frequently asked questions

The act of putting someone else’s ideas or words into your own words is called paraphrasing, rephrasing, or rewording. Even though they are often used interchangeably, the terms can mean slightly different things:

Paraphrasing is restating someone else’s ideas or words in your own words while retaining their meaning. Paraphrasing changes sentence structure, word choice, and sentence length to convey the same meaning.

Rephrasing may involve more substantial changes to the original text, including changing the order of sentences or the overall structure of the text.

Rewording is changing individual words in a text without changing its meaning or structure, often using synonyms.

It can. One of the two methods of paraphrasing is called “Fluency.” This will improve the language and fix grammatical errors in the text you’re paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing and using a paraphrasing tool aren’t cheating. It’s a great tool for saving time and coming up with new ways to express yourself in writing.  However, always be sure to credit your sources. Avoid plagiarism.  

If you don’t properly cite text paraphrased from another source, you’re plagiarizing. If you use someone else’s text and paraphrase it, you need to credit the original source. You can do that by using citations. There are different styles, like APA, MLA, Harvard, and Chicago. Find more information about citing sources here.

Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly cite the source . This means including an in-text citation and a full reference, formatted according to your required citation style .

As well as citing, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas in your own words.

So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?

• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
• Paraphrasing  is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely in your own words and properly cite the source .

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Ficha para trabajar aspectos propios de la ortografía. En este caso el uso de la Y en los verbos.

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How many dogs have government jobs? What about sea lions?

Washington is going to the dogs — for real this time.

As of 2022, the federal government employed 5,159 German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, beagles, Jack Russell terriers and other forms of everyone’s favorite furry friend. Another 421 worked as canine contractors.

Department of Data

The job descriptions for these four-legged feds range from the sublime — 31 help “park rangers traverse Denali National Park in winter” — to the subprime: Others “detect waterfowl feces” infected with bird flu.

We found the work of these politically connected canines described in magical detail in a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which apparently is taking its role as government watchdog literally. The report — which addresses the working conditions of working dogs — somehow escaped our noticed until we were scooped by our friends at USA Facts , a data evangelism and dissemination outfit founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

The majority of Uncle Sam’s shepherds (and other breeds) — almost 3,000 — work for the Department of Homeland Security. About 1,100 of those DHS dogs sniff bags and whatnot for the Transportation Security Administration, otherwise known as everyone’s airport security friend, the TSA. Another 1,800 are Pentagon pooches, hard at work for the Defense Department. Together, those two departments account for 85 percent of total federal working breeds.

Across every agency and other government-adjacent institution included in the database, the most common use for dogs seems to be detecting explosives and drugs — tasks they perform in places as diverse as Amtrak (57 police dogs), the Postal Service (47 dogs) and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (eight dogs). The SPR, in particular, would seem to have an incentive to ask its dogs to detect anything that might blow up — anything other than its 360 million barrels of crude oil , that is.

Dogs also patrol and search hard-to-reach areas, such as federal wildlife refuges; track people on Forest Service land and for the Veterans Affairs Police; and apprehend suspects for law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service. At some agencies, dogs even work to identify currency, firearms, pests and invasive species.

As you might imagine, given their demanding and sometimes dangerous jobs, these productive pups often undergo months of training — more training than is required in many human occupations . GAO finds “procuring and training a dog can cost approximately $65,000 to $85,000.” If that were an annual salary, it would put our canine colleagues between GS-7 and GS-11 in D.C., depending on level of experience.

Furthermore, GAO says these dogs ought to be provided with “food and water,” housing “at a handler’s home or at a kennel,” and “exercise for working dogs appropriate to weight and breed” — the kind of lifestyle perks you don’t usually get until you rise to GS-14 or so.

How many other animals work for the feds? We’re curious!

The U.S. Army sold its last homing pigeon in 1957. If “guinea pig” counts as a job, the National Institutes of Health keep thousands of mice, rats, fish, hamsters, pigs, dogs, rabbits, monkeys and, yes, guinea pigs, according to an analysis of Agriculture Department and NIH data by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. NASA employed monkeys and chimpanzees as astronauts, or at least as prominent research subjects. But the space agency reportedly euthanized what appeared to be its last 27 nonhuman primates on a single day in 2019 .

The Navy’s Marine Mammal Program has at various points tested a dozen marine mammals — including orcas, pilot whales and seals — for duties including mine detection and swimmer defense . Birds, sea turtles and sharks also have been pressed into service.

As of early 2023, the Navy still trained a reported 77 dolphins and 47 sea lions. According to the New York Times, they no longer breed dolphins and plan to phase out the animals in favor of underwater drones. Meanwhile the animals, some of whom were once deployed in America’s foreign wars, are helping break new ground with research on kidney stones, cataracts, weight issues and all the other indignities faced by aging veterans everywhere.

Maybe Americans just hate school buses?

A few of you contacted us about our column regarding a sharp drop in school-bus use during the coronavirus pandemic to say we’d missed the obvious: People aren’t riding school buses because buses are — and we’re paraphrasing here — bully-riddled, foul-smelling, wildly inconvenient, rolling disease vectors.

To be honest, we had dismissed that line of thinking because, as far as we can recall, school buses could be unpleasant even before the pandemic. So it may not explain the drop.

Also, we didn’t have data on school-bus popularity. Until, that is, our friend Carl Bialik of the online polling company YouGov read the column and reacted the only way he knows how: with polling. This month, Bialik asked 1,117 U.S. adults what they thought of the transportation that had taken them to school .

Buses lost. Only 34 percent of us who rode the bus “liked” or “loved” the experience, a figure that appears downright pitiable next to the incredible 91 percent who said the same about driving themselves. In fact, having your own set of wheels was wildly popular even if there was no engine involved: Riding a bike (or skateboard, or scooter) got 71 percent support.

The fastest-rising mode of transport — being picked up and dropped off by a relative — roughly tied with carpooling at 65 percent. Though it did better if you looked only at those who said they loved it.

Walking wasn’t beloved — data hints it may be especially unpopular in the Midwest — and public transit wasn’t really anybody’s favorite. But those two modes ran laps around the lowly yellow bus. It was the only mode of transportation to evoke more negative feelings than positive ones.

Of course, something can be tremendously vital and important without being particularly beloved. Just ask the IRS, Interstate 95 or dental floss. Getting to school is the single most important prerequisite for succeeding in school, and the yellow bus is sometimes a child’s only means of doing so.

The best question we can’t answer

During the Spring and Summer in Connecticut there are thousands upon thousands of robins. During the day they only make quiet chirps, but as the sun goes down a single robin or two sit high in a tree and make a loud chant/song until the sun goes down.

Is this night song repeated over and over by a single robin a form of religious service for all robins in the area to their Sun God?

— David ONeil, South Windsor, Conn.

The perhaps unsurprising news, David, is that we just don’t have the data for this. We tried our best, contacting one of our all-time favorite sources, Eliot Miller, now with the American Bird Conservancy.

If anyone on the planet could decode your robins, it would be Miller, the man who once helped us determine — once and for all — which birds are the biggest jerks at the feeder .

Miller helped develop a Cornell Lab of Ornithology app that recognizes birdsong and now crisscrosses the Americas setting up recorders and analyzing audio data to create new measures of bird diversity . Unfortunately, even Miller’s artificial intelligence models can’t currently identify Sun God worship among robins, though he sounded like he was tempted to try.

But there’s good news: Miller doesn’t need AI to guess what went down in Connecticut.

“Birds, particularly migratory birds like robins, breed on an annual cycle,” he told us. “Their gonads enlarge, testosterone starts pumping, and all of a sudden they go from making little whines and chirps when they get scared or annoyed to full-blown songs until the sun goes down.

“This particularly happens leading up to when they actually have babies. Why? Because now is when they are duking it out over who gets to breed where, with which females. Later, when there are babies, they’ll actually cut back on the singing, presumably to draw less attention to their nest.”

Miller did leave the door open to robin religion, however. The mating-related explanations “are ideas humans have come up with,” he said. “They’re probably right, but you got to ask the birds to be sure.”

Hi! The Department of Data is on a quest for queries. What are you curious about: What fish swim the fastest? Has news coverage really grown more negative? What’s the best workplace in pro sports? Just ask!

If your question inspires a column, we’ll send you an official Department of Data button and ID card. This week, we’re mailing them to Nate Johnold at USAFacts, who spotted the government dogs data, Carl Bialik at YouGov and thrush theologian David ONeil.

• How many dogs have government jobs? What about sea lions? March 15, 2024 How many dogs have government jobs? What about sea lions? March 15, 2024
• The great American llama (and ostrich and emu) collapse March 8, 2024 The great American llama (and ostrich and emu) collapse March 8, 2024
• A huge federal project identified the most physically demanding jobs in America March 1, 2024 A huge federal project identified the most physically demanding jobs in America March 1, 2024