Ready for CAE unit 5 pp 62 - 63 Motherhood's Best-Kept Secret

Mr Baechi (Switzerland)
a selection of words from the gapped text exercise in Roy Norris' "Ready for CAE"
31 words 36 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. wander
    move about aimlessly or without any destination
    It was my 19-year-old son, who is at u niversity in Edinburgh, calling to say that he had broken up with his girlfriend at midnight and he had been wandering a round the city ever since, not knowing what to do.
    1. This word sounds exactly the same as "wonder", to be curious to know sth.
    2. The English word, though identical in form to the German word "wandern", carries a different meaning.
  2. wreck
    something or someone that has suffered ruin or dilapidation
    He a rrived looking a wreck, but after a good sleep and some home cooking, he began to feel his old self again.
    understandable definition: a ship destroyed at sea
  3. contemporaries
    all the people living at the same time or of the same age
    Girls I knew then were fairly open with their mothers, but none of my male contemporaries would ever have admitted asking their mothers for advice.
  4. advice
    a proposal for an appropriate course of action
    Girls I knew then were fairly open with their mothers, but none of my male contemporaries would ever have admitted asking their mothers for advice.
  5. contract
    a binding agreement that is enforceable by law
    In a world of short-term contracts, downsizing and redundancy, even the most promising and ambitious of our children will go through many career highs and lows during their twenties;...
  6. redundancy
    the attribute of being superfluous and unneeded
    In a world of short-term contracts, downsizing and redundancy, even the most promising and ambitious of our children will go through many career highs and lows during their twenties;...
    correct definition here: state of being unemployed
  7. dependent
    relying on or requiring a person or thing for support
    A typical son will continue to be at least partly dependent on his mother well past the age of 18.
    important: preposition "on" with "dependent"
  8. dependency
    relying on or being controlled by someone or something else
    There are some encouraging signs of success in reducing dependency on coal.
  9. invincible
    incapable of being overcome or subdued
    When my boy was growing up, he always maintained a fairly invincible front.
  10. siege
    an action of an armed force that surrounds a fortified place
    His early imaginary play involved sieges, ambushes and surprise attacks.
  11. ambush
    the act of hiding and waiting to make a surprise attack
    Here the noun is meant: an ambush.
  12. prevail
    be larger in number, quantity, power, status or importance
    He used the games to convince himself that he could prevail. = overcome any danger, be stronger than anyone else
  13. prevalent
    most frequent or common
  14. bay
    an indentation of a shoreline smaller than a gulf
    In his teens, he used many o f these same tricks to keep me at bay.
  15. reassure
    cause to feel confident
    ' Most of us took pains to reassure our sons that it was okay for them to show physical affection or cry when they were u pset.
  16. affection
    a positive feeling of liking
    ' Most of us took pains to reassure our sons that it was okay for them to show physical affection or cry when they were u pset.
  17. anxious
    causing or fraught with or showing nervousness
    If our boys a re not so anxious now about showing their emotions, our efforts in this a rea have not been in vai n .'
  18. confide
    reveal in private
    I t may be that they were wrong a l l a long - that sons have a lways confided in their mothers - and just made sure that no one else knew.
  19. stumble
    miss a step and fall or nearly fall
    Have I stumbled on motherhood's best-kept secret?
  20. previous
    just preceding something else in time or order
    Our norm has been to em pathize with our children when they tel l us about their actions or feel i ngs, whereas the previous generation tended to be shocked.'
  21. reluctance
    a certain degree of unwillingness
    Many of my friends a re su rprised at this reluctance of their 20-someth ing sons to break away.
  22. intimacy
    a feeling of being close and belonging together
    Pyper, the mother-son intimacy is nothing new.
  23. reticent
    reluctant to draw attention to yourself
    As one friend said of her rather reticent son: ' My job is to give my son courage.'
  24. bond
    a connection that fastens things together
    B ut this contin u ing mother-daughter bond is something
  25. weakness
    a flaw
    I had to teach h i m how to put up new defences so that his rougher classmates would not see his weaknesses.
  26. make up
    form or compose
  27. defence
    an unconscious process that tries to reduce anxiety
    Despite all our talk a bout how important it was for men to let down their defences and learn how to express their feelings, most of us still secretly felt that any man who depended on hiss mother too much was a bit of a mummy's boy.
  28. anticipate
    regard something as probable or likely
  29. empathize
    be understanding of
  30. reluctance
    a certain degree of unwillingness
  31. cuddly
    inviting cuddling or hugging
Created on Tue Nov 19 01:41:28 EST 2013 (updated Thu Jan 08 07:40:05 EST 2015)

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