Unit 3 (Two Stories about Flying)
Adverbs, prefixes, phrasal verbs and the passive
Use prefixes, phrasal verbs and the passive voice correctly.
Adjective to adverb. Usually add -ly: vague → vaguely. Watch the spelling:
- a final y becomes i: angry → angrily, hurried → hurriedly;
- indignant → indignantly, threatening → threateningly.
Example: 'I vaguely remember my first day at school.'
Prefixes for opposites.
- im- before m and p: immobile, imbalance, impartial, improper, immoral, impolite, impossible, impatient;
- il- before l: illiterate, illegal, illogical, illegitimate;
- in- for many others: insecure, invisible, incomplete.
Phrasal verbs. A verb plus a small word, with a new meaning you cannot always guess:
- walk in (a walk-in interview: no appointment); walk out (leave, often in anger);
- take up (start a hobby: take up yoga); take in (understand);
- give away (give free); give in (stop resisting); give up (stop trying);
- put in (effort); put away (store: Diwali decorations boxed for next year); put out (a fire).
The passive. The object becomes the subject; use a form of be + past participle:
- 'Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal' → 'The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan.'
- 'The field has been converted into a playground.' (present perfect: has been + converted)
Add by + the doer only when it tells us something useful.
A science note. The book's drill says the 'malaria virus'. Malaria is caused by a parasite, not a virus. The female Anopheles mosquito carries it.
Unscrambling: Amelia Earhart. Find the subject and verb first, then attach the other chunks. She was an American pilot who set many records, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while trying to fly round the world; her plane was never found. It remains one of the twentieth century's great unsolved mysteries.
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