Additional Practice: Vocab in Context

Additional Practice: Vocabulary in Context

By Linda Flores

Pay careful attention to context to better understand unknown words or phrases.

Tip #2

Try plugging in the answer choices to find the option that makes the best sense.

Tip #1

Remember!

Multiple Choice

While the fame of musical geniuses

like Mozart and Beethoven endures

for centuries, the idols of pop music

quickly fade into _____.

• obscurity

• disbelief

• permanence

• poverty

"While" sets up a contrast between the idea of fame and something that is its opposite: obscurity.

Multiple Choice

In order to prevent an increase in the

number of unemployed people, the

economy must expand to _____ new

jobs to offset those lost to factories in

other countries.

• extinguish

• create

• prolong

• conceal

The phrase "in order to" sets up a cause and effect (outcome) sequence. The outcome is employment, so the effect must be the availability of jobs.

Multiple Choice

In order to protect her privacy, the

former employee spoke to reporters

about the safety violations only after

they guaranteed her ____.

• compensation

• publicity

• representation

• anonymity

There are several verbal clues such as "in order to," which tells you that the blank must be filled in by a word that will gurantee privacy: anonymity.

Multiple Choice

In the State of Nature, described by

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan as a

state of war, one against all others, no

individual has sufficient physical

strength to be assured of personal

security, so all rely on ____.

• animosity

• premeditation

• principles

• allies

The key verbal signal is "so," a word that indicates a logical inference or casual consequence: no individual is secure, so everyone belongs to a group.

Multiple Choice

Members of the Research and

Development Council had been

warned that the prototype was

extremely ____, but were pleasantly

surprised to see a model with

many ____ usually incorporated only

much later in the design process.

• crude ... refinements

• flexible ... advances

• rudimentary ... deficiencies

• unreliable ... trappings

"But" is an extremely important verbal signal. It sets up a contrast between "prototype" and the "model." Since prototype means the first example, you would expect it to be fairly primitive and the later versions to be more sophisticated.