Word of the Week
With its 120th word, Word of the Week has now come to an end. We hope you enjoyed this free feature and that it has given you an insight into the thinking and research behind the English Vocabulary Profile.
All 120 are still available to read in our archive, below. Each Word of the Week in the archive is followed by a link to the full entry for that word on the English Vocabulary Profile. To view the entries, you will need to subscribe to the EVP: to subscribe for free click here.
Word of the week: put
The verb put is extremely common in English. Learners meet it at A1 level in the sense of moving something to a place or position, and at A2 in the sense of WRITE. It is also likely to feature in classroom instructions and textbook rubrics. Three senses of the phrasal verb put on are listed as being at A2 and one of these, CLOTHES, may well be known at A1. A number of phrasal verbs with put are known from B1 level, including put away, put back and put off in the sense of DELAY, and several more are acquired at B2 and beyond. Phrasal verbs are always listed at the end of an EVP entry, and can be searched for as a separate category. You can use the Advanced Search facility in the preview version of the EVP to get an idea of how this works in practice.To view the full entry for put on the English Vocabulary Profile, please click here.
Word of the week: if
Not surprisingly, the conjunction if has a fairly long entry in the EVP. Most of its uses are in conditional structures, but the entry also includes the B2 level phrase as if, as in It was as if we’d been friends for years. This phrase also appears in the entry for as, which was recently featured as the Word of the Week – because the EVP is an electronic resource rather than a printed book with obvious space constraints, we can list phrases in more than one place, giving you easy access to the information.To view the full entry for if on the English Vocabulary Profile, please click here.
Word of the week: strike
The word strike has more meanings than are currently held in the A1-B2 levels of the EVP, so it will be revisited in the C levels analysis that is currently taking place. The main meaning of the noun, as in being/going on strike, appears to be known from B1 level, although its use among learners is understandably confined to adults. The verb is a complex one for learners to use with confidence and causes errors in grammar, spelling and word order. At B2 level, the Cambridge Learner Corpus shows that its use in association with a thought or idea, as in it strikes me that, what struck me most, etc. is at least as common as the verb sense STOP WORK. Indeed, learners tend to use the phrase on strike with be or go in preference to the verb.To view the full entry for strike on the English Vocabulary Profile, please click here.
