Lesson 10
THE INTERVIEW

Skills Practice

Text 1
	Read the text below and answer the questions that follow.
Woman: Good morning. Ticket office.
Man: Oh, hello. Can we still get tickets for tonight’s show?
Woman: Yes, there are still tickets available.
Man: Good. How much are they?
Woman: Full price is $35 . Or, $25 concession for students.
Man: Two students, please. What time does the performance start?
Woman: Doors open at 6.30 p.m., but the concert doesn’t begin until 7.15.
Man: That’ll be fine. Can I pay for tickets and collect them at the door?
Woman: Certainly. The ticket office will close at 6, though.
Man: Fine. Two student concessions, please. My name’s Wright. Richard Wright. W-R-I-G-H-T.
Woman: OK. Two students. W-R-I-G ….

	

1. How do the two speakers communicate?
2. What’s the woman’s profession?
3. How do you know the man is a student?
4. Approximately what time will the man arrive at the show?
5. How do you know that the show is a concert performance?
a) From the conversation
b) From the dictionary
c) From my own knowledge
6. Concession means special treatment. How do you know this?
7. How much will the man save for the concession? 
8. How long will the audience wait till the show begins?
9. What do you think the woman is doing at the end of the conversation?
10. What would the man say after the woman’s last line?
a) Good afternoon.
b) Thank you.
c) What’s your name?	

Text 2

	Do the same with this one.

	     
      A recent survey shows that less than a third of the people who replied to the questionnaire complained about their holidays last year. Twenty percent of the respondents said that they had  to wait up to two hours for their flights. About seventy-five percent reported that the accommodation matched the description printed on the brochure. About twenty-five percent of the respondents, however, complained about lost luggage. On the whole, the survey concludes that people expressed quite enough satisfaction about their holidays.
     This is good news for the tourism industry. A holiday is a major purchase—yet it is one we can’t try before we pay. All we have to go on is the brochure we give out to prospective customers. And, most of all, everybody in the business must work harder to provide better service in the market.
	
1

5

10

15	

1. The text is mainly about:
a. how to book a flight
b. results of a survey
c. how to manage a hotel
d. objects of tourism

2. About how many people complained?
a. 100
b. 150
c. 200
d. 250

3. The topic of the second paragraph is:
a. follow up of the survey
b. an interesting market sale
c. the procedure of the survey 
d. work in the tourism business

4. Complaints include the following, except:
a. flight waiting time
b. lost luggage
c. hotel accommodation
d. the questionnaire

5. The word however (line 8) expresses:
a. result
b. contrast
c. addition
d. conclusion

	6. The survey concludes that:
a. people are quite satisfied with their holidays
b. there is too much difficulty in having a holiday
c. respondents are interested in the survey
d. there is good news about the tourism business

7. This (line 12) refers to:
a. news
b. results of the survey
c. tourism industry
d. complaints about tourism business

8. The word prospective (line 15) most closely means:
a. rich
b. satisfied
c. future
d. professional

9. The market (line 17) refers to:
a. customer
b. service
c. business
d. work

10. The writer of the text is being:
a. cynical
b. contradictory
c. critical
d. persuasive	

Clipped Words and Others

	Last week, we studied about synonyms and antonyms. There is another aspect of vocabulary mastery which is often useful for us. This is about clipped words and other forms. 

Clipped Words
	Clipped words are words that are shortened from their original forms. For example, the word TV is a shortened form of the word television. The list that follows presents some examples of clipped words and other forms.

Word	Origin	
TV	

television	
fridge	refrigerator	
lab	laboratory	
vocab	vocabulary	
gym	gymnasium	
maths	mathematics	
ad	advertisement	
phone	telephone	

Homonyms
A homonym is a word that is identical with another word in both the pronunciation and spelling but has a different meaning. The word light may mean “not heavy” or “lamp” depending on the context or according to what the speaker or writer means. 

When we meet with homonymous words, we must try to understand their meaning through the context. Once in a while, we can look up the words in the dictionary. Again, it is often useful to know well enough about homonyms. Below is a list of some other homogonous words. 

Confusing Pairs

	Some word pairs in English are often confusing for us. We need to be very familiar with them so that we can use them correctly. Here is a list of examples of confusing pairs. Again, this is not an exhaustive list.

Pair	Example	
their - there	Their house is very big.
There is a big house there.
	
to - too - two 	We want to work overtime. Where do you go to?
It’s too hot to eat. It’s hard,  too.
Two and two make four.
	
quiet - quite	Please, be quiet. People are reading.
It’s quite a difficult test.
	
weather - whether	The weather is fine today. We can go out.
I don’t know whether they are coming or not.
	
lie - lay	Lie down and breathe slowly.
Lay the baby gently on the cradle.
	
rise - rice	All the children rise, and start to run.
How much is a kilogram of rice now?
	
rise - raise	The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
In the ceremony, we raise the flag.	

Exercise 1

Find the meaning of each of the homonyms below.

1. They met at the foot of the mountain.
    I hurt my foot when I jumped off the bus.

2. Open the back of the camera to load the new negative.
    Where do you put the jacket? At the back of the chair here.

3. The hands of the clock pointed at midnight.
    Can somebody give a hand, please? We need to move this filing cabinet.

4. In the second table, the writer presents the percentages of the tourists.
    The rock table on the Big North hill consists of clay and chalk.

5. It’s a rich soil; everything grows there.
    Give to the poor while you are rich.

Exercise 2

Choose the correct word to fill in the blank space.

1. (There/Their) turn will come after we come back from lunch.
2. The (rise/rice) and fall of the country depends on the youths’ struggles.
3. Our friend is a (quiet/quite) person; he never tells about his family.
4. We have to move the shelf to the end of the hall, (to/too).
5. The patients (lay/lie) down for a minute waiting for the doctor to attend to them.
6. All of us sat around the table and talked about the (weather/whether).
7. How many (courses/causes) do you need to take to finish your study?
8. You can take these maps free of charge. It’s

Sentence Pattern: SVO

	Now, we are studying the sentence pattern: SVO (Subject + Verb + Object). A sentence of this pattern consists of a subject, and a verb, and an object as its predicate. An object is a recipient of the action stated by the verb of the sentence. An object is closely related to the verb of the sentence (compare this with the function of a complement described last week). 

The store sells many things.
My aunt always makes very good cake for the Lebaran day. 
A group of small children followed us.
They have been discussing the technical problems since 8 o’clock in the morning.

	We can identify the pattern of these SVO sentences as follows:

The store  sells  many things.
		       S	        V	            O

My aunt  always  makes  very good cake  for the Lebaran day. 
		     S	     Adv         V      	    O		       Adv

A group of small children  followed  us.
		       	       S	       	            V         O

They  have been discussing  the technical problems since 8 o’clock in the  morning.
         S	                     V      	  	         O		                              Adv

Exercise 

Underline the S V O in the following sentences.

1. After some time they saw the light.
2. The secretary types many letters everyday.
3. Most of the islands in Indonesia possess much natural resources.
4. The Department of Public works has been repairing many roads and bridges.
5. Machines like this one in this office print all kinds of styles of documents.
6. The company dismissed the night supervisor because he often came late.
7. Top management in the Boeing company reflected market conditions accurately.
8. The man who is in charge of this department has made a lot of innovative changes.
9. They discovered easily who wrote the blind letter some weeks ago.
10. He directed the first flow of the crowd in the demonstration movement.