Advanced Vocabulary for IELTS 7.0+: Poverty and Social Issues ( Part 2)
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Poverty and Social Issues (Part 2)
Homelessness
(C) Now use the phrases in Column A of (B) above to fill the gaps in the following sentences. You may need to change the form, tense, word order or phrase structure slightly.
- Those _____________ have few if any friends and lack the means, faculties or desire to make a meaningful contribution to the community; they are utterly alone and despondent.
- Few of us however well-intentioned would be prepared to welcome someone in off the streets and into our home for fear they would _____________ if we let our guard down and took our eyes off them for even a moment.
- He was pulled in by the police for _____________, but the reality is that he was simply and innocently passing the time watching the passers-by go about their daily business.
- She was _____________ and her once glamorous life was in pieces; she held little hope of finding a way back to her glory days.
- She was forced to go _____________ to earn enough money to support her abusive husband’s drug addiction.
(D) Match the word in Column A with its strongest collocate from Column B.
Column A | Answer | Column B |
(a) domestic | (i) history | |
(b) chequered | (ii) scars | |
(c) kerb | (iii) violence | |
(d) illicit | (iv) guidance | |
(e) soup | (v) market | |
(f) black | (vi) kitchens | |
(g) sleeping | (vii) trafficking | |
(h) people | (viii) abuse | |
(i) substance | (ix) drugs | |
(j) parental | (x) rough | |
(k) emotional | (xi) crawling |
(E) Now use the answers from (D) above to fill the gaps in the following sentences. Use each collocation once only.
- He has a history of ___________ and I would regard him as a loose canon with the potential to explode again at any given point in time without warning. It is tragic that he has been thrown out onto the streets but his ___________ as both a parent and a father moderate the level of sympathy I have for him somewhat.
- She has severe ___________ from her time under the guardianship of her foster parents, who, it later turned out, were serious dealers in ___________ and psychologically unstable themselves. This girl was let down badly by the system.
- She is lacking ___________ and the absence of a role model and authority figure in her life has made her especially susceptible to suggestion; it is hardly surprising that she had been led astray by the group of troubled youths she fell in with while ___________ .
- ___________ is rife amongst the homeless; you only have to look at the huge queues of people lining up outside the methadone clinic each day to tell you that. You’d seldom observe as big a queue outside the ___________, ironically.
- Those who engage in ___________ must realise that they are endangering the women they pick up and that their money simply lines the pockets of pimps involved in a seedy network of ___________ which stretches across the whole of Europe not to mention shady dealings in the ___________.
Answer Key
(C)
- on the margins (of society)
- run amok
- loitering with intent
- down-and-out
- on the game
(D)
- iii
- i
- xi
- ix
- vi
- v
- x
- vii
- viii
- iv
- ii
(E)
- domestic violence/ chequered history
- emotional scars/illicit drugs
- parental guidance/sleeping rough
- Substance abuse/soup kitchen
- kerb crawling/people trafficking/black market
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