Learning English - Words in the News - The fruits of hard labour

Last updated at 14:56 GMT, Wednesday, 02 January 2013

The fruits of hard labour

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Report and vocabulary

Transcript:: The poignant fruits of a prison courtyard.

On South Africa's Robben Island, famous for its jail, volunteers are harvesting vines planted in a garden once tended by its most famous inmate, Nelson Mandela.

Over the years many people have been accused of trying to cash in on the Mandela brand but the participants in this scheme see it as a way of cherishing his memory.
poignant: causing a strong emotional feeling
tended by: looked after by
inmate: prisoner
to cash in on: to take advantage of a connection or association with a person or event, often for financial gain
cherishing: affectionately protecting

Exercise

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from news reports.

Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.

poignant / tended by / inmate / to cash in on / cherishing

1.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn described a day in the life of a prison camp _______________ , Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

2.
The exercise courtyard of Saint-Martin-de-Re prison in western France is home to a [vegetable] patch which prisoners are allowed _______________.

3.
The spiralling cost of education in many parts of the world, coupled with the ease of finding out about foreign courses on the internet, mean that more and more students are deciding to study abroad.

And English-speaking nations like the Philippines are primed _______________ this trend.

4.
We rightly _______________ our back yards and green spaces, and we'll defend them passionately when projects are announced.

5.
The bell towers - like that of Mirandola's Duomo, ravaged by gaping cracks - are in some ways the most _______________ architectural victims of all.