Learning English - Words in the News - Many kinds of intelligence

Last updated at 12:13 BST, Wednesday, 27 August 2014

Many kinds of intelligence

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Report and vocabulary

Transcript:: We all dread exam results.

But one English school has decided to soften the blow with a letter.

Tests don't assess all the things which make people "special and unique", it says. A love for music or sports, or just being "kind and thoughtful" is also important, according to the note.

The letter has gone viral on the internet.

But the head teacher of Barrowford Primary School has now been accused of plagiarism, after a similar message was discovered on an American blog.
dread: to feel very worried about something that might happen
soften the blow: to make the bad effects of something seem less serious
thoughtful: (here) kind and considerate
gone viral: became popular very quickly
plagiarism: using another person's work without saying where it came from

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.

dread / soften the blow / thoughtful / gone viral / plagiarism

1.
He was a great MP and a kind, _________ and decent man.

2.
The images have now _________ and been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

3.
I _________ going out to eat now, even though we are really sociable people and we love doing it, it just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

4.
The chancellor is expected to try to _________ of cuts by announcing the go-ahead for major capital schemes which could help create jobs and stimulate the economy.

5.
_________ has become a major issue for universities, with many using software to detect material taken from websites.