Answers to the Exercise

1. It was dark and SILENT in the old church. I felt quite scared.

2. Trappist monks have to take a vow of SILENCE. They aren't allowed to speak to anyone.

3. The police officers bowed their heads and observed a moment's SILENCE for the crash victims.

4. The hungry lion spotted the deer drinking from the stream and SILENTLY stalked towards it.

5. They offered a SILENT prayer for the victims of the crash.

6. Charlie Chaplin was the most popular actor during the great days of the SILENT movies.

7. The striking miners greeted the government's latest pay offer with a stony SILENCE.

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Study Tip

Two weeks ago I spoke about collocation or "words that go together." Whenever you are studying an English text, keep your eyes open for interesting collocations. In the examples above there are at least two interesting noun/verb collocations:

• They observed a moment's silence for the crash victims.
• They offered a silent prayer for the victims of the crash

There is also an interesting verb/adjective/noun collocation:

• They greeted the government's pay offer with a stony silence.

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Here are some more examples of similar word families:
• Independence / independent / independently
• Confidence / confident / confidently
• Patience / patient / patiently
• Innocence / innocence / innocently
• Intelligence / intelligent / intelligently
• Convenience / convenient / conveniently
• Reluctance / reluctant / reluctantly
• Elegance / elegant / elegantly

Click here to try some other one-point lessons.

© Robert E. Jones, 2003