New Year, Fresh Start. The new year is here and it’s an opportunity to have a fresh start - to start something again (such as renewing a gym membership and using it regularly; how about that?).
‘New’ and ‘fresh’ sometimes have the same meanings. Yet, they’re commonly combined with different words:
New
baby/location/version/technology/moon/release
Fresh
snow/produce/paint/footprints/wound/memory
‘Fresh’ can have additional meanings (other then ‘new’) as well. Below are a few examples of those and their opposites:
fresh vegetables - canned/dried vegetables fresh water - salty water
fresh breath - bad breath fresh air - stuffy air
fresh bread - day-old/stale bread fresh shirt - worn shirt
Collocation refers to the way in which some words regularly occur together. There is no grammatical reason for this so there are no rules to learn. A bit like prepositions, you need to read a lot, expose yourself to as much English as you can, and when recording vocabulary you should make sure you write down collocations whenever you can.
In this post we're going to revise the collocations with the verbs studied in your book:
set, raise and win.
- Set is often cited as the English word with the most different meanings and, unsurprisingly, it's got a number of collocations. You can set concrete things like alarm clocks, watches, thermostats, for example. You can set a date or a time and you can also set a price or a rate for something (as in The Central Bank is responsible for setting interest rates). Set is also used with words referring to rules or standards such as conditions, guidelines, limits and criteria (as in Opposition parties have set conditions for peace negotiations to begin) and you can also set an example or set a precedent (as in Her behaviour sets a very bad example or This ruling will set a legal precedent). Set can be used with certain nouns to establish the way in which something is done, e.g. set a tone, a pattern, a fashion or a trend (Her opening speech set the tone for the whole conference). You can also set a table or set a record. In terms of the future, you can set yourself (or someone else) a goal, a challenge, an objective or a task. From the unfortunate student’s point of view, teachers can set homework, set essays and, worst of all, set exams.
- Raise (not to be confused with its intransitive equivalent rise) has a lot of collocations, some of which are easy to understand such as raise your hand, raise a flag, raise a salary or raise your glass, while others are more idiomatic, e.g. raise a smile or raise hell (as in 'His jokes failed to raise a smile' or make people laugh, and 'They raised hell when they were told the hotel had no record of their booking', or got very angry and made a scene). In the sense of ‘create’, raise can collocate with a number of abstract nouns, for example raise doubts, raise fears, raise a question, raise hopes and raise expectations (as in 'We don’t want to raise your hopes at this early stage' or 'Doubts have been raised about the viability of the project'). If you raise your eyebrows, you show you are surprised at something. Raising your voice indicates that you are speaking in a loud voice, probably because you are angry. You can also raise the alarm if you want to draw people's attention to a problem. You can raise children o raise a family. .
- Win-Earn-Gain. The three of them relate to getting or achiving something, but the nouns they collocate with are very different. Win: You can win a competition or a sporting event. For this achievement you might win a prize, a cup or a medal. You can also win a contract, win the right to do something, win support or approval. Earn: Apart from earning money or earning a salary, you can also earn your living in order to pay for everything you need. Gain: You can gain weight or speed. You can also gain an advantage as in "Some people try to gain an advantage by using their personal contacts). Gain also goes with acces, admission and entry. Other nouns used with gain are gain experience, gain time. And the good news is that there is one word that collocates with all three verbs: RESPECT. You can win respect, gain respect or earn respect, all of which meaning getting respect out of your efforts or behaviour.
Now make a comment with at least two examples for each of the three verbs.
MODAL VERBS CHALLENGE
