Study English - Series 2, Episode 1: Eye Testing

Hello. I'm Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation, where we look at the skills you'll need to write, read, speak and listen to formal, academic English.

In today's episode, we're talking about pronouns. We'll also have a quick look at homonyms and then take some time to practice using suffixes.

But first, we're going to watch a clip about people who suffer from eye problems. The people in this community live far from the city, so it's hard for them to get medical treatment.

They have no access to specialists at all, and they cannot travel because they are poor, and most of them have cataract and they are blind because of cataract, which is preventable.

The resources aren't here really to take care of them. It would mean a major upheaval if they got to the stage where they couldn't be taken care of here. They would have to leave their home, their friends, their family and go somewhere where they could be cared for, which is miles away in remote communities.

The professor is talking about the access of residents in the Moora community to eye specialists.

He talks about the residents by using the pronoun ‘they’.

Pronouns are words that can take the place of nouns. They're words like ‘I, you, they, who or what’.

We can use pronouns in a number of different ways, and they take several different forms.

They can act as subjects, objects or possessives.

If we look at ‘they’, the subject form is ‘they’, the object form is ‘them’, the possessive form is ‘their’.

Listen to the professor talk about the residents.

They have no access to specialists at all, and they cannot travel because they are poor, and most of them have cataract and they are blind because of cataract, which is preventable.

Here, ‘they’ is used as the subject of the sentence.

Did you notice that the subject and verb agree in number? They're both plural.

The professor always says ‘they have’, or ‘they are’.

Let's listen to the clip once more.

Most of them have cataract and they are blind. The resources aren't here really to take care of them.

Both the speakers use the pronoun ‘them’ after the preposition ‘of’ – ‘most of them’, ‘take care of them’.

Let's see how we can use ‘them’ with other prepositions.

We can say:

‘of them’,

‘to them’,

‘by them’,

‘for them’,

‘in them’,

‘on them’,

‘with them’,

or, ‘at them’.

Now listen for the possessive form of ‘they’ ‘their’.

They would have to leave their home, their friends, their family and go somewhere where they could be cared for, which is miles away in remote communities.

Here, ‘their’ functions as a possessive adjective. It describes ownership.

‘Their’ is used to talk about things that belong to the eye patients.

The patients’ homes - ‘their homes’.

The patients’ friends - ‘their friends’.

The patients’ families - ‘their families’.

So there are three forms pronouns take:

the subject form, like ‘they’,

the object form, ‘them’,

and the possessive form, ‘their’.

The word ‘their’ is a homonym. Homonyms can be words that sound the same but have different meanings, like ‘their’ and ‘there’, /ðɛə/.

Julie is talking about ‘/ðɛə/ home, /ðɛə/ friends, /ðɛə/ family’.

Is that ‘their’ or ‘there’?

We know from the context that she is talking about ownership – who the friends, home and family belong to.

So we know which spelling of /ðɛə/ she is using – ‘their home, their friends, their family’.

Another example of a set of homonyms is ‘h-e-r-e’ and ‘h-e-a-r’. They're both pronounced the same – /hɪə/.

Listen for /hɪə/.

The resources aren't really here to take care of them.

She says ‘the resources aren't really /hɪə/.'

The context tells us that when Julie says /hɪə/, she means ‘in their immediate location’. She is using ‘h-e-r-e’.

‘The resources aren't really here.’

There are two different types of homonyms.

The ones we've looked at so far are called homophones, because they sound the same even though they're spelt differently.

Some other examples of homophones are:

‘sight and site’,

/saɪt/

‘sale and sail’,

/seɪl/

‘fair and fare’,

/fɛə/

and ‘through and threw’

/Ɵru/.

So homophones are words that are spelt differently, but sound the same.

The other type of homonym is a homograph.

Homographs are words that are spelt the same but, in different contexts, the word will be pronounced differently.

Some common examples are:

‘read and read’,

/rid/ /rɛd/

‘wind and wind’,

/waɪnd/ /wɪnd/

‘live and live’.

/laɪv/ /lɪv/

Let's try an exercise about homographs.

How would you pronounce the word in bold?

She read the instructions carefully.

She /rɛd/ the instructions carefully.

We've already seen how some words are pronounced differently depending on their context and function.

And when we looked at ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’, we saw how the form of some words will change depending on the context and function.

Another way that words can change is by adding suffixes.

Suffixes can be used to create a new word with a new function and meaning.

First, listen for the suffix ‘able’.

They have no access to specialists at all, they

cannot travel because they are poor, and most

of them have cataract and they are blind

because they have cataract, which is

preventable.

Cataracts are preventable.

By adding the suffix ‘–able’ to the verb ‘prevent’ we form the adjective ‘preventable’ meaning ‘able to be prevented’.

We can add the suffix ‘able’ to a number of other words to form similar adjectives.

For example:

‘read’ becomes ‘readable’,

‘count’ becomes ‘countable’,.

and ‘recognize’ becomes ‘recognizable’.

There are many other common suffixes in English.

Learning suffixes is a quick way to expand your vocabulary.

Let's take a look at two other common suffixes:’ –ist’ and ‘–ism’.

We can use ‘–ist’ when we talk about the ‘people who do certain jobs’.

So you could be:

a ‘journalist’,

a ‘chemist’,

a ‘geologist’,

or a ‘psychologist’.

We use the suffix ‘–ism’ to talk about ‘beliefs, ideologies or movements’.

For example:

Buddhism,

modernism,

realism,

or Marxism.

And the people who believe these ideas can sometimes be described by adding the ‘–ist’ suffix.

So we get:

‘Buddhist,’

‘modernist’,

‘realist’,

or ‘Marxist’.

So let's take a look back over what we've learned today. We've looked at how words change according to their function and context.

First, we've looked at pronouns and the different forms they take –subject, object, and possessive.

Then we talked about homonyms and the two different sorts – homophones and homographs.

And we finished today with a few different suffixes ‘able’ ‘ism’ and ‘ist’.

If you'd like to spend some more time on any of these topics, have a look at the Study English website.

It's at abcasiapacific.com/studyenglish.

That's all for today. I'll see you next time for more Study English IELTS preparation.

Bye bye.