Page 37 - American English File Student Book 3B

6 VOCABULARY

making adjectives and adverbs

One of these is luck, for example being
lucky enough to be in the right place at
the right time.

a Look at the bold words in the sentence
above. W hich is a noun and which is an
W of personalities they have, or how intelligent they adjective? U sing the word luck, can you
hat is the question we always ask about successful
people? We want to know what they’re like - what kind
m ake...?
are, or what kind of lifestyles they have, or what special talents 1 a negative adjective
they might have been born with. And we assum e that it is those 2 a positive adverb
personal qualities that explain how that individual gets to the top
3 a negative adverb
of his or her profession.
b > - p .163 Vocabulary Bank Word building.
But according to Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, we
D o Part 2.
are asking the wrong questions. He thinks that while talent is
obviously a factor, there are two other more important ones that
make a person successful. The first of these factors is luck.
7 WRITING

a Read the rules for the sentence game.

The sentence game

1 You should write correct sentences
with the exact number of words given
(contractions count as one word).
2 The sentences must make sense.

3 You should include a form of the word given
(e.g., if the word is lu ck , you can use lu ck y ,
lu ckily, etc.).
He begins with the example of sports players. In recent research
done on various groups of elite ice hockey players from Canada
b W ork in team s o f three or four. Play the
and the Czech Republic, one fascinating fact came to light. In
sentence gam e. You have five m inutes to
both countries, it was discovered that 40% of the players on
w rite the follow ing sentences.
the top teams were born between January and March, 30%
between April and June, 20% between July and September, and 1 fo rtu n e (ıı words)
only 10% between October and December. The explanation was
2 co m fo rt (9 words)
simple. The school year in these countries runs from January
3 lu ck (7 WORDS)
to December. A boy who is ten on January 2nd will be in the
same class as one whose 10th birthday is on December 30th. 4 ca re (6 words)
The chances are the first boy will be bigger, stronger, and more 5 p atien ce (12 w o rd s)
coordinated. He is much more likely than the other boy to be
chosen to play on junior teams. He will then get better coaching c Your teacher will tell you if your sentences
than the others, and will play many more games, so will also get are correct. The team with the m ost correct
more practice. In the beginning, his advantage isn’t so much that sentences is the winner.
he is more talented, simply that he is older. He was lucky enough
to be born in the first months of the year. But by the age of 13 or
14, with the extra coaching and practice, he really will be better 8 (5 9») SONG Karma J3
than the others, and far more likely to be successful.

The extra practice is vital, because the second factor that
Gladwell believes is of great importance in determining whether
somebody is going to be successful or not is what he calls the
“10,000 hours theory.” This theory, based on studies in many
different fields, says that in order to get to the very top you
need to put in 10,000 hours of practice, whether it is playing an
instrument or a sport, or programming a computer.

Online Practice 9A 87