Cover of the textbook Speakout Upper-Intermediate - Students' Book

The key answer of exercise 4

The key to exercise solutions in chapter 7.4 - News blunders for the textbook Speakout Upper-Intermediate - Students' Book with authors Frances Eales and Steve Oakes from Pearson Education

Question

  1. Read the article and write down the one thing that the man traded that is mentioned in the article but not in the recording.
  2. Read the article again and do the tasks.
  3. The article is exactly 60 words. Imagine your editor tells you to cut it to exactly 45 words. Which words could you omit without losing important details (hyphenated words count as one word)?

Answer

a)

  1. a neon sign

b)

  1. There are five possibilities → A Canadian man, Bored blogger, the 26-year-old, paper clip owner, homeowner
  2. trading / exchanging; objects / items
  3. step by step → emphasises the time taken in small stages; larger and larger → again emphasises the progression. The use of two comparatives is common as a way of emphasising.

c)

A Canadian man has made headlines by trading a paper clip for a house. Bored blogger Kyle Macdonald started by exchanging small objects - a pen, a door knob, a neon sign - but step by step the 26 year old built up to items of larger and larger value, and after one year his journey from paper clip owner to homeowner was over.