← Back to C1 General contentsWorkbook · 10B. No direction home
Home practice · cleft sentences · commonly confused words · answer key included
1 · Cleft sentences
Which is a correct cleft sentence?
Rewrite for emphasis: 'My grandfather taught me to read a map.'
Complete the cleft: '______ our species has always been able to do is roughly know where home is.'
Rewrite: 'I just want one screen-free afternoon.'
'It's not the map that matters — it's the walking' emphasises:
Which is grammatical?
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2 · Complete with the correct word (commonly confused)
- The delay had a real drop on her focus.
- It is a matter of drop , not convenience.
- You need to drop the guitar every day. (BrE verb)
- She would drop you to leave earlier.
- The screw is a bit drop — tighten it.
- The dog wagged drop tail.
- She is much more patient drop I am.
- Leaving now is the drop choice.
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3 · Rewrite for emphasis
Rewrite for emphasis with 'It was… who…': 'My grandmother, not the school, taught me patience.'
Rewrite with a wh-cleft: 'She gave me an old paper map.'
Rewrite with 'All I want…': 'I just want one deliberate walk per week.'
Rewrite with 'The reason … is that…': 'I stopped using GPS because I wanted my direction back.'
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4 · Match each pair with the rule that distinguishes them
- affect (v.) / effect (n.)drop or tap here…
- principle (n.) / principal (n.-adj.)drop or tap here…
- practice (n.) / practise (v.) [BrE]drop or tap here…
- advice (n.) / advise (v.)drop or tap here…
- lose (v.) / loose (adj.)drop or tap here…
- its / it'sdrop or tap here…
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5 · Podcast · The cartographer's Saturday walk
Listen to a short first-person podcast monologue from a Lisbon cartographer reflecting on her six-week no-phone walking experiment.
📄 Show transcript
Speaker: What most of us have quietly lost is not our sense of direction — it's our trust in it. I live in Lisbon, I'm a cartographer by trade, and yet, for years, I was navigating my own city with an almost total reliance on my phone. Six weeks ago, I started an experiment: no phone on my daily walk to work, and especially not on my Saturday walks.
I honestly thought the first thing to return would be my ability to navigate, to instinctively know which turn to take. But no. What came back first was attention. I started noticing things again – the scent of jasmine, that distinctive blue azulejo tilework on a building I’d walked past a thousand times. Landmarks. It's on those Saturday walks that I finally started noticing the city again, truly seeing the intricate patterns of the old Alfama district, or the light catching the Tagus.
My final, perhaps unromantic, point is this: all you need is one deliberate walk a week — no phone — for six weeks. The point isn't to throw the phone away. It's about recalibrating.
- Which cleft does she open with?
- What returned first, according to her experiment?
- Which cleft does she use about her Saturday walks?
- What is her final unromantic point?
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6 · A short reflection (180–220 words)
Write a short first-person reflection titled: "What I quietly gave away." Use at least three different cleft structures and two commonly confused pairs correctly. End with an honest, unromantic conclusion.
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