English Vocabulary in Use: Advanced Book with Answers and Enhanced eBook Vocabulary Reference and Practice 3rd Edition

149
English Vocabulary in Use Advanced
Use words from the opposite page to fill the gaps.
1 The chain has increased its number of restaurants 
in the last ten years. There were 
20; now there are 80.
2 Many teachers were worried after the government announced it was going to cut its 
on schools.
3 The number of students enrolling for the course has increased by a 
of three, from 
50 to 150 in just two years.
4 There was a sudden and 
rise in the number of serious road accidents during the 
extreme bad weather last winter.
5 We need to 
the estimate downwards from 3,000 to about 2,500.
6 There seems to be a 
between the two sets of data which suggests that the 
experiment was successful.
7 International trade is important to the country and makes up one third of its 
.
8 The company 
its number of overseas branches from three to 12 in the space of 
five years.
Rewrite these sentences using the words in brackets so that they keep the same 
meaning.
1 The two reports of the accident appear to be inconsistent. (discrepancy)
2 Oil prices were up one moment and down the next last year. (seesaw)
3 Monthly average temperatures have been different from what we usually see this year. 
(deviate, norm)
4 The water levels didn’t go up and down as much as we’d expected last year. (fluctuate)
5 I don’t need to know all the individual figures – just give me the total. (aggregate)
6 His moods change – one minute he’s happy, the next he’s depressed. (erratic)
Answer these questions.
1 If you give someone a ballpark figure, is it (a) precise or (b) rough?
2 If you round up 68.7, does it become (a) 69 or (b) 68?
3 If you want to give a conservative estimate when forecasting profits, would you prefer to 
(a) underestimate or (b) overestimate your figures?
4 If your weekly wage (in dollars) has just run into four figures, how much do you earn?
5 If you tot up all the numbers between 1 and 10, what do you get?
6 Name two variables that might affect a soft drinks company’s projected profits.
7 If the ratio of girls to boys in a school is 1.5 to 1, are there more girls or boys?
8 If you err on the side of caution, do you (a) take care not to make any mistakes, 
(b) adopt a cautious attitude, or (c) make errors through lack of caution?