Tag: B1-B2

English Exercise – Passive Voice

The passive voice is used very frequently in English, as it is used when the subject is unknown or doesn’t need to be mentioned. In fact, that last sentence was in the passive voice!

To form the passive voice, we put the verb to be into the tense needed, then we add the past participle.

 

For example:

Active voice – I made dinner tonight

Passive voice – Dinner was made tonight

 

Active voice – I write an essay every week

Passive voice – Every week, an essay is written

 

Active voice – He will commit a crime

Passive voice – A crime will be committed

 

We also use the passive voice if we want to give the focus of the sentence to another subject. For example, if we say: The album was recorded by Oasis in 1999. This means that we are more interested in the album than the band.

Something which helps with IELTS Writing Task 1 could be the fact that we use the passive voice when describing a process.

E.g. The flour is poured into a bowl, then the sugar is added and mixed together.

 

Passive Voice

Make these sentences passive voice:

 

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Whether you’re taking an English course here in Milan or you simply want to boost your language skills with loads of online English language exercises, Scrambled Eggs is here for you! Check out our vast collection which includes hundreds of exercises for all levels, and if you think there are some exercises, topics or videos we should add more of, be sure to send an email our way at hello@scrambledeggsinglese.it

Permission – allowed, permitted, supposed to

Instead of using basic modal verbs like can, could, must & should to express permission, why not take your English vocabulary up a level with some of these more advanced words?

Allowed to

 We use this in place of ‘can/could’ when expressing permission – but NOT possibility.

Structure: Subject + to be + allowed to + infinitive

E.g.

We are (not) allowed to sit at this table.
Are we allowed to sit at this table?
We were(n’t) allowed to sit at that table.
We will (not) be allowed to sit at that table.

Permitted to

In a more official/formal situation, we can use permitted to. This is usually used with laws/rules to express permission and prohibition.

Structure: it + be (not) permitted to + infinitive

E.g.

It is not permitted to bring liquids onto the aeroplane
It is permitted to photograph the paintings without flash

OR

Structure: noun + be (not) + permitted

E.g.

Barbecues are not permitted on the beach
Trucks are not permitted to drive through this area

OR

Structure: gerund verb + be (not) + permitted

E.g.

Bringing liquids onto the aeroplane is not permitted
Photographing the paintings with flash is permitted

Supposed to/Meant to

 Instead of using ‘should’, we can say either of these phrases in order to express either obligation or permission.

Structure: be (not) supposed to/meant to + infinitive

E.g.

We’re not supposed to be out after 10pm!
She’s not meant to eat 24 hours before the surgery, but she’s hungry.
I’m supposed to start the meeting at 3pm, but I think we can start early.
No-one is meant to be in the office this weekend, why are you here?

Permission exercise

Rewrite these sentences to make them correct.

Learn English with the News – The Pastry AI that Learned to Fight Cancer

Science and food do not have to be mutually exclusive: cancer researchers in Japan have been working with software developers to adapt an innovative computer program that can identify hundreds of different types of pastries at the cash register into a program that can detect cancer cells under a microscope lens.

Watch the video and then do the accompanying English language exercises.

The news is a consistent source of entertainment, knowledge and discovery that never ceases to exist and always comes out with more and more material each day. Because it plays such a vital part in our lives and is so important to keep up with, it is without a doubt a piece of your everyday routine that can’t go ignored.

Whether it is to understand the ramifications of recent legislation passed, to hear about recent events and grasp the potential consequences to your country, or simply hear about what is happening in other countries in order to compare them to what’s happening in yours, the news is certainly a staple in our lives and the most consistent way to get information.

This is why Scrambled Eggs has decided to unite two of your biggest worlds: learning English and keeping up with what is happening in the world. We hope our challenging daily exercises, composed of listening, vocabulary and comprehension exercises in English, will satisfy both of those above worlds in a satisfactory and also entertaining way.

So enough about introductions, let’s get to today’s Learn English with the News topic:

Adapted from this article. 

The Pastry AI that Learned to Fight Cancer | Fill in the Blank

Fill in the blank with the correct preposition.

The Pastry AI that Learned to Fight Cancer | Synonyms Match

Match the words with their synonyms.

The Pastry AI that Learned to Fight Cancer | True or False

Decide if the statement is true or false.

 

Full text:

“A software company called Brain has been working with a cancer research center in Kyoto, Japan to adapt software they created for the Japanese bakeries into a program that can detect cancer cells under a microscope lens.

Brain’s software, BakeryScan, was created in 2007 and has since been improved to allow Japan’s bakeries to easily identify different types of pastries at the cash register.

The pastry industry needed this complex software because of Japan’s very diverse food tastes. The country’s long trade history led to its desire for a variety of flavors. For this reason, unlike French or Italian bakeries that offer only a few options, Japanese bakeries offer pastries of all sizes, shapes, flavors, and colors. There are hundreds of different types of pastries in these unique bakeries.

The many different types of pastries caused cashiers to spend months learning the price of each individual pastry based on sight alone. This meant that the checkout process was not only very difficult for cashiers, but also caused long wait times for customers.

Brain, which was founded by computer programmer and software designer Hisashi Kambe, had always worked on projects based on computer visualization capabilities and so to combat this problem at the cash register they created BakeryScan.

BakeryScan is unique because, unlike deep learning software like Google Translate, Siri, and almost every AI system out there, it doesn’t need large amounts of specialized data to make decisions; it is created to understand irregularities like the shadow cast into the middle of a donut hole or the slightly darker color of over-baked bread without needing the input of tens of thousands of similar images.

When a doctor at the Louis Pasteur Center for Medical Research, in Kyoto, saw a television segment about the machine, he realized that cancer cells, under a microscope, looked a lot like bread. He contacted Hisashi Kambe’s company Brain to see how they could collaborate to develop a version of the program that could help pathologists detect cancer cells.

The program they came up with, Cyto-Aiscan, is currently being tested in two major hospitals in Kobe and Kyoto. It is capable of “whole-slide” analysis, meaning that it can analyze an entire microscope slide and identify the cells that might be cancerous. The software considers the color tone of the nucleus, its size and texture, and its overall roundness and can lead to earlier diagnoses by speeding up the process, ultimately allowing for more effective treatments for cancer patients.”