Ket Vocabulary Practice 2: Fill & Download for Free

Although I have never run any preparation courses for the IELTS, I have delivered at least 100 courses for the Cambridge exams (KET, PET, FCE, CAE, PCE, BEC P, BEC V, BEC H) that are most popular here in Switzerland. Of those, the BEC exams are the most popular, and useful, for business English, which is my specialty.All Cambridge exams, and the IELTS are indeed Cambridge, follow a similar structure, focus, exam system, and grading system. As such, the best way to evaluate your current study strategy is to take a few practice exams and see how you fare.However, it is a rare bird indeed that can self-train for any of the above mentioned exams because a large part of taking the exam is knowing the strategies for completing each part in the time allotted and also knowing the pitfalls and common mistakes made by test-takers.If you are determined to do this on your own, or can not afford the price of a course or trainer, then you can take, for a price ($164), an official practice exam online at the link below to get an idea about how prepared you are for it:https://ieltsprogresscheck.com/shop-general-training/Or you can self-test (but not efficiently for the spoken section of the exam) using a certified Cambridge “Past Exams/Papers” book like the ones below which use actual past exams as practice material and provide in-depth instructions and descriptions of each of the 4 tests (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening):Cambridge IELTS 9 Self-study Pack (Student's Book with Answers and Audio CDs (2))The Official Cambridge Guide to IELTS Student's Book with Answers with DVD-ROMOr read up on the grammar, vocabulary, and tips with books like these:Common Mistakes at IELTS AdvancedCambridge Grammar for IELTS Student's Book with Answers and Audio CDCambridge Vocabulary for IELTS Book with Answers and Audio CDAnd there is more information about the IELTS here:IELTS Past Papers - Tutors Field BlogGood luck!

Both are two very controversial hypotheses (at best). While some linguists study into these hypotheses and see them as “maybe possible”, most academic linguists reject these two hypotheses, some call them even “pseudo-science”.But at first some information regarding these (related) proposals. After that I will speak about my personal view.Nostratic is a hypothetical and controversial macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents.The funding father of modern Nostratic (and indirectly Eurasiatic) is the Soviet linguist Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych.The three groups universally accepted among Nostraticists (which correspond to Eurasiatic) are Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic; the validity of the Altaic family, while itself controversial and generally rejected, is taken for granted by Nostraticists. Afroasiatic, Kartvelian and Dravidian languages are also often included, with Afroasiatic possibly splitting the earliest.The paleo-European languages, such as Etruscan, Thyrrenian, Aegean languages, but also Sumerian and Elamite, are included as extinct branches.Additionally some also include Nivkh, Ainu, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Eskimo-Aleut, Yukaghir, Koreanic and Japonic.→Actually there is no single similar view. Every linguist has a different view on this hypothese, or even reject parts of the views of other “Nostraticists”.Some versions as example include only Indo-European, Afroasiatic, and possibly Kartvelian and Dravidian. Another view sees Indo-European as a mix of Kartvelian and Uralic.We already see that this includes a huge number of different Eurasian and American languages with different views how they may ve related.This maps shows one of the hypothetical spreads of Nostratic and its subgroups:Nostraticists argue that these languages originated from an West-Eurasian population which lived in the Middle East (Fertile Crescent) about 15,000BC. This West-Eurasian populations spreaded into much of Eurasia and replaced the local languages of the indigenous populations. That means, according to Nostraticists, local Siberians and Northeast Asians have adopted the languages of West-Eurasian invaders.The main supporters today are mostly exclusive a small number of linguists from Russia and ex-Soviet states. It was also called the “Moscovite school”.Allan Bomhard is one of the really few non-Russian linguists who are positively interested in this hypothese and he has published several papers about his opinion.The hypothese is nearly universally rejected, while some linguists even call the proposal “pseudo-science”.Other, more “neutral” scholars say that Nostratic can not be proven and accepted as a genealogical unit as it is far to far back in time and the possibility of simple prehistoric language contact, borrowings and “wanderwörter” can not be ruled out.Critic:The proposal completely ignores language contact, loanwords, migration of people and languages, creolization and chance resemblances. Additionally, much recent genetic studies were published and are in serve contradiction to the Nostratic hypothese.Much worse than the rejected Altaic proposal, this hypothese lacks any relevant similarities that are not borrowings or explained through language contact, and which would be necessary for a possible genealogical unit.Mostly all similarities can be explained by language contact and borrowings. Actually the linguistic evidence clearly supports borrowings and contact. There is no evidence for a shared origin.It was pointed out that the data from individual, established language families that is cited in Nostratic comparisons often involves a high degree of errors and wrong or constructed cognates; Campbell demonstrates this for Uralic data and criticized the “Indo-Uralic proposal” which suggests a common origin between Indo-European and Uralic. The hypothetical genetic relation between Indo-European and Uralic is rejected by most linguists and not supported by historic migrations and population genetics. It was also found that Indo-European and Uralic stood in strong and intense contact. Some even call Indo-European a “Uralified” language family. (A idea later adopted by Bomhard himself, as to explain contradictions in the Nostratic proposal.) The number systems of Indo-European and Uralic show no commonalities, which is another point to prove that they can not be related at all.It is pretty clear that there are many borrowings from either late PIE into Uralic (sometimes excepting Samoyedic) or Proto-Indo-Iranian into Uralic (perhaps always excepting Samoyedic).Asko Parpola, a specialist in Indo-European and Uralic languages, founds that there is strong evidence for a extreme contact between IE, Uralic and Proto-Finno-Ugric and Proto-Indo-Iranian respectively. According to the evidence, the Abashevo culture was bilingual between an Indo-European and an Uralic language. Additionally, Parpola also notes the correspondence between the East Asian/Siberian lineages of haplogroup N and proto-Uralic and rejects any claims of association between proto-Uralic and R1a.Last but not least, there is even much evidence that Indo-Europeans preceded Finno-Ugrians in Finland and Estonia, further strengthening the mutual influence on each other.“An archaic (Northwest-)Indo-European language and a subsequently extinct Paleo-European language were likely spoken in what is now called Finland and Estonia, when the linguistic ancestors of the Finns and the Sami arrived in the eastern and northern Baltic Sea region probably at the beginning of the Bronze Age.”Additionally many mythological elements of Slavic are clearly borrowings from Uralic. →Borrowings from Uralic into IE are likely also more common than thought. On the other hand, Finno-Ugric vocabulary seem to have been borrowed extensively from IE, with the Samoyedic branch nearly lacking such similarities.—Not to mention the general rejection of Altaic which is necessary for the Nostratic hypothese. The included language are converging rather than diverging over the centuries. This means, the similarities found today are getting fewer and fewer if we go back in time to their proto forms.For example critics of Altaic are arguing that the Mongolic 1st person pronoun *bi is a borrowing from Proto Turkic *bé. There is evidence for huge borrowing between these languages. Thus Altaic and Transeurasian is generally seen as “areal family” and not a genealogical unit.It has also been criticized that Nostratic comparisons mistake Wanderwörter and cross-borrowings between branches for true cognates.As mentioned above, the most recent studies about population genetics and prehistoric migrations are in serve contradiction to the Nostratic hypothese. It was recently found that both Uralic and Turkic have a east Siberian and Northeast Asian origin respectively. There is no evidence of a migration from the Middle East (the proposed homeland of Nostratic) to Siberia or East Asia and than back, except the ANE, but they are themselves a mix of West-Eurasian and East Asian groups and predate proto-Nostratic. Quite in contrary, there is evidence for migrations from East Asia to West-Eurasia.A article (Dzibel 2015) about the current acceptance of Nostratic even calls the Nostratic hypothese a "Soviet Utopian Idea" and criticize the whole hypothesis as fringe.Other studies, such as most recently Nichols 2019, regarding Bomhard 2018, criticized his Nostratic as well as the Eurasiatic proposal strongly and concluded that Bomhards evidence either lack a solid basis or are far from a genealogical relevance.“The resemblances in pronominal roots of IE, Uralic, Kartvelian, Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic are striking – at first glance. But the *m- : *t pattern of IE and the others is sound-symbolic and similar in typology and favoring context to “mama”-”papa” vocabulary (Nichols 2001); and /m/ proves to be an attractor in small paradigms, more likely to expand than to be lost and susceptible to diffusion under the right sociolinguistic conditions (Nichols 2012a,b, 2018). The combination of sound-symbolic value and attractor status make the Eurasiatic pronominal resemblances a very weak diagnostic of genealogical relatedness but a tantalizing clue to early Neolithic sociolinguistics and contacts between some of these languages.”…“Areal contacts often involve similar phonologies, but these can be acquired gradually through diffusion and not only from single intense contact episodes.”On all of these counts the evidence is not probative.Another recent study concerning the Altaic (Transeurasian hypothese) by Ceolin 2019, who run a significance test on regular patterns of phonetic similarities or correspondences among word-initial phonemes in the basic vocabulary came to the conclusion that there is no Altaic/Transeurasian genealogical unit. The language differ to much to have a common origin. While Mongolic and Tungusic share a noteworthy amount, this can be explained by their close and long-term contact. Turkic was the most different of the three, only sharing some reliable amount with Mongolic but not with Tungusic. The languages became more dissimilar the more we look back in time, which is in contradiction with the proposed relation.Heggarty et al. about the smaller Eurasiatic clade within Nostratic:“Yet their “data”— claimed reconstructions of Proto-Eurasiatic wordforms in the Languages of the World Etymological Database (LWED) (comment: LWED is mostly made by Nostraticists.) —are not actually data in any sense that either the natural sciences or mainstream linguistics would recognize. They are subjective interpretations, not amenable to independent validation or replication, and widely rejected as vacuous by specialists in language reconstruction (2).Moreover, the founding assumption is invalid: if, within a set of subjective interpretations, a given nonrandom pattern emerges, then that of itself constitutes proof that those interpretations cannot be mistaken. Such reasoning seems far removed from scientific method and practice.”He also called the Moscow LWED school as “nearly religiously” addicted to their Eurasiatic and Nostratic hypothese.“Also, Eurasiatic’s supposed “fit” with the usual suspect, the retreat of the glaciers, is only in (their) chronology. It is no explanation of why Eurasiatic should exist at all. Why should changing climate have favored just one language lineage, out of a single homeland, to dominate Eurasia, rather than a generalized advance of multiple, independent groups right across the continent?”Personal viewIn my opinion, the small number of (controversial) similarities is based on language contact, prehistoric borrowings and diffusion, as pointed out by experts in the fields of IE, Uralic and Altaic.I also somehow think that Nostratic has a political touch. Russian state linguists support it, and it fits the Soviet-Ideology quite clearly. Everyone of the native Siberians would suddenly be relatives of Russians. Russians can claim all of Eurasia as united brothers (see the Russian “Eurasian Union”). The somewhat fanatic tendency for proving words as cognates and the rejection of accepted knowledge about Indo-European and Uralic or the 100% acceptance for Macro-Altaic are also not helpful for their credibility.Additionally, some Hungarian nationalists seem also to love this theories as it would mean they did not adopt the language of Siberian nomads but were always West-Eurasians. I even read answers from an Hungarian nationalist who said that “Nostratic people” spreaded this language and haplogroup R into Eurasia from the Middle East. According to him, haplogroup R1a is a Uralic-Hungarian haplogroup. He than continued and claimed that Turkic is relatively more Nostratic with Mongolic and Tungusic be less Nostratic because of mixing with East Asians…. A “Caucasoid proto-Turk” is something I thought I would only hear from fringe and fanatic followers of the “Sun language theory” (see: Sun Language Theory - Wikipedia) or certain small ideology groups of Anatolian Turks (which also hate to be associated with an East Asian language and to be of “mixed” origin and not “pure Turkish” whatever this would mean in the heterogeneous history of Anatolia).Also the inclusion of the Ainu language contradicts with chronological evidence. The chronological concept of Nostratic is contradicting known history, not only in the case of Ainu.According to Nostraticists, mostly no one in Siberia and Northeast Asia (Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Koreanic, Japonic, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, even Eskimo-Aleut) is speaking their native language because everyone in these regions got “Nostratified” (except the Yenisseians/Ket)…. This is on the edge of racism and eurocentrism in my opinion.The best example is Turkic and Mongolic. Proto-Mongolic borrowed extensively from Turkic (both common Turkic and Oghur Turkic), so much that early linguists were sure that they are related to each other. But over time it got clear that these are all borrowings and long-term contact. Even the Mongolic 1st person pronoun *bi is a borrowing from Proto-Turkic *bé.The same applies for borrowings between Proto-Indo-European and Uralic and between Indo-Iranian and Uralic. (Such borrowings are mostly not found in the most eastern Uralic branch of Samoyedic).__Conclusion:Nostratic (and Eurasiatic) is a controversial hypothese. Mostly all similarities can easily be explained by language contact, borrowings and diffusion.Just in case, this 'macro-family' is not only controversial - it's widely rejected. Again, evidence for it is not nearly conclusive. Even the rejected Altaic proposal has had enormous more “evidence” and is still more likely than Nostratic or Eurasiatic.I will later expand this answer, with more information and evidence for and against and why modern population genetics likely have made the final end for this hypothese.To be honest, I have started reading several tens of studies about Nostratic since last week, during my research on proto-Turkic homeland proposals. There are so many critic points to Nostratic, Eurasiatic and Indo-Uralic that I can not even summarize all of them.The nearly universal rejection of Nostratic is more than understandable and justified. Any claim that this hypothese is true or even possible is far from any reliable basis, other than wishful thinking.Please feel free to comment your opinions.Thank you for reading. :)

India is a country where people living in different parts have their own languages. The regional languages are quite different from one another. The leaders and therefore the administrators of the country cannot stay connected with all these regions without a common language. it's impracticable for everybody to understand 20 languages. We do not tend have any common language at present, except English and Hindi.Major technological and scientific advancements have been written in English language and keeping in mind, India’s foreign policy and the requirement of a convenient and effective medium for exchanging ideas, English paves its way for being accepted as language for all Government Directorate and Legal proceedings and therefore, it is important to be sound with it to crack a competitive exam.As you are keen on improving your English skills (not restricted to just clearing a UPSC exam ), it is necessary to follow the points given below:Grammar is the key:As it is a well known fact that the first step towards learning a language is being thorough with its grammar. It is the building block of any language. Get a grammar book like Wren and Martin and Practice all the exercises from it.You can also check your proficiency by taking free online tests from:Level Test - Grammar | Oxford Online EnglishFree Online English Grammar TestTest your level of English Grammar and VocabularyKey English Test (KET)(These are some examples of sites where you can visit to check your language ability. There are tons of such websites and you are advised to do some research on it.2. The more you read, the more you know:Reading is just as important as learning grammar. It not only enhances you with knowledge but also gives you ideas on how to frame a sentence. If by chance you come across a word you don't understand, you can write it in your diary and look it up online or in a dictionary.Reading also improves your concentration. So in short, you shoot multiple targets with a single arrow.3. Think in English:Thinking in English is an excellent way to build your vocabulary with words you actually use. Enough said.4. Grasp your Verbal Ability:You need to be good at antonyms (Opposite/विपरीत), synonyms (Words with similar meanings/पर्यायवाची), analogies (उपमा) homophones, homonyms and correct framing of sentences.You can buy any competitive exam self tutor for mastering this section. A bank PO preparation book by Arihant (or any similar publisher) will serve the purpose.Check this link: Buy Bank PO Rules and Techniques of English Book Online at Low Prices in India5. Compose:The efficacious utilization of English sentence structure in your writing can change everything. Utilizing language structure well isn't just about how you compose and accentuate a sentence, it is about how the sentence is assembled. Truly, a grammatically adjust sentence is extraordinary, but a well crafted sentence is what makes you a standout writer in the eyes of the reader.Try to write on an arbitrary topic based on the facts you have accumulated and frame them well. Get it checked by a friend who has good command over English. Perhaps he/she might give you some alternatives on bettering your manuscript.6. Speak in English:No language can be mastered without conversing in it. Try to speak as much as you can. Make mistakes boldly and don't get embarrassed when someone tries to correct you. As a matter of fact it will make you more fluent.In our nation, some wouldn't fret communicating in English by any stretch of the imagination. In certain cases, some who hear some individual communicating in English may imagine that he's rich, originates from an a well-to-do family.However, one must remember that English is a language just as any other.And NO LANGUAGE SHOULD BE USED A MEASURE OF INTELLIGENCE OR STATUS!!!