Supplementary Exercises for

Lost in Cyberspace
Richard Peck
_____________________________________________________________________

1. American and British English

a) Different spellings

The text of your book is written in American English. Did you have a lot of problems
with unusual spellings? Test yourself with the following list of words. Take a piece of
paper and make two columns headed ‘American spelling’ and ‘British spelling’. Then
check your answers in a good English dictionary which will usually use the
abbreviations (AE) or (BE) to tell you which is which.

traveller
math
center
colour
kilometre
traveler
driver’s license
theatre
harbor
color
kilometer
program
theater
harbour
maths
modeling
favourite
centre
driving licence
favorite
programme
modelling

How did you get on? Correct any mistakes you made in your list and then try to
deduce ‘rules’ for the spelling of any groups of words in your list. But don’t try to
make a rule if you only have one pair of words! Three rules would be plenty.

1
b) Different meanings

Sometimes the same word has a different meaning in the USA and Britain. Find the
right word in each ‘language’ for the following definitions or to fill the gaps (=…) in
the sentences from the box below. Print out this page and write the words under the
headings on the right:

British English American English

___________________________________________________________________________

1. Suitcases or bags which you take on holiday.

2. Part of a car where you put the answer to 1.
3. Place where you live, smaller than a house.
4. Don’t walk to the sixth floor, take the …
5. Walk on the … not on the street.
6. If you write in pencil, you can correct any
mistakes with a(n) …
7. Year at school (e.g. First …, Second …)
8. Things (empty packets, old food etc.) that you
want to get rid of.
9. “What’s for lunch?” – “I can open a … of spaghetti.”
10. Written under a message on a classroom blackboard:
“This information is important. Please do not …”
11. There were a lot of notices on the school …

garbage rub out luggage notice board trunk

eraser apartment boot grade elevator flat
pavement bulletin board tin sidewalk baggage rubber
lift wash rubbish form can

c) Confusion for British English speakers!

Sometimes the American English word has a completely different meaning in British
English. Which of the words in the box above has the following meaning in British
English?

1. Something you wear on your foot.

2. American gangster word for ‘to kill’.
3. A condom. Americans call this a …
4. This only contains drinks (coke, lemonade, beer etc.) in British English.
5. An elephant has one of these in both languages.
6. A piece of paper on which you have to write information about yourself.
Americans would call this ‘a blank’. In American English you ‘fill in a blank’. In
British English you ‘fill up a …’.

2
2. Word families

You can build up your word-power faster if you learn not just new words but also
their ‘family members’. As word-building often involves the use of prefixes and
suffixes, you will gradually get a feeling for what these word elements mean. For
example: you know the word ‘public’, you see the verb ‘to publicize’, you look it up
in a dictionary and find that it means ‘to make something public’, so you can guess
that the prefix ‘-ize’ has the meaning ‘to make’. There are many verbs ending in ‘-
ize’, and if you know what the prefix means, this helps you to guess the meaning of
these verbs without looking them up in a dictionary.

We have put some of the new words from this reader into a list and would like you to
supply the missing members of the family. We have put dashes (-----) in categories
where there is no suitable ‘member’ in this family. Print out this page before doing the
exercise. You can correct your answers by using a dictionary, but don’t look the words
up until you have tried your best to fill in the gaps. If you are ‘good at suffixes’, you
can often ‘guess’ the right forms, and the better your guesses, the quicker you will
learn new vocabulary.

When you look up a word in a dictionary, it is a good idea to ‘meet the family’: look
at other forms of the basic word and their meanings. We have given you a separate
column for such words.

Noun Verb Adjective

Other ‘family members’ you know
or have found in the dictionary
____________________________________________________________________

shock
separation -----
helpful
to notice
sleep
shiny
excited
dirt
to smell
to disappear
fresh
tasty
to threaten
speech -----
original
----- violent
connection
upset
----- loyal
bright
to retire -----
to imagine
applause -----

3
3 What did you think about the book and the people in it?

Complete your answers from the boxes, but give reasons for your choice as well!

1. I … the book
a)  enjoyed b)  didn’t enjoy c)  neither liked nor disliked
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
2. The level of the book was …
a)  too easy for me b)  too difficult for me c)  just right for me
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
3. The book was full of …
a) old clichés b)  funny descriptions c)  unlikely happenings
such as ___________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
4. In the future, time travel …
a)  will still be impossible b)  may be possible c)  is unlikely
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
5. If I could travel in time I would go …
a)  into the recent past b)  into the future c)  into the distant past
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
6. I think that Phoebe … her trip into the future
a)  can remember b)  has forgotten c)  thinks she dreamed about
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
7. I think Mr. Lewis will …
a)  stay in New York b)  go back to Chicago c)  find a new girlfriend
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
8. I think Aaron Zimmer is …
a)  a little crazy b)  a genius c)  not a good friend to Josh
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
9. I think Mrs. Lewis is …
a)  a bad mother b)  a good mother c)  a permissive mother
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.
10. I think Heather …
a)  needs help b)  is a selfish person c)  is just a typical 13-year-old
because __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________.

If you would like to complete more than one option for any of the sentences above,
please go ahead.

4
4. Places in the story

Let’s finish off with a wordsearch puzzle which contains the names of twenty people
or places mentioned in the story. Don’t forget to search diagonally (from top left to
bottom right only)!

J F K A I R P O R T O P S L Q Y L
N I M N L E S C A M BO G Y R O S
O B L O O M I N G D A L E S T O P
H A MA N H A T T E N R O A K L E
U B O L I V E R H I C K R N U V N
C A M I L L A A MA N L G DQ H C
K C Z M I J P N T Y A O E E B C E
L E W I S T O T A H E R E R I H A
E E LE A C H S Z L E P O Z TI M
Y F E N E L L A H J L R W N GC L
U P H O E B E R W H P E K R B A J
I B C U T H B E R T Z U N Y S G V
H E A D B L O O M F I O N A C O X