Today’s picture: Otara Market, South Auckland – on a windy Saturday morning

Part 1: Today's word

‘Crucial’ means extremely important, so it’s a useful word when you need to say something stronger than ‘important’. If something is crucial, you can’t do without it! When you analyse something, you can try to identify crucial elements – in other words, the most important parts. The noun is ‘crux’ – but it’s mostly used in the expression, ‘the crux of the problem / issue / matter’ meaning the most difficult part of a problem.

The quality of recruitment is crucial to the company’s success.

I don’t think you’re focusing on the crux of the matter – how we’re going to pay for all of this.

For more exercises and examples, go to: www.academicenglishgenerator.com

Part 2: Test

Here are four sentences with our word of the day - but only three of them are correct. Which is the odd one out?

It’s crucial that this package is delivered safely to our London office.

Although his help was crucial, we could easily have completed the project without him.

She’d forgotten to include a crucial piece of evidence, which meant that her argument was not supported.

He tried to explain to everyone the crucial importance of his research.

Part 3: Practice Questions:

What are the crucial elements of a successful essay or report?
Why would you argue that English is crucial for business people in the modern world?

Part 4: Kiwi Quiz Question

On June 25th 2008, the New Zealand Government signed one of the most important treaty settlements, returning ownership of _________ to Maori from the central North Island?

Forests
Lakes
Mountains
Hot springs

Part 5: Today's link:

Soup Stirring Robot (from Radio New Zealand)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/__data/assets/audio_item/0020/1604126/ngts-20080624-1912-Soup-stirring_Robot-wmbr.asx

Vocabulary for the article:

back-channelling / to ditch somebody / humanoid / insinuate yourself / inevitable / autonomy / biomass

Questions for the article:

In which country was the interviewee based?

What’s the crucial aspect of the project which attracted funding?

What is more difficult with the new generation of robots compared to traditional ones, used in car factories etc?

Which are the two forms of safety mentioned by the Professor?

What’s the purpose of backchannelling?

Why did the research team choose serving soup as a function for their robot?

Which kinds of backchannelling do the robots need to understand?

How difficult is it for a robot to avoid colliding with people in a room?

Has the demand for robots declined?

What is a robot?

What is the main aim of the ecobot program?

Today’s musical intro: from Cuba

Charlas del Momento by Orquestra Aragon. From the CD ‘Baila Carola’. 1992. Exotica