Rangkuman Materi Himpunan dalam Matematika

 Talking about Burglary

 

Gina: How was your trip?

Liam: My trip was good… But my house was burgled while I was gone.

G: Oh no!

L: Yeah… I came back to find the back window broken, and everything was messed up inside.

G: I’m so sorry to hear that. Do you know when it happened?

L: Not exactly. Apparently there have been several break-ins in the area recently, though.

G: Did they take much stuff?

L: Some electronics, a laptop, a few other small things. It’s all replaceable, but it’s still not a good feeling.

G: I’m sure. Still, maybe the police will catch them and you’ll get it back.

L: Maybe, but I doubt it. They came and dusted for prints, but they said that there was almost no chance of recovering my things.

G: Really?

L: They say that stolen goods tend to be moved out of the city and sold somewhere else, so they’re very difficult to trace. The detective told me that there’s a whole network of fences around the country, and they move stolen items between them.

G: Sounds like big business.

Look at a sentence you heard at the start of the dialogue.

• My house was ________ while I was gone.

Do you remember the missing word?

The word was ‘burgled’, from the verb ‘to burgle’.

With crime vocabulary, you often need to learn words in threes.

• burgle -> verb
• burg— -> n. person
• burg—- -> n. activity

Do you know the noun forms?

Here they are.

• burgle -> verb
• burglar -> n. person
• burglary -> n. activity

You need to know one noun for the person, one noun for the activity, and the verb. Do you need a review on parts of speech and sentence structure? Watch our lesson: English Sentence Structure.

Sometimes, some of the forms might be the same. For example: murder, murderer, murder.

• murder -> verb
• murderer -> n. person
• murder -> n. activity

Sometimes, one of the forms might be a completely different word, like this: steal, thief, stealing.

• steal -> verb
• thief -> n. person
• stealing -> n. activity

Keep this in mind when learning vocabulary to talk about crime and court in English.

This is also a useful way to learn other types of vocabulary. Would you like more vocabulary practice? Be sure to watch our Oxford Online English lesson on learning English vocabulary.

Let’s look at some other useful vocabulary from the dialogue.

1. There have been several break-ins in the area recently.
2. They came and dusted for prints.
3. Stolen goods tend to be moved out of the city and sold somewhere else.
4. There’s a whole network of fences around the country.

Here’s a task for you: look at the definitions. Can you match the words to the definitions?

1. Items taken from someone illegally.
2. When a house is burgled.
3. Someone who buys and sells stolen items.
4. To spread fine powder everywhere in order to find fingerprints.

Pause the video and find your answers.

Could you do it? Let’s look!

1b
2d
3c
4a

‘Break-in’ and ‘burglary’ have a similar meaning; you could use either word in this sentence.

‘Fence’ is a colloquial word, but it’s useful sometimes as there’s no single word with the same meaning.

Learn more about what colloquialisms are and get some examples of them: Colloquialism Examples.

Let’s move on to part two in talking about crime and court in English. Don’t forget that you can always review a dialogue or a section as many times as you need.