Improving your vocabulary through collocation exercises

Remember the steps in the collocation exercise
1) Gather words related to the theme.
2) Find their meaning
3) Write a passage of your own using as many of the words as you can.

1) Young people today feel a strong sense of camaraderie. This can be a good thing when they give each other positive strokes and laugh hilariously at jokes that only they can understand. However, such relationships have strings attached so that they may have to grapple with their own emotions and their friends as peers interfere constantly in each others lives. Best friends may feel resentful instead of cared for. They hold each other in high esteem but also long for a sense of individual achievement. This means that they may try hard to impress others intellectually and bask in the admiration of their peers. When they are ignored by their peers or rejected, they tend be filled with despair or lose their faith in their friends. When this occurs open lines of communication with their family is important. Parents must not relinquish control of their children to their peers but must try to understand and bond with their child.

2) Hitch is inherently different in nature from his brother. He is a generally positive person. As an abandoned child, he knows well about the importance of a close knit family. He longs for congenial family gatherings and often imagines what his life would be like if he is part of a normal family unit. Someone there to always lend a listening ear and give positive strokes when he is overwhelmed by demands and pressures. However, he knows it is only a dream. It is only after great effort on his part to formulate his own values that he managed to develop good interpersonal relationships and become a well adjusted adult with a high level of maturity.

3) A long time ago there was a boy named Glass who was overwhelmed by the demands and pressures placed on him by his parents that he rebelled and he was soon beyond parental control. He was too busy with his own emotions to grapple with the demands of home, family and school and he wanted to be alone. In contrast, there was another boy called Sun who was cheerful and constantly filled with joy. His heart was filled with a sense of exhilaration and a sense of achievement when ever he made a new friend. He would go around in a triumphant smile on his face.

One day, Sun met Glass in a bus stop. Sun recognised that Glass was at the stage of adolescent depression. His heart reached out to the stranger and he wanted to help Glass and they began to chat. Glass told Sun that the generation gap was a perennial problem and that he did not like the way his parents talked to him. Sun was honest with Glass he talked about how every one felt misunderstood at times and it was normal to feel confused. He taught him strategies of coping with life challenges and low self esteem. He talked about the right way to assert independence and keep happy. Glass was greatly inspired by the talk and deeply appreciated all the advice he received. Glass started to put Sun's advice into practice and his relationship with his family improved by leaps and bounds.