Vocabulary and grammar: Naming places

VinsightVerbs + prepositions

1Read the sentences about South Africa. Choose the correct prepositions. 

• 1I'm in Cape Town waiting foratabout the next bus to Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa.

• 2The city of Cape Town belonged ontoof Holland in the seventeenth century.

• 3A famous lighthouse warns sailors fromaboutfor the cliffs at the Cape of Good Hope.

• 4When he was in prison on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela hoped offorfrom a change in government.

• 5What happened aboutfromto Nelson Mandela? Well, he came out of prison and became president.

• 6I thought foronabout watching a rugby match when I was in Johannesburg last week. It's a very popular sport in South Africa.

• 7The city of Durban borrowed its name fromaboutto Sir Benjamin d'Urban, who was a politician.

• 8We're learning a lot about South African history fromtoabout our evening classes.

while, as and when

2Complete the sentences with while, as or when. Use each word at least once. In some sentences more than one answer is possible. 

• 1WhileAsWhen I was driving across Alabama in the USA, I passed through a town called Brilliant.

• 2I was surprised whileaswhen I discovered that they named New York after the Duke of York.

• 3My family lived in a small Scottish village called Dull whileaswhen I was a child.

• 4I heard about a local town called Boring whileaswhen I was staying with friends in Oregon in the USA.

• 5WhileAsWhen we were walking home, we saw a signpost for a town called Hell.

• 6WhileasWhen I was visiting a city called London in Canada, my best friend Sam was staying at a hotel in London, England.

while, as and when

3Complete the biography about Captain Cook. Use the past simple or past continuous form of the verbs in brackets. 

You need to use normal letters and capital letters correctly in this task.

In 1769, while he 

¹

 

(sail) across the South Pacific Ocean, the famous British explorer Captain James Cook, 

²

 

(open) a secret letter from the British government and 

³

 

(read) the instructions. The letter told him to find the unexplored continent of Terra Australis. When Cook 

⁴

 

(reach) the islands of what is now New Zealand, he 

⁵

 

(make) the first good maps of the coast. Then, in April 1770, he sailed west to the south-east coast of Australia. As his ship 

⁶

 

(travel) along the coast, Cook 

⁷

 

(give) names to the strange, new places. One day, when his men 

⁸

 

(get) off the ship at a beautiful bay, they 

⁹

 

(find) a lot of interesting animals and plants, so Cook 

¹⁰

 

(call) the place Botany Bay. And while they 

¹¹

 

(repair) the ship near a river, Cook 

¹²

 

(name) the river after his ship, the Endeavour. Today, the Endeavour River reaches the Australian coast at a town called Cooktown, which is named after the explorer himself.

4  You opened your social network page this morning and found two messages from friends. Read the messages, then write a reply explaining why you were in the places and what you were doing.

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