In the NEWS

Girl Praised for Saving Mum's Life
Sep 13 2009 ninemsn news

A young north Queensland girl is being praised for saving her mother's life.
Four-year-old Alex Wood called triple-zero when her mum Rebecca Stanley collapsed on the floor of their Kirwan, Townsville, home with severe abdominal pain.
With only her twin brother and one-year-old sister by her side, Alex called the emergency line and spoke calmly to Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) emergency medical dispatcher Leonie Richards for nearly 10 minutes until paramedics arrived to treat her mum.
"Alex was able to tell us her address, that her mother had collapsed and that she needed an ambulance right away," Ms Richards said in a statement.
"She listened carefully and was able to answer all of my questions. She really did a fantastic job."
Ms Stanley said she was extremely proud of her daughter and how she handled the August 31 emergency.
"I would hate to think what may have happened had Alex not learnt triple-zero. She is my little hero and I'm just so proud of her," she said.
"My husband and I have been teaching our children about triple-zero and I am so glad that all that repetitive learning paid off in this instance," she said.
QAS northern region assistant commissioner Rodney Walz said Alex was one of the youngest Queenslanders to call triple-zero.
"It is unusual that we have such a young caller through the triple-zero service and this really highlights the importance of teaching the emergency number to your children as early as they can understand it because you never know when they may need to use it," he said in a statement.

*Triple-zero = 000 (the national emergency number in Australia)

STUDENT TASK

1. Look up the following words in the dictionary (http://www.dictionary.com/)

praise

collapse

severe

abdominal

dispatcher

handle

repetitive

highlight

statement

Tip 1: Any time you are studying vocabulary, be sure to write sample sentences and mark also what part of speech it is, e.g. verb/adjective/noun/adverb. You may copy the way the words are used where you found them (i.e. you can copy the sentences from the above article. Do not feel that this is cheating, because you are merely learning the use of these words for the first time. But later, you need to repeat these words when you are speaking or writing English so that it becomes part of your English memory bank!)

Tip 2: Another way of really cementing into your memory bank new vocabulary, is to make sentences in different tenses, question forms and negative forms.

Here is a sample of the way to complete the student task.

(to) praise (v) - to say that you admire or approve of someone or something.

e.g.

1. original: A young north Queensland girl is being praised for saving her mother's life.

2. negative: The girl is not being praised.

3. question: Is the girl being praised?

4. past tense: The girl was praised.

5. future tense: The girl will be praised.

Tip 3: You may continue in this manner using other grammar forms so you can become more familiar with their usage. This way, you can, "kill two birds with one stone," because not only are hou learning new vocabulary, you are at the same time learning and practising grammar!

Tip 4: Take note of what the mother said in the above article about how she and her husband taught their young children to remember the emergency number and procedures: REPETITIVE LEARNING! "Practise makes perfect?" There is no shortcut!