Collocations for Ethical Choices, Public Accountability and Social Justice
QUESTION • EVALUATE • ACT FAIRLY • TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
Start the lesson
Fair decisions require more than good intentions: people need reliable evidence, transparent procedures and a willingness to consider how choices affect different groups.
Responsibility means asking who may be affected, checking the evidence and being prepared to explain a decision—even when there is no perfect solution.
Explore the readingLexiLink · Ethics, Responsibility and Social Issues B2–C1 80 minutes
Complete the tasks and investigate ethics-related collocations in SkELL. Then explain how a policy could protect people while remaining transparent and fair.
Teacher-facing timing plan. The sequence moves from lexical noticing and IELTS-style reading to contextual practice, SkELL verification and productive use.
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to use B2+–C1 collocations for ethics, responsibility and social issues, distinguish close meanings, test language hypotheses with SkELL, and use expressions accurately in context.
Study each expression, its meaning and the synonyms that may fit a similar context. Compare the alternatives carefully: words may be close in meaning without being interchangeable in every sentence.
Read the text carefully or listen to it. Target collocations are shown in bold. The case study and its figures are fictional and created for learning purposes.
Pause / Resume preserves your place, or move the slider to jump to another part of the text.
A. On 10 January 2024, the fictional district of Eastford announced a pilot programme to improve access to social services. Project lead Dr Aisha Malik said the purpose was to address an ethical dilemma: how to use limited funding while maintaining equal access for residents with different needs. A review of 520 applications showed that people with limited internet access were less likely to complete forms online.
B. The council introduced paper applications and face-to-face appointments in March. Its public report of 17 June 2024 described new measures intended to strengthen public accountability. Officials were required to explain decisions and record how they applied ethical standards. The programme also established a confidential process for raising concerns and promised whistle-blower protection for staff reporting serious wrongdoing.
C. A local health centre raised concerns about data privacy after an online form requested more personal information than was needed. The data officer, Samuel Reed, recommended reviewing informed consent and limiting access to sensitive records. The investigation found no evidence that information had been sold, but the centre changed its form and published clearer privacy guidance.
D. Community advocate Farah Osman said the effects of social inequality could not be assessed by looking only at average results. She urged decision-makers to consider vulnerable groups and the principles of environmental justice, because some low-income households lived close to a busy road and lacked access to green space. Residents joined a public meeting on 2 September 2024 as part of a wider effort to increase civic engagement.
E. The review released on 14 February 2025 found that completed applications had increased by 18%, but it did not conclude that every problem had been solved. The report recommended keeping transparent procedures, checking for a conflict of interest in future procurement and evaluating whether support improved public trust. It described collective responsibility as a continuing task for officials, service providers and residents rather than a single campaign.
Decide whether each statement agrees with the passage. Choose TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN.
Match each statement to paragraph A–E. Use each paragraph once.
Choose the best answer according to the passage.
Complete each expression using its meaning and the context; choose the word that makes a natural collocation.
Choose the missing word in each collocation. Read the whole expression, not just the blank.
Use sentence meaning and grammar to select a collocation that fits the context.
Choose the collocation that best fits the situation about ethics, responsibility and social issues, cultural identity or cooperation. Use the contextual meaning to decide; do not classify parts of speech.
Choose the expression that fits the situation and the meaning of the sentence.
Open SkELL. Search public accountability, ethical standards, social inequality and public trust in Word Sketch. Compare authentic examples and meanings. Record two collocations, write an original sentence for each, add related expressions and explain how corpus evidence confirmed or changed your first hypothesis.
Three options in each question express similar meanings. Choose the one collocation that does NOT belong to the synonym group. All options are natural expressions; the odd one out is different in meaning.
Choose the collocation that matches the meaning described. All options are natural English expressions; use meaning rather than parts of speech.
These tests become progressively harder: recognise collocations, choose expressions in context, compare close meanings, and evaluate realistic situations involving ethics, responsibility and social issues. The practice score is reported separately from the 115-point lesson total.
Write at least 100 words discussing a social issue and proposing a responsible response. Use at least eight target collocations and consider who may be affected. The 100-word target is recommended for full writing credit, but unfinished work can still be submitted.
Please compose your paragraph here rather than pasting a prepared text. Normal paste, cut/copy shortcuts and drag-and-drop are blocked in this writing field. This browser restriction supports the task rules but is not a complete plagiarism-detection system.
0 words — 100-word minimum to submit; no maximum
Use the word counter below to review your draft. You may submit unfinished work for teacher feedback.
Your name and group from the student profile above, your SkELL collocations and original sentences, related words, corpus notes, writing paragraph and available exercise scores will be collected in the teacher's spreadsheet.
Auto-scored sections: reading MCQ, True/False, paragraph matching, Matching, Sentence Completion, Odd One Out, Find the Collocate, Multiple Choice, Lexical Cloze and Collocation Repair (100 points total). SkELL cluster (10) and productive writing (5) are teacher-scored. Maximum lesson total: 115 points. The 24-point Progressive Lexical Test is submitted as a separate practice result and is not added to the lesson total.
Vocabulary bank informed by the Lesson 25 topic, “Ethics, Responsibility and Social Issues,” in the supplied LexiLink lesson collection. Definitions, reading and interactive exercises were adapted or written for LexiLink.
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