Tricky+vocabulary+page

Some vocabulary is very tricky to understand, even native speakers make mistakes with certain words, here I will try to explain some of the more difficult words or words that are often used incorrectly.

The very first target word in Inside Reading Unit 6 is a good example, many people have problems deciding whether to use affect (the target word) or effect. Here's an explanation of the difference taken from the BBC Learning English website:

What's the difference between affect and effect? The main use of 'affect' - with an 'a' - is as a verb meaning to have an influence. So you could say: 'Your emotional state affects how you remember things'. The word with an 'e' - effect - is usually used as a noun and it means the result of an influence. So: 'What effect will the new law have on road use?' Part of the problem, you see, is not only that these two words are spelt very similarly, often pronounced the same, but their meanings are also very similar - one's a noun, one's a verb. There is a rarer and more formal use of 'effect' as a verb - that's the one with the 'e' - meaning 'to make something happen'. So you could say: 'It is pointless to try and effect a chance in policy now'.

There are also a number of fixed phrases so something that you might hear quite often is 'take effect'. So that's effect - with an 'e' - used as a noun. Here's an example: 'New privacy regulations will take effect on July 1st.'