Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[kerstin]

1Children" make up" a large propotion of the world's population.
=take up?
what else could be used to replace "make up"?occupied?
2I'm talking about" English football",as opposed to European football.
Do you also call it"American football"?
3Can you check if I use the phrase "as opposed to" correctly?
-There's a lot of advantages to/of mastering a foreign laguage ,as opposed to just learning the basics of it.
-Making friends with sincere people is important,as opposed to having fair weather ones.

Thank you for your patience.

[bud]

1. "Take up" and "occupy" would work OK, I guess. In my opinion, though, both are better used when speaking about percentages of physical space. (E.g., "Our kitchen is so big it takes up half of our apartment.") At the moment, the only other possibility I can think of for your sentence is comprise.

2. In the U.S., the sport we call soccer is what the rest of the world calls football. To us, football is a different sport. So American Football is used in situations where confusion may arise - or European football. I've never heard of English football, but I suspect it is the same as European football. I know they are trying to make American football popular in Britain, but it has a long way to go to reach the level of popularity that European football has there.

3. Yes, excellent!