A Helping Hand

Words in Use (Lesson 36)

• prompt
• hasty
• scorch
• tempest
• soothe
• sympathetic
• redeem
• resume
• harmony
• refrain
• illegal
• narcotic

Read the following passage to see how the new words are used in it.
  
A Helping Hand
Youth workers Bill Nash and Jim Boyle are househunters, not so much for a house as for a concerned family willing to house and feed troubled youngsters temporarily. They try to give prompt attention to those who cannot or will not live at home. For some, leaving home may have been the result of a hasty decision, based on a scorching remark and the subsequent* tempest within the family. The cooling-off period away from the family is a time to soothe feelings. With sympathetic outsiders, youngsters have a chance to redeem them- selves. The hope, of course, is that they will learn to relate* to adults again and quickly resume a normal life of harmony with their own families. Some people refrain from offering their homes, expressing vague* fears of the harmful effects on their own children. But this has not been the case, even when the problem of the "visitor" was the illegal use of narcotics. One parent remarked, “With us it worked the other way. The horror of drugs became real to my own son. We got a lot more than we gave.”