Vocabulary

When you read inEnglish  you should be taking notes on useful vocabulary - anything you think is a basic lexical term that you have seen before  or a more complex (but not uncommon or obscure) expression. Here are some examples taken at random from an article in Longitude. In making your own notes on a text that you are reading, you may want to write down more of the sentence to provide a context for the meaning and the way the word is used. You will probably need to check in a dictionay to see how the word collocates and then write down one or two ways to translate it into Italian.

He is unlikely to succeed

a work in progress

Nevertheless,

in spite of

this turned out to be a mistake

this really matters

to shape events

a dual role

pragmatic / pragmatist

this is not a problem that can be ignored

conventional wisdom

the ruling elite

current

a widening gap

to act as

to tend towards + noun/ to tend to + verb

sluggish

no longer

turmoil

a deep commitment

decision-making

to wind up / end up doing something

to forge or build consensus

to come to power

a cliché

grass-roots

unexpected event

effectively

this involves compromise

to be regarded as

the fact that

an outsider

that seems to be what he is trying to do

to get things done

powerful

unstable/instability

turn this into an opportunity

In the meantime / Meanwhile

the political establishment

for two and a half decades

most Americans (in general) / most of the Americans (in a specific group of people already mentioned

well-off/better-off

upset the system

the economy is expected to grow by only 1.5% next year

people have to realise that

a combination of circumstances

bias / biased

daily / day-to-day

an economic reversal  
behavior

to stimulate growth

guarantee

to miss the point

reassure