‘Confer‘ has two meanings. One meaning is to consult other people or discuss something with other people. The other meaning is to officially give someone a title.

Examples:

• Before you make any decisions about hiring new staff, please confer with the Finance Department to check our funding.
• When you graduate from your Ph.D you are conferred with a degree.

Collocations: When you learn new vocab, make sure that you note collocations too. For this group of words some collocations are:
communicate with, communicable disease
concentrate on, concentrated effort
conference about, conference on, confer an award, conference theme
contrast with, in contrast to, contrasted against
cycle of, recyclable goods

Check the meanings:  of the words if you don’t already know them. Check the meanings of the various forms as sometimes they are different. You can check them at Time4english by clicking the words (http://www.time4english.com/aamain/lounge/awl.asp).

Academic Word List 39

Complete the sentences below with the correct word and the correct form of the word.

1. When sporting matches are televised, the teams involved need to wear _______________colours so that they can be distinguished easily. (contrast, concentrate)
2. In the last 20 years methods of ______________have been highly influenced by social media. (communicate, contrast)
3. Sometimes it is hard to _______________ on study. (cycle, concentrate)
4. The title of ‘Sir’ is _______________ on people who are deemed to have made an important contribution to British society. (confer, communicate)
5. The _______________ of the seasons is affected by climate change. (cycle, confer)

Answers (in the wrong order below)
5. cycle   4. conferred   3. concentrate    2. communication    1. contrasting