despite

Fill in the blanks with the following words. There may be more than one right answer.

as a result of despite even so in order to whereas

1. ___ ensure everything goes to plan, please read all instructions carefully.

2. ___ recent cutbacks, Marketing and Sales will be merged into one department.

3. Mary and Jeff feel we need to reduce personnel expenses, ___ I believe we should take more people on!

4. I agree with you about that; ___, I’m not going to approve it.

5. Valerie sent the report out, ___ my strict instructions not to.

To make this easier, we’re going to break all these words into two groups: 1. Despite and in spite of are prepositions, meaning that they must be followed by nouns or verbs in the gerund. Despite having studied, Peter just couldn’t pass the exam. Kelly couldn’t get into the disco in spite of knowing the […]