Word Game with Spring Words

Lots of you might be tired of the winter doldrums by now. Waiting for ourselves to wake up from hibernating, let us enjoy word scramble with signs of Spring!

Suppose you are going on a field trip with your students to a park. You give the class a list of things to look for in the woods and meadows, but the words got all mixed up. Can you help them unscramble the list of words below?

  Example:   OFGR:  _____________     The answer is FROG

     

     

     1.   FEUYRBTLT   ____________________________

     2.   SRSGA:  _________________________

     3.   ORMHTARWE: ___________________________

     4.   SNTGLHUI: _______________________

     5.   UDB: _________________________

     6.   DDNLIAENO: ___________________________

     7.   ORELWF: _______________________

     8.   EBE: _________________

     9.   GLBDYAU: _____________________

     10.               OMLOB: __________________

     11.               ERGEN: ___________________

 ANSWER KEYS 

     

     1.  BUTTERFLY

     2.  GRASS

     3.  EARTHWORM

     4.  SUNLIGHT

     5.  BUD

     6.  DANDELION

     7.  FLOWER

     8.  BEE

     9.  LADYBUG

     10.              BLOOM

     11.              GREEN

English Idioms about Love

Love is in the air on Valentine’s day this week. What comes to your mind first when you think of love and care? Candlelight dinner with a bunch of roses? Sweet chocolate for your loved ones? Otherwise, staying active at the gym working out together? All is good as long as you can reach your loved ones’ heart. 😊

This week, let us go over some interesting idiomatic expressions related to love. (source from https://7esl.com/love-idioms/)

1.   to hang the Moon: to idealize someone; to think someone is capable of enormously difficult acts/ to think that somebody is extremely wonderful, amazing, or good

2.   to carry a torch for someone: to continue to be in love with someone even after the relationship is over or has ended

3.   to have the hots for someone: to be attracted to someone

4.   to fall for something/someone hook, line, and sinker: a phrase stated after something or someone has been easily fooled or deceived or lured in. This expression has its roots in fishing lingo, referring to a fish having fallen for the bait easily, swallowing the hook, the fishing line, and the sinker along with it.

5.   to kiss and make up: to make peace after an argument

6.   love rat: somebody who cheats on his or her partner

7.   May-December Marriage or Romance: a May-December Romance or Marriage is an instance of the romantic involvement of the two parties between whom there is a considerable age difference. Quite oftentimes, one individual has an ulterior materialistic motive, such as money or status, etc.

8.   Old flame: an ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend

9.   to whisper sweet nothings: to whisper a complementary statement with no real substance (i.e., meaningless romantic utterances) into the ear of a significant other

10.       to be smitten (with someone): to be madly in love; affected by something/ someone overwhelming; made irrationally enthusiastic

Time to test how well you got the meaning of each idiom listed above!!!

    

    1.   Jina has found herself totally _________________ with Tim lately. From sun-up till midnight, all she thinks about is Tim.

    2.   As far as I heard, Laura and Quincy broke up two months ago, but it seems Laura’s still carrying a ______________________ for him.

    3.   Wow, I could feel that love is in the air today. Everywhere I go grab a bite of something, lovers lean across the table, whispering _________________________ in each other’s ear. I wonder how many of those items are truly deeply in love. Haha…

    4.   A:Are you still seeing Frank?

        B: Nope, he’s my ________________________ now. We broke up last       Christmas.

    5.   Pete and Danny had always been arguing over political issues for all those years, but now they decided to ___________ and _________________, putting all their political differences aside.

    6.   A: OMG!!! Have you heard that Humphrey has popped the question to that 25-year-old girl?

B: Are you kidding me? Humphrey is 55 years old!!! Wow…I can’t believe that I’m gonna witness a  ____________________________ marriage around me!

    7.   You always think highly of Willie and he hung _____________________________, but I beg to differ. He is not that kind of gentleman in your imagination.

    8.   A: You’re way too gullible! Your teammate Gary told you a complete lie, and you took his word for it?

B: I didn’t know that I fell for his scheme hook, ____________, and _______________.

    9.   A: Everybody in this fitness training program has the ________________ for the coach.

B: Wow…wish I could tell the members that the coach is a womanizer. Yup, he even cheated on his wife three years ago and got divorced.

A: Geeeez….he must be a ____________________!

Answer Keys

    

    1.  smitten

    2.  torch

    3.  sweet nothings

    4.  old flame

    5.  kiss and make up

    6.  May-December

    7.  the Moon

    8.  line, sinker

    9.  hots, love rat

Elsewhere

Elsewhere

When the funeral director and his staff wrapped up the somber process of washing and shrouding my father’s lifeless body, they said “Now, the deceased is ending all his ties with this world.” It was the saddest and unbelievably coldest bunch of words that I had ever heard in my life. Even though what I saw right in front of me was my dad without soul anymore, I wasn’t ready at all to accept the funeral director’s temerity to say those bitter, heartless words. Those words sounded and felt so frustrating like nefarious accumulations of beta-amyloid protein in my dad’s brain in his final days.

Some religion might argue that you would be completely out of the memory of the deceased in “elsewhere”, the place one belongs to after death. Either a believer of God or an atheist, most of us tend to believe there is some higher ground we will leave for when life here in this world is over. What makes us all keep the faith in living in some place of the unbeknown after we are done with this world? Is it because we would feel sorry for our own self or the bereaved without such a belief? Otherwise, have we all been dragged into a huge hole of lies that there shall be a whole new “elsewhere” once our bodies have stopped living in this world? Then, what is the picture of that place in your imagination like? Heavenly or unimaginably pitch black?

I have a short voice recording of my final conversation with my dad in the hospitable. Since he was becoming more and more delirious – especially at night-, our conversation sounded weird and off the wall. With his eyes closed tight, and his cold hand in mine, Dad was repetitively trying to solve basic additions like “One plus five…..two? Six?  One plus six….” I was like “One plus five is six!! Good job, Daddy!!!”….” Each time I play the recording when I miss him so badly, I find myself wondering if Dad was really with me when we had that conversation…or if he was already on his way to the “elsewhere”. Also, I’d ask him in my mind this simple question over and over again. ‘Will you ever recognize me when I get there to join you some time in the future?’

Expressions

     

     

     1.   temerity: (noun) excessive boldness or rashness; foolhardiness or recklessness

     2.   nefarious: (adjective) infamous by way of being extremely wicked

     3.   beta-amyloid protein: (proper noun) an amyloid that circulates in human blood and in cerebrospinal fluid and is deposited into plaques found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Also called amyloid beta-protein.

     

4.   a thing/ a place of the unbeknown: a thing/a place without the knowledge of someone

Word Play with Rhyme

This week, let’s solve fun word quiz (using rhyme) provided by NPR.

I'm going to give you two words. Rearrange the letters in each of them to make two new words that rhyme.

Example: SHOT ASCOT:   HOST, COAST

        

        1.  LAZE EQUALS:

        2.  GINS NILE:

        3.  FIBER FLEA:

    4. TROUT RETUNE:

    5. WRONG HORNET:

    6. LUBE WEST:

    7. EIGHTH ITEM:

Answer Keys:

1. zeal, squeal

2. sign, line

3. brief, leaf

4. tutor, neuter

5. grown, throne

6. blue, stew

7. height, mite

Buzzwords in Business

Do you feel from time to time that you have been way outdated or being weeded out in the field of your work or business? Feeling dull, malfunctioning, and tragically unhip like a caveman. Nobody would be thrilled to die out in their realms. Let us go over some buzzwords that have often been used in the business world.

(http://americasbusinessguide.com/9-overused-buzzwords/7/)

1.   to drink the kool-aid: completely buy into an idea or system, whether good or bad / to embrace a particular philosophy or perspective without a doubt

2.   millenials: “millennials” is not a new word or concept, but has become a buzzword today, because “millennials will make up more than one in three of your workforce by 2020 and by 2025 they’ll reach 75%. It’s safe to say millennials will be who you’ll employ, groom, develop, retain and rely on to do business. But that’s not the only place you’ll be dealing with millennials. From a consumer perspective, millennials spend close to $600 billion a year. That essentially means your products and services will heavily rely on the business of millennials.” (Paul Keijzer)

3.   IoT: IoT stands for Internet of Things, which literally means physical objects with internet capabilities such as smart watches, smart cars, smart homes etc.

4.   Agile talent: According to Harvard Business Review, “a new generation of worker that is a freelancer on the one hand– so not connected to one single organization as a permanent employee– but at the same time, the work that this freelancer is doing– we call agile talent– is strategic work as opposed to administrative or operational work or temporary work replacing a full-time permanent employee.”

5.   Disruptive Innovation:  “disruptive innovation” is a new idea (which is different from the existing approach or attitude of corporate development) that creates a new market or radically increases value in an existing market.

6.   ContinuousNext: The Continuous Next approach is a business strategy which is emphasized by Gartner, expounds on the importance for organizations to be more adaptive to change. Digital business transformation created a strong momentum for continuous development and the ability to adjust technology to deliver the best possible business intelligence value. (source from DataPine)

7.   Digital Citizen: a person who develops the skills and knowledge to effectively use the Internet and other digital technology, especially in order to participate responsibly in social and civic activities: We're teaching students how to become good digital citizens.

Now let us practice using the above buzz words in actual sentences!

    

     1.   As a user of various online sites, such as the Web, apps, social networking pages, and other online collaboration forums, you should learn proper manners and etiquette to become a safe and polite “_______________________ citizen” of different communities.

     2.   Today’s volatile world requires employees to fit into constantly adapting, agile project teams. In other words, you need to have the _______________________________ for the changing framework designed to support agile working and digital collaboration.

     3.   Coach Bill has made all his team players to drink the ________________________, but some players were against the idea of accepting what they are told to do with no doubt.

     4.   In order to create perpetual innovation, integration and delivery, we are supposed to foresee the next evolutionary phase of what the research firm calls digital transformation. In other words, we need to take a continuously changing and developing attitude and approach called _______________________ way of thinking.

     5.   Lots of Youtubers are focusing on young consumers, especially the ______________________, who spend close to $600 billion a year.

     6.   Living in the world that’s filled with ___________ gadgets and gizmos sometimes makes me feel like a human trapped in a huge intricate machine controlled by AI.

     7.   Quite a few people argue that _____________________ innovation in our industry will soon completely replace the jobs currently occupied by human labor.

Answer Keys

    1.   Digital

    2.   Agile Talent

    3.   Kool-aid

    4.   ContinuousNext

    5.   millennials

    6.   IoT

    7.   disruptive

Summer Word Play

Are you tired of being in the winter doldrums now? Why don’t we think about Summer time by unscrambling the following words that relate to Summer?!! 😊


Example:  msmuer  turns into "summer"

   1.   oth  _________________

   2.   waets  _______________

   3.   polo  __________________

   4.   gismnimw  _____________________

   5.   rperlnski  ________________________

   6.   cmriceae _________________________

   7.   seihnnsu ________________________

   8.   lmneaoertw  _________________________

   9.   iccinp _____________________________

  10.               gtoshdo  ___________________________

  11.               eispolpc  _________________________

  12.               ssuiwitm ____________________________

  13.               novcatia  _______________________________

  14.               mpincag  ________________________________

  15.               teha ___________________________

  16.               plfioplfs  __________________________

Answer Keys

1. hot

2. sweat

3. pool

4. swimming

5. sprinkler

6. icecream

7. sunshine

8. watermelon

9. picnic

10. hotdogs

11. popsicle

12. swinsuit

13. vacation

14. camping

15. heat

16. flip flops

Let Your Piggy Dreams Fly

Another new year titled as the year of "Golden Pig" has kicked in. Golden Pig might sound like the following 365 days would be paved with a red carpet for all lucky gold diggers and go getters who will take much pride in their rich harvest. Everyone has big or small goals or expectations for this brand new bunch of days ahead.

It doesn't matter how old you are when it comes to build and rebuild your grand schemes. Wait, let me put it differently. It doesn't matter how YOUNG you are when you're about to revamp your dreams and plans. It is because the shiny new packet of days are equally given to everyone of us. To some out there who are terminally ill or diagnosed with irremediable diseases, the new year ahead must feel totally different. Every single day for those ill people in dire situations, the fresh bunch of year called 2019 must seem more precious and priceless than those who just keep noodling around with the days given. If you are lucky enough to be in good shape as you speak, let the spirit of people desperately longing for tomorrow be yours and mine.

No matter how old, young, healthy, or sick, you can create the new batch of days just the way you love at your own pace. Even if there's unexpected glitches or obstacles in your way, do not freak out or despair. Just take them as refreshing elevenses or pitstop in a race that you could savor for recharging yourselves. That way, the year of Golden Pig will make your own piggy dreams fly high even when pigs don’t fly in 2019. Happy piggy new year to you all!!!

Expressions

   

   1.   to kick in: (intransitive verb) to start/ begin

   2.   to put something differently: (verb) to state something otherwise/ in a different way

   3.   irremediable: (adjective) incurable/ hopeless

   4.   to noodle around: (verb) wandering/exploring with no set destination for no specified amount of time

   5.   batch: (noun) set/ array/ group

   6.   glitches: (noun) a sudden, usually temporary malfunction or irregularity of equipment

   7.   elevenses: (noun) a light snack, usually with tea or coffee, taken mid-morning

   8.   pitstop: (noun) a stop at a pit for refueling or service during an automobile race.