Day 30: Don't say the word!

It has arrived! The last day of your 30-day challenge is here. Here's a fun one that you can use to play with someone (I'm quite fond of that, as you may have noticed).

Do you know the board game Taboo? The one with cards that gave you a word to define to other players and a little list of words that you couldn't use in your definition. Did you ever play that game when you were younger? Or maybe you played just a week ago, who knows!

And have you ever played this game of forbidden words in a language class? There's something about it, maybe its simplicity, or the challenge inherent in forbidding the obvious, that makes it perfect to help students fix vocabulary.

Plus, it can get really funny. I'd say the funnier the more competitive the players are!

Easy instructions for our last challenge:

 - Read the cards below and choose six to define.

 - Try with a timer first! You have 30 seconds to attempt a definition. You can record yourself on the phone to test yourself!

 - Share your definitions with us, now in written form in the comments. Are there any cards you didn't choose because you thought they were too difficult?



That's all, folks! I hope you have fun and rack your brains a little with our last challenge!


DROWSY
sleep
drug
yawn
tired
doze

WEIRD
bizarre
odd
strange
different
mad

COLLEAGUE
friend
work
together
job
group

VANISH
disappear
finish
end
go away
fade

PUZZLE
maze
mystery
labyrinth
jigsaw
together

EULOGY
funeral
death
testimony
deceased
speech

COMPOST
soil
fertilizer
decompose
organic
waste

MAGMA
volcano
Earth
hot
flow
eruption

EVIDENCE
crime
police
investigation
crime
prove

HEADACHE
pain
throb
aspirin
migraine
temple

DICTIONARY
words
definitions
book
meaning
Webster's

ICE
snow
water
freeze (frozen)
cube
cream

SNOW WHITE
dwarfs
mirror
stepmother
apple
poison

PANDA
bear
bamboo
China
white
black
ChuLin







Comments

  1. fdgcApril 14, 2020 at 6:12 AM

    Hi, all,

    Let´s go for the last challenge.

    My definitions:

    Ice: What there is on the poles of the Earth that currently is thawing because of global warming.

    Eulogy: The speech that is given when somebody dies usually praising the deceased.

    Drowsy: The state in which a person is just after having waken up or at the end of a pretty weary day.

    Magma: Melted rocks which are in movement under the terrestrial crust and can emerge through a fault or other type of crack in the tectonic plates.

    Dictionary: A physical or online tool in which you can look up expressions or check the spelling or pronunciation of something. One of most famous is Collins.

    Evidence: A group of things, multimedia resources or facts which are used by an attorney in a trial to demonstrate that his defendant is not guilty.

    I´ve chosen them sort of randomly except one, magma, which has been the easiest since I was helping my daughter to study geology in English not long time ago :-)
    Incredible though it may seem, the hardest has been dictionary because of the ban of the words "book" and "words"

    So, we´re done, I can believe it. I never thought when I started the challenge that I would complete it. And now what? Surely there will be a gap in these days of lockdown. Definitely, I´ll miss this.

    Thank you very much indeed for your hard work, Bea. It´s been great, tough some times, but beneficial and usefull aways, and, above all, I´ve had a lot of fun.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shall I compare thee...April 15, 2020 at 11:40 AM

      You can be sure the pleasure was mine! Whenever you replied you made my day!

      Delete
  2. ANAApril 14, 2020 at 9:58 AM

    Hi mates!

    Here you have my definitions for the last day!

    WEIRD: a person whose behaviour or body language stands you out as something you won't consider "normal"

    COLLEAGUE: a person with whom you do an activity at the place where you go to earn your salary.

    EVIDENCE: the clues that the police search at the place where someone has been killed and that will help identify who the murderer has been.

    HEADACHE: many men complain that this is the pathetic excuse women give them when they don't want to have sex, or when they have their period (excuse me for those who don't think that way, but I find it a direct way to make the other person guess the word!)

    ICE: you can skate on it with skates supplied with a blade under them.

    COMPOST: a natural product you add to the susbstratum at your vegetable garden in order to "feed" it and add to it some nutrients that will make the plants grow better and healthier. It can come from animals like chickens or horses.

    Thank you, Bea! The challenges have been enjoyable! I haven't done all of them, but I'll continue working on them these days!

    See you on Thursday!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shall I compare thee...April 15, 2020 at 11:42 AM

      I love the headache, hahaha! Where did you get the inspiration?
      I'd have to check "compost". I think your definition would fit more the word "manure". But still, so detailed! Thank you!

      Delete
  3. EvelitaApril 14, 2020 at 11:29 AM

    Hi everyone!

    I have actually just played the game with my boyfriend! Aiming to win (don't ask me whom or what, it was just my competitive streak who was playing!) I didn't respect that much the creation of a definition, but sometimes used the "gapped-sentence technique" hahaha.

    Anyway, this is what I've said trying to make him know the Tabu word within the 30 seconds:

    - WEIRD --> When something it's not normal or it's way distinct to what you could expect, you'd say it's...

    - COLLEAGUE --> Someone you usually do certain things with...

    - PUZZLE --> This entertaining activity which contains plenty of pieces which could create a popular painting or another image

    - HEADACHE --> According to some jokes, this is said to be the most common excuse women use for avoiding having sex with their partners.

    - ICE --> What you need a lot of for a good gin and tonic

    - PANDA --> A big animal which can be found in zoos and whose orign might be Asian.

    I loved it! Taboo was my favourite board game and this challenge has been enjoyable. I had to look up for the words drowsy and compost, and even though I tried to definde them, my boyfriend couldn't guess them as he didn't know them either.

    I reaaally appreciate your effort on this 30-day challenge and on our course!

    Now you have got it back, I hope you can make the most of that precious time that you have been given to us for this month.

    See you on Thursday!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shall I compare thee...April 15, 2020 at 11:43 AM

      You? Competitive? I don't believe you! ;)

      I love your gapped sentence technique! Thanks to you, always!

      Delete
  4. AngelApril 14, 2020 at 12:01 PM

    Hi mates!

    These are my definitions, I hope you enjoy them:

    COLLEAGUE: When I go to the office, each of the peers who are waiting for my reports.

    PUZZLE: An image or a photo that is splitted in small pieces, so you have to join them to reconstruct the original form, because it's supposed to be funny.

    DICTIONARY: In a library, VOX is one of it (and I'm not referring to the political party).

    ICE: Something you put in a whisky to get a whisky on the rocks.

    SNOW WHITE: A Disney character who only can waking up by a kiss after eating a specific kind of fruit.

    PANDA: A well-known antivirus whose name refers to a lovely animal.


    Bea, thanks for this last challenge!

    See you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. MiguelRMApril 15, 2020 at 3:59 AM

    WEIRD: a person or situation out of the expected.

    COLLEAGUE: the ones which share with you an academic or labour space.

    VANISH: What the stains do when they enter in contact with an all-purpose cleaner

    DICTIONARY: A tool to check the spelling or pronunciation of for example, for example.

    ICE: What makes a whiskey to be on the rocks.

    PANDA: A great animal, but a better antivirus.

    I haven't done all the challenges, but I have enjoyed the ones that I did!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Shall I compare thee...April 15, 2020 at 11:56 AM

      I am so glad you've enjoyed them, Miguel! The "dictionary" one is brilliant!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 3: A crossword

Image
A classic challenge for any language lover! Full of synonyms, abbreviations, cultural references. Who's up for a crossword in English today? Instructions for Day 3: - Find the crossword I have more or less randomly selected for you here in this link . - Start as soon as you can! This crossword tells you the time it takes you to complete it, and the timer will start running as soon as you open the tab. A little convention on this page is that correct letters will appear in black and wrong letters in red. Every wrong letter will give you a 10-second penalty. - Complete the crossword to the best of your ability for 15 minutes ("I just feel like a mild challenge" mode) or 20 minutes ("I got hooked" mode).  - Take a screenshot after that time and show us your result.  Let's see who we consider to be the winner! You can see here my result for a different crossword. It took me a little while until I realised there were penalties, so my
Read more

Day 8: the pronunciation poem

Hi everyone! How do you feel after passing the one-week mark? Are you settling into a routine? Tell us in the comments about how you have incorporated this challenge into your daily life. Today's the day that the mystery of the pronunciation lists is revealed. There is this fiendish pronunciation poem that highlights the worst part of English pronunciation: the exceptions to the most useful of all findings for a learner of English--patterns. What happens when we have internalised a pattern of spelling-pronunciation and then--oh no--we find a word that doesn't follow it? "It's just a pattern", we tell ourselves, "it's not a rule". Oh well, we'll get over it. We write it down and try to learn it, cursing the English language mildly. We try to brush it off, but the truth is that it's frustrating. And the only antidote against that frustration is humour, and a sense of community that comes from acknowledging that even native speakers strug
Read more

Day 24: little big conjunctions

Hey there everyone! The other day I was here reflecting on how we had forgotten about adverbs, and then it occurred to me that we had also forgotten about this seemingly unimportant part of speech, one that we never seem to devote a lesson to, but which can do so much to a sentence's meaning: the conjunction. For today's challenge, I am introducing to you to some of the most advanced conjunctions. You probably know them, and if that's the case, today will give you a little bit of practice so you don't forget them. Introducing (in alphabetical order): albeit by the same token inasmuch as notwithstanding what with yet The challenge for today: - Complete the sentences with the right conjunction from the list. - Tell us in the comments which one is your favourite. Can you make a new sentence with it? Here we go! 1. No one wants the natural beauty of the area to be compromised ____________ they continue to build hotels. 2. ____________  some c
Read more