Get Smarter, Feed the Hungry, for FREE

19th October 2007..

 

Who doesn’t like improving his or her vocabulary? Now now, wait a minute, this isn’t about the nightmares of school, pop vocab quizzes and spelling bee contests. There are some great words out there, words that help articulate, emphasise, and decorate our speech. Great vocab words can be incredibly communicative, and fun at the same time.

For example, you could declare that you’d like to punch someone in the face for getting on your nerves; or you could state that you’d like to defenestrate them, which would actually mean you’d like to throw them out of a window. I mean really, how good is that? There’s actually a word out there that means precisely to throw something, or someone, out the window!

Right then, and who also doesn’t like helping those less fortunate around them? Feeding the hungry, for example? Well, thanks to the people at Poverty.com, the world poverty site, now you can do both: improve your vocabulary and help feed the hunger. The site is called FreeRice, and the premise is ingeniously simple: A word is displayed along with a choice of four synonyms; choose the correct synonym, and 10 grains of rice are donated by the sponsors and advertisers of the site.

In just a few minutes of being on the site, I’ve already helped donate over 200 grains of rice, and learned a few new words like opus (a creative work) and expediancy (suitableness).

There are two ways to really make the most of this site: First, spread the word, tell your friends, family, co-workers. And second, don’t just visit it once, have a play around, and then forget about it. Bookmark it and make it a daily, 60-second habit. Just consider it a chance to learn a new word nearly every day. Have a few goes, rack up maybe 50 grains of rice, and then get back to work. Manage to do that even a few times a week, and you could easily donate 10,000 grains of rice in a year.

FreeRice.com