Saturday, August 07, 2010

heat wave

During the dog days of summer, most people in the world can feel the devastating impact of global warming. Here in Taiwan, it is quite easy for the thermometer to register 38 degree Celsius (or 100 degree Fahrenheit) before noon. Being an English teacher, I am not going to talk about why the weather has become hotter year after year, how the global warming has influenced our environment, or what eco-friendly actions we should take to cool us off during the deadly heat wave. Instead, I am curious how EFL learners can describe the heat wave except the simplest word -- 'hot'. Word choices or sentence varieties are always difficult to EFL learners.

Let's start from some words I have collected for my English database in the past few years. Many Americans feel Taiwan is sweltering because they sweat a lot here in Taiwan. Taiwan's weather is hot and humid during the summer, which makes people from a continent feel unpleasant. In fact, many states in the USA are even hotter than Taiwan, but it seems that those states are not as humid as Taiwan. However, from a news broadcast I just saw, the southern states of USA can also be very humid in the summer. Most residents in the southern states of USA can't bear the stifling humidity; according to a news report from CBS (August 6, 2010), this year 29 children nationwide died in hot vehicles because they were accidentally left in hot vehicles. It is no doubt that the smoldering heat has blanketed across many portions of US South this year. In fact, across six states of USA, more than 30 deaths are to blame to this week's extreme heat.

'Hot' is not the only word that we can use to describe the weather in the summer. Some other possible word choices are 'muggy' (e.g. a muggy day in August), 'sultry' (e.g. a hot and sultry day), or 'scorching' (e.g. a scorching summer day). Well, no matter how many expressions you can think of to describe this hot summer, I just hope that these boiling summer days will go away soon.

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