World's Laziest
Reading comprehension: 1.b 2.a
3.a 4.c 5.c
Lazy
Terms
Words and Their Stories: Couch Potato
Now, the VOA Special English
program Words and Their Stories.
Some unusual words describe
how a person spends his or her time. For
example, someone who likes to spend a lot of time sitting or lying down while
watching television is sometimes called a couch potato. A couch is a piece of
furniture that people sit on while watching television.
Robert Armstrong, an artist
from California, developed the term couch potato in nineteen seventy-six. Several years later, he listed the term as a
trademark with the United States government.
Mister Armstrong also helped write a funny book about life as a
full-time television watcher. It is
called the “Official Couch Potato Handbook.”
Couch potatoes enjoy watching
television just as mouse potatoes enjoy working on computers. A computer mouse is the device that moves the
pointer, or cursor, on a computer screen.
The description of mouse potato became popular in nineteen ninety-three.
American writer Alice Kahn is said to have invented the term to describe young
people who spend a lot of time using computers.
Too much time inside the house
using a computer or watching television can cause someone to get cabin fever. A
cabin is a simple house usually built far away from the city. People go to a cabin to relax and enjoy quiet
time.
Cabin fever is not really a
disease. However, people can experience
boredom and restlessness if they spend too much time inside their homes. This is especially true during the winter
when it is too cold or snowy to do things outside. Often children get cabin
fever if they cannot go outside to play. So do their parents. This happens when
there is so much snow that schools and even offices and stores are closed.
Some people enjoy spending a
lot of time in their homes to make them nice places to live. This is called nesting or cocooning. Birds
build nests out of sticks to hold their eggs and baby birds. Some insects build
cocoons around themselves for protection while they grow and change. Nests and cocoons provide security for
wildlife. So people like the idea of
nests and cocoons, too.
The terms cocooning and
nesting became popular more than twenty years ago. They describe people buying their first homes
and filling them with many things. These
people then had children.
Now these children are grown
and have left the nest. They are in college. Or they are married and ting
families of their own far away. Now
these parents are living alone without children in their empty nest. They have
become empty nesters.
Lazy Jane by Shell Silvertein
The visual of the poem shows a center justified poem but lying underneath
the words is a girl. Her mouth is open
and you can get the visual that she is actually waiting for it to rain.
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