Listening

Warm Up

Helpful Words and Phrases

Listen and repeat.

  1. authentic
    • ex. It’s hard to find a restaurant that serves authentic Greek food.
  2. authenticity
    • ex. The museum staff is checking the authenticity of the painting. He is worried that the painting is fake.
  3. delve into
    • ex. The police delve into the mysterious case to find the truth.
  4. correlate
    • ex. The study aims to correlate eating habits to catching this disease.
  5. filter out
    • ex. She filters out personal messages on her phone to see only important work messages.

Article

Read the article below and answer your tutor's questions.

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For 2023, the Merriam-Webster word of the year is “authentic.” This reflects a crisis of authenticity in the rise of artificial intelligence. According to Peter Sokolowski, an editor for Merriam-Webster, dictionary searches for “authentic” are common. But he said that the search for this word increased this year on the company’s online dictionary.

Sokolowski’s team doesn’t delve into the reasons people use dictionaries in search of specific words. However, they focus on increases in dictionary searches and world events that correlate. This year was the year of artificial intelligence. Public figures like Taylor Swift, Prince Harry, and Elon Musk are pursuing authenticity in words and actions.

This year marks Merriam-Webster’s 20th anniversary of choosing a top word. How does the company choose? Part of the process is filtering out words. The company filtered out words that are always popularly searched among the 500,000 words online. Some of these words are “love” and “affect” vs. “effect.” It also filtered out five-letter words, as players use the site for games like Wordle and Quordle.

This material was based on an article by The Associated Press.

Discussion

Choose a topic and discuss the questions with your tutor.

Dictionary and Learning New Words

  • In your opinion, what is the importance of using a dictionary? Discuss.
  • How important is learning new words to you? Discuss.
  • Imagine you are choosing the word of the year. What English word would you choose as the word of the year? Why? Discuss.

Authenticity

  • Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is “authentic.” Do you agree with the company’s decision? Why or why not? Discuss.
  • According to the article, public figures like Taylor Swift, Prince Harry, and Elon Musk are pursuing authenticity in words and actions. What do you think this means? Discuss.
  • According to the article, there is a crisis of authenticity now that artificial intelligence is rising. Why do you think this is the case? Discuss.