3 Ways to Express Appreciation Using English (Father’s Day Special)

Father’s Day (16 June, Sunday) is fast approaching! Do you have any plans to celebrate this special occasion?

If you are keen on writing a card for your father or father figures in your life, you could watch the video below for some ways to use English to express appreciation! Let your creative juices flow by crafting a unique and interesting Father’s Day note using an acrostic poem, a tongue twister or a pun. Have fun!

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An Acrostic Poem for Dad!

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Video script:

I am jumping jubilantly for June!

Hi, everyone! June has begun and school is out for the month! One of the most special occasions in June is… Father’s Day! Hence, I would like to share 3 fun ways in which we can use English to show appreciation for the father figures in our lives.

When we want to show appreciation, we may want to write a card or a note. There are many ways to make our writing more interesting! The first way is to write what you want to say with an:

1. Acrostic poem

An acrostic poem is a poem in which the first letter of each line spell out a word or a phrase. For example:

Dedicated,

Amazing and totally

Dependable

To create an acrostic poem, follow these five easy steps:

1. Choose a word related to what you want to write. For Father’s Day, the word could be ‘father’, ‘daddy’, ‘thank you’ or even your dad’s name!

2. Write your word down vertically

3. Think of words or phrases that help to describe what you want to express.

4. Write these words or phrases next to the letter in your acrostic

5. Based on what you have, fill in the rest of the lines to create the poem

In my example today, I will use the word ‘father’

F

A

T

H

E

R

As I am trying to thank my father, I may want to fill the acrostic poem with reasons for why I am grateful. Hence, I may think of words or phrases that begin with some of the letters in my word.

F

Always being there for me

Teaching me skills

Having the biggest heart

Expecting nothing and giving me everything

R

Do you see that I didn’t fill in words for ’F’ and ‘R’? You can do so for any letter you want! You can write something different for certain lines. For instance, I want to begin and end the poem in a different way, so I will not fill in the lines with reasons. My final acrostic poem will look like this:

Father, thank you for:

Always being there for me

Teaching me skills

Having the biggest heart

Expecting nothing and giving me everything

Really, you are the best!

Have fun creating your own acrostic poem!

2. Tongue Twister

A second way to use English creatively is to craft… tongue twisters!

Tongue twisters are phrases or sentences that are hard to say quickly because the words used have very similar pronunciation.

For example, listen to me mangle this famous tongue twister:

She sells sea shells by the sea shore.

The shells she sells are surely seashells.

So if she sells shells on the seashore,

I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

So, how can we write our own tongue twister?

The simplest way is to use alliteration, where the words you use all have the same first consonant sound.

1. Pick a consonant (letters that are not a, e, i, o, u)

2. Write down as many words as you can think of that start with that letter

3. Try to think of some nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. (To form sentences)

4. Make up a sentence or even a poem that uses as many of your words as possible.

To describe my dad, I thought of words that start with the same first consonant: ‘d’

Seeing the words that I have brainstormed, I will pick and arrange them so that they make a sentence that makes sense. For example, the tongue twister that I came up with is:

Daily, daring Dad daringly deals with dangerous denizens,

dazzling his dear daughter dearly.

Try making your own tongue twister for ‘father’ and words beginning with ‘f’!

Before we move on to the last point, let me tell you a joke.

Why is the mushroom always invited to parties?

That’s because…. he’s a fungi (fun guy)!

Do you realise that there was a wordplay on the words ‘fun guy’? They were replaced by a word, ‘fungi‘ with the same pronunciation. What I have just shared is a pun.

3. Write a card…with puns

You could create an interesting and humorous note by including puns in your words! A pun is a humorous use of a word or phrase that has several meanings or that sounds like another word.

For example:

fungi sounds like fun guy. So, I could use it in a line that says: Dad, you are such a fungi (fun guy)!

There are many ways to create puns. One of the simplest ways is to use words that sound the same.

To create a pun like that, you could follow the steps:

1. Think of a word you want to use.

2. Then, think of another word that sounds the same as that word.

3. Replace the original word with the similar-sounding word to make the sentence!

To help you craft your own puns, here are some helping words and their homophones.

To make your pun even clearer, you could even draw pictures related to it so that your dad can appreciate your wit!

We have come to the end of the video. I hope that you are feeling inspired to write something creative to show appreciation for your dad. Have a great holiday with your loved ones! See you in the next video!