Put to use

Put to use

Today’s expression is “put to use.” When you put something to use, you take something (or someone!) that’s not doing anything, and you make it do something good and valuable. You put it to use.

Today’s story was about fish farming . Fish produce solid waste. In net pens, the waste falls to the ocean floor, where it can damage the local ecosystem. But on dry land farms, that’s not the case. The farmers just extract the waste from the tanks.

Then, what do they do with it? It’s waste. It’s not doing anything. It’s unwanted. They could dig a hole and bury it, I suppose. They could burn it? I have no idea—I don’t want to know what that smells like.

But actually, they put the waste to use. It turns out that waste from fish farms can be used to produce methane gas and, from that, electricity. Now that’s something that’s useful! So they took this waste, which was not doing anything good, and they started using it to make electricity. They put it to use.

They can also put this waste to use as fertilizer in hydroponic farms. You learned about that in Lesson 417—where they grow plants that are not actually planted in soil . Fish farmers can take the waste from their fish and put it to use as fertilizer in hydroponic farms.

A great way to use “put to use” is with skills. A lot of us have skills, we have abilities, that we don’t use. Let’s say you work at an office job, but years ago you painted houses and did some light repair work. So you know how to install a ceiling fan, paint a room, put up drywall, maybe do some light carpentry. But that was a long time ago—you work in an office now.

But you might put those skills to use by volunteering at a local school. So you have these skills. They’re not doing anything for you at your desk job. But if you volunteer one day a month at a local school, you can use your skills to help with projects there. You can put your skills to use.

Have you ever been to a party or an event, and you see the party or event organizer running around doing lots of errands, starting to get overwhelmed? Here’s something you can say in that situation: “Put me to use.”

I’m standing here doing nothing! I’m useless, milling about chit-chatting with people. I hate idle chit-chat! Put me to use. Use my abilities. Tell me to…I don’t know…bring out some new chairs or tables, collect the empty glasses, whatever. Put me to use—give me something useful to do.

JR’s song of the week

Today’s song of the week is “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Roberta Flack. This is an interesting one—you’ve probably heard the main refrain of this song before. You might have heard a cover that came out not long ago.

The writer of the song is named Lori Lieberman. And she wrote the song about the experience of watching another singer, Don MacLean. And the lyrics go like this:

“I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style. And so I came to see him, and listen for a while”

Then she says he was “Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song.”

So this song, “Killing Me Softly With His Song” is really about someone watching another singer and being moved by the performance. The Roberta Flack version is the song of the week.

See you next time!

And that’s it; that’s all for today’s Plain English. I survived another science-based story, congratulations to me for that, and congratulations to you for sticking with us for Lesson 585. Remember JR has uploaded the full content to PlainEnglish.com/585.

And also remember that if you’d like to use ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools to upgrade your English—then come join us in Plain English Plus+, where we are building out a special new course on artificial intelligence for English learning.

The first modules are available now. The first one is about when to use ChatGPT and when to use Google Translate so that you can get the best results from your translations. The second module—and this is an interesting one—is all about the different ways you can ask ChatGPT to give you a translation.

And it’s more than just saying “translate this to another language.” This is how we get embarrassing or incorrect translations. But with these tools, you’ll be prepared to get the best possible translations out of ChatGPT.

And that’s the second topic in the course that’s already available in Plain English Plus+, called “AI for Learning English.”

If you’re already a member, go to the bottom of your dashboard: you’ll see it. If you’re not yet a member, then you can join us at PlainEnglish.com/Plus and you will have instant access to all our great ChatGPT and AI resources in that course.

That’s all for today. We’ll be back on Monday. See you then.