In the next few weeks we’ll be running workshops on the best strategies for teaching Units 1&3 English and Literature. In both workshops, we’ll be stressing the importance of vocabulary instruction and sharing a whole range of strategies to improve students’ lexicon. One of the resources we’ll be discussing in this context is web based vocabulary applications. Two we like are:
- Describing Words: https://describingwords.io/
- Word Sift: https://wordsift.org/features.html
Here are some ways these two web applications are useful:
Describing Words provides collocations – words that you often use in conjunction with other words. Specifically, it provides adjective collocations for nouns. So, if you type in the noun anger it will list all of the different types of adjectives you can use to describe anger. So how is this useful in the English and Literature classroom? It’s useful because one of the basic ways we can improve student text response analyse is to help students create rich noun groups which describe character’s feelings and actions and ideas in the text like this:
| adjective | noun |
| profound and bitter | anger |
| destructive | reaction |
| overwhelming | insecurity |
| pervasive | injustice |
So they can put them into sentences like this:
Harper Lee demonstrates the pervasive injustice which exists in Maycomb through the unquestioning attitude the citizens have to segregation.
We can get students to this point by either giving them or asking them to brainstorm nouns to label character feelings, actions and ideas in the text and then getting them to use Describing Words to identify the right adjectives to enrich these nouns.
Word Sift is useful for analysis of language – whether close analysis in Literature or analysis of argument in English. Any text you have a digital copy of can be cut and pasted into Word Sift and Word Sift will analyse the frequency of word use and present this analysis as a word cloud. What makes this tool more useful than other word cloud applications, is that it displays a thesaurus visualisation of synonyms for words used in the text you are analysing. So, if we plonk in MLK’s ‘I have a dream speech’, ‘dream’ will come up as the biggest word and if we click on this, Word Sift will show a thesaurus visualisation which includes synonyms for ‘dream’ such as ‘ambition’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘perfection’. So how is this useful exactly in the English and Literature classroom? It’s useful because one basic was of closely analysing text is to discuss the what sense or feelings a word creates or evokes. For example, if we were analysing ‘I have a dream’, we might say:
King’s repeated reference to having a ‘dream’ appeal’s to his audience’s aspiration and ambition for a future which is better and more perfect than their current position.
Effective analysis always relies upon using other words to explain the sense of a word you a focusing on. Word Sift can help with this process.
