Using ridiculous words like "phantasmagorical" can be impressive and spice up your writing. We say this, because one of the things we're constantly talking to teachers about is the importance of teaching vocabulary. In previous posts we've written about web 2.0 tools such as wordle and visuwords which can be used as vocabulary stimulus and as extenders respectively. Today we're blogging about another interesting vocabulary tool we've just started playing around with recently. It's called Wordnik and can be found here: http://www.wordnik.com/
Wordnik is dedicated to creating lists and exploring the meanings of words. It can be used as a straight dictionary/thesaurus tool, where you can get students to simply look up words. Using it like this can be effective as the site offers not just a series of definitions for each word, but an extensive list of related words, examples of contextual uses (including how the word has been used in recent tweets and blogs), and the top images that come back for an image search for the term.
However, a more interesting way to use this site is to get students to create a profile. This is quick and easy. Once they have done this they can create their own word lists and comment on the lists of others, and even create collaborative lists. This means at the start of each unit (or as a unit progresses), students can create and refine word lists on the topic being studied. As the year progresses, students can create many new word lists. This encourages students to explore and take control over their vocabulary.
On the subject of vocabulary, here's a few quick activities to get students thinking about the nuances of meaning of words:
1) Give students two opposite words such as 'angry' and 'happy'. Using a tool such as Wordnik, get them to find synonyms for these words as well as related words. Get students to then create a word spectrum - with 'angry' and 'happy' at either end of a page, and five to seven words arranged along a line in between them depending on what students see as the exact nuance of their meaning. Where would 'upset' come along the line or 'jubilant' or ' calm'?
2) A related activity, is to get students to brainstorm words to describe a character in a text being studied. They pick one of these words, and then find as many synonyms/related words for this word as they can. After this, students look at the words carefully, and list them according to which one most precisely (through to least precisely), describes the character. Worknik is a great tool to use for this activity.
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