A friend of mine recently e-mailed me a link to this really cool site I’d like to share with you all. It’s called Visual Thesaurus. From the name of it you might think that it’s a type of picture dictionary, but it’s visual in a different way. It visualizes for us the links of the word networks, by showing us a word with its “relatives” all around it, distributed according to the closeness of their relation. This thesaurus not only gives you a word definition, it also shows word maps, gives examples of the word’s usage and even its pronunciation. I think it might help students, especially those for whom English is not the first language, develop a better vocabulary and get a better grasp on the way words are used.
And this is not all. There is more to that site than just a thesaurus. It also has interviews with writers and bloggers, and links to useful linguistic resources, as well as links to blogs related to teaching, corporate communications, writing, grammar, kids books, lexicography. I haven’t looked through every corner of that site, but I think that every one of us can find something interesting there.
That Visual Thesaurus site would be great to use in the classroom. I think it points out that words aren’t, at least to a certain extent, arbitary. The one draw back is that if you want to keep using the thesaurus, you’ll have to pay a fee, which most folks won’t be willing to do. In any event, my name yeilded interesting results.
Reply to Jenny
Visual Thesaurus is a valuable, interactive resource for learning about language and word definitions. The word maps are a unique way to develop vocabulary.
You might also be interested in exploring “A Word A Day” for building vocabulary and understanding usage. Here’s a description directly from the website:
“What is A.Word.A.Day? The music and magic of words–that’s what A.Word.A.Day (AWAD) is all about. AWAD (ISSN: 1524-6884) is a daily electronic publication from the wordserver at Wordsmith.Org. AWAD includes a vocabulary word, its definition, pronunciation information with audio clip, etymology, usage example, quotation, and other interesting tidbits about words to subscribers every day. You can think of it as a word trek where we explore strange new words. Words are usually selected around a theme every week. There is no charge to subscribe to AWAD.” Here’s a link to the site:
http://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html
Reply to Diane, EOC
Jenny, you are right about the fee. That’s unfortunate. I hadn’t noticed it before your post. But it could probably be used just as a fun example in some classes.
Reply to Yana
Thank you for the link, Diane. This is indeed a neat and almost subconscious way to build vocabulary. I think some other thesaurus sites like Merriam Webster’s http://www.m-w.com offer similar programs to the Wordsmith’s “word a day”. The only downside is that the words explored are usually truly weird
Reply to Yana