Mozuku

This month I’d like to focus on some search tools that mostly specialize in vocabulary. I don’t feel really comfortable using the term “search engine” since most people associate that with the Google-powered tool that sits prominently somewhere on the page that opens when you launch your browser. But most people are now making use of multiple search tools—Google books, image or video search tools, etc.—on a daily basis and just as you would use certain search tools to search for images, the tools here can be used to help you investigate and better understand lexical items (words, phrases, or longer fixed expressions).

First and most impressive this month is Visuwords. Type in a word or phrase and get a visual “map” of the word’s meanings and associations. Hover your cursor over any term to get more explanation or definitions. This must be seen to be believed. You will be impressed: I promise.

Next is ERek, a search tool that brings up instances or examples from either the whole web or only .edu (academic) sites or only news sites. This can be very helpful in identifying collocations or just seeing how the lexical item is used. A great tool.

Amazon.com allows you to search inside many books. If you would like some good examples of a lexical item in use in a certain area (economics, TESOL, etc.) you just choose a book in that area and search in the book for your item. For example, I just chose the book Understanding Motivation and Emotion by Johnmarshall Reeve (Wiley) and did a search for the word “identity.” My search produced 30 examples from the book.

If you would like to know how two similar terms (start vs. begin, for example) compare  in usage volume (frequency) on the web, Googlefight can help you. Just input the two terms and the system returns the number of times they can be found on the web. This can also be used to check out cultural items (hambuger vs. hot dog, or Pokemon vs. Dragonball, for example).

And finally, there is a new search engine in development that may just be the way all search engines work in the future. It is called Wolfram Alpha. It tries to understand your questions and return data in a way that matches your needs. It is still in development, but vocabulary searches seem to work well. If you search for a term, you get definitions, origins, frequency information (written and spoken), pronunciation, and much more. Give it a try and taste the future.

Welcome to October. Though the column this month features Halloween as its topic, I’ll be introducing a variety of sites—something for academic searching, a place to be creative or let your learners get creative, and a tool that just might save you some time.

Halloween

On the train the other day I saw a poster for Disneyland with that unmistakable orange and black design. Disneyland has really embraced Halloween as one of its seasonal themes, just one of many signs that students in Japan are now familiar the festival and its imagery. The history of Halloween is more interesting than just pumpkin faces, however, and can be good content for an English lesson. Here are two sites that you can use as a resource, or even send your more advanced learners to.

CBBC (BBC News Learning Site) has a nice short summary of the festival and its history and images.

History.com’s Halloween page is a wealth of resources including videos, background information, pumpkin carving suggestions, and related stories.

A Free E-book Search Engine

It is remarkable how many books are now being released online for free these days under the Creative Commons license, usually in pdf form. I have recently downloaded Opening Up Education, edited by Toru Iiyoshi and Vijay Kumar, and A Designer’s Log: Case Studies in Instructional Design by Michael Power. And recently I came across a new search engine for e-books, which should make it even easier to find free books online. It’s called Free E-Book-s.

Get Creative

Looking for a nice writing project for your learners? Storybird gives you the tools to write storybooks (like children’s picture books) online. Artists post their work at the site and you can just browse for images to use, choose a few, and write a story. The results are simple (as in not so much written text) but are surprisingly sophisticated. The completed stories can be viewed online and in the near future you will be able to print out your stories too.

Save Some Time

The Scholastic Vocabulary Quiz Maker: Here is a vocabulary test making robot brought to you by Scholastic. Go to the page, input your vocabulary (just the vocabulary, not the definitions or examples) and let the system create a vocabulary test for you. The system provides the definitions for you. And you can select the grade level of difficulty to control the difficulty of the definitions. It’s all in English—sorry, no translations are allowed—but it makes a test that you can easily adapt (copy and paste and edit) for use with your own learners.