Wordle

Today's website: Wordle

What is this? 

It is a fun and interesting tool which generate word clouds from a piece of text. Wordle not only creates an artitic image of word clouds but also extracts the most commonly occuring words from the specific text or website. It is simple and easy to use that users only  have to paste a text or add the URL of a blog, the RSS Feed of a webpage. Besides, Wordle also provides a variety of options in terms of layout, color, font.

It is suitatble for both teachers and students to create their own unique word clouds in language classroom. 

Why is the content useful in language learning?

•  With regard to multiple intelligence, the word clouds can help those learners who preferred to learn with visual aids. 

• The word clouds not only create an artistic image but also helps students identify key words in a  text and analyze the content.  The following two Wordle images are based on one of my blog on Wordsift.

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• If students are asked to make a word cloud based on the article they have read as an assignment, there won't be a correct answers to the assignment. Students can do the assignment based on their understanding, of the text, creativity and imagination to design their own unique word cloud. The color, font, layout and many more are also of their choices. They can even delete the words they don't want by right-clicking on them and sift the tagged words again and again.  It is easy and interesting to do the assignment.

• The key words in the word cloud can be applied in many reading and writing activities as suggested in the next section.
• Teachers and students can make their own special vocabulary list together in an interesting way.
• It is convenient for teachers since the image can be saved and be prinied out for classroom and future use.

Classroom use

 There are several ways to make Wordle useful in language teaching and learning.  

• After reading  a short English  story or a novel, students can work as a group or as an individual and make a word cloud by typing in the box the descriptions of their favorite character or some adjective which can express their feelings toward the story. The following Wordle image is an examples I made by typing the single words related to Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice". .
  

• After reading a poem, teachers can have students make a word cloud as well. Students can either write what they feel when reading the poem or freely write any word they can think of related to the topic of the poem. 

• After reading an article, students can make a word cloud and summarize what they have learnt in it. To make it more challenging, teachers can limit the number of words they can put in the word cloud so that students have to work really hard to find the key elements in the article. The limitations of words can be set by clicking " layout" in the bar above the image, please see the following picture. 

• After writing a composition or an essay, teachers can have students paste them on Wordle and have them examine their Wordle image whether they tend to repeat using the same words like happy and I. 

• Pre-reading activity: teachers can give students the hard copy of Wordle iamge made from an article and have them predict what the article might be about. This activity is also helpful for students to practice speaking.

Limitations

• Wordle cannot correct students' spelling errors.