Wordle and Wordsift

What are Wordle and WordSift?

Wordle and WordSift are two online tools (or toy as they say) that used to generate word clouds. They are usually used to summarize texts or writing and make the most frequent words used in the text appear to be bigger. With these tools, it is easier for people to view the key points in the texts and save times. Each of these tools has their own features that can be adapted into English language lessons to make them more interesting and exciting! Lets meet both of these fun tools!

Wordle: Beautiful word clouds.

"You can tweak you clouds with different fonts, layouts and colour schemes. The images you created with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out or save them to the Wordle gallery to share them with your friends"

So, lets get started! It is easy to use this tool. Just go to the website Wordle and  start to create your own word clouds of any text you want to. You can either copy and paste your text into the box provided or just copy the URL of the sources of your text.  And send them for processing!

Within few seconds, you have your own word clouds. You can personalize the word clouds according to your interest and need and share it with your friends! Below is an example of a word cloud produced using Wordle:

WordSift: Visualizing words.

"WordSift was created to help teachers manage the demands of vocabulary and academic language in their text materials. We especially hope that this tool is helpful in supporting English Language Learners. We want WordSift to be a useful tool, but we also want it to be fun and visually pleasing. We would be happy if you think of it playful  as a toy in a linguistics playground that is available to instantly capture and display the vocabulary structure of texts, and to help create opportunity to talk and explore the richness and wonder of language!"

How it works? Same as Wordle! Click this website WordSift and all you need is to copy and paste your texts and obtain an instant visualization of you text. The most frequent vocabulary will appear bigger.

WordSift is a bit different from Wordle as also provide some information that are related to the most frequent words in the text. For example, the sentences of the most frequent words and synonym.

                             
Wordle an WordSift in ELT:

Advantages:

1) Students can preview text using both of these tools. As the most frequent words appear bigger in word clouds, it helps students to identify  the key vocabulary and predict the content of the text they are going to read. This is important as research suggests that previewing text is a useful strategy for improving comprehension. Besides, the example source sentence in the WordSift, helps students to skim the text and make a complex text become more accessible. Students can also use these tools to preview any text that they want to read at their own times (promotes learner autonomy)

2) You can also develop speaking activity using these tools. Have your students to write their own short stories and ask them to create word clouds of the stories. In pairs, ask your students to show their word clouds to their partners and predict each other's stories. This is a fun an creative way to get your students talking and practice speaking. Their own produced word clouds may also be a motivation for them to talk about.

3) Your students can also use both of these tools to summarize their own writing in order to check them. Identifying redundant words or sentence structure would be easier if they use these tools.

Disadvantages:

1) Some students might prefer something more challenging as Wordle and WordSift might be less attractive and perhaps too easy for them (this is however depending on he level of the students you teach).

2) No internet connection at home might demotivate students to do word clouds on their own at their own times.