The Internet is home to many English vocabulary websites, most
of which focus on activities to improve standardized test scores.
Such sites do little to get students to use new vocabulary words
in their writing.
The list of websites discussed here are appropriate to use in
conjunction with vocabulary building activities
you include as you are teaching writing and reading comprehension
in your discipline.
Websites for vocabulary in context
Vocabulary websites that illustrate words in use in more than one
or two contexts are rare. Those listed below provide a deeper pool
of illustrations from which to choose.
Logos
Library is an excellent source of words in context, but the
examples may be too difficult for weaker readers.
The Corpus
Concordance English will take a while to master (use the demos),
but it has great potential for teaching vocabulary in context. You can not only specify a word to search for, but also the
places to search. Although most of the corpus search options
are written, some are oral (one is American television.
Use the oral options to help you decide students are likely to
have heard a specific word.
-------- ADVERTISE HERE-------
Put your Tweet-length ad here to reach a niche education audience.
OnlineAdvertisingInfo
Also worth checking is the Word of the Day on The
New York Times Learning
Network page. Each weekday the newspaper presents and defines
a work and tells how many times the word was used in the newspaper
in the previous year. The Times gives links to stories using
the word, but not to the location of the word within the piece.
The most efficient use of Times site in your teaching is
to watch it daily for words on your master list for the year. Then
copy the vocabulary sentence and URL of the story in which it appears
into your teaching notes to be pulled out at the appropriate time.
Websites for roots, prefixes, suffixes
Another category of vocabulary websites are useful for study of
word roots.
For lesson plans on Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes,
check out MyVocabulary.com.
Espindle is a membership site that began as a parent initiative
to improve spelling and other literacy skills. Espindle provides
some useful information free, including a list of word
roots and a list of word
suffixes.
BetterEndings, a site about fetal alcohol spectrum disorders,
has a page listing root
words, suffixes
rel="nofollow", and prefixes
in simple table format. One column of the table gives the meanings
while another gives examples of words using that root/prefix/suffix.
At VirtualSalt, Robert Harris provides not only a list of
roots, but also a short and very readable introduction
to the topic of English
word roots.
Harris has some worksheets available on the same page. Although
I rarely recommend worksheets, the one on number prefixes might
appeal to your math and technology oriented students. It's certainly
worth a look.
PrefixSuffix
is devoted to English word roots and word creation. Besides lists
of roots, prefixes and suffixes, you'll find a wealth of information
to help you teach etymological topics. Many of the articles
are short and easy to read. You could have students
use them as texts or as resource materials for writing prompts
or other class activities.
