Wordsift

What is this?

Wordsift is a word cloud programme, that takes any text, 'sifts' it for the content words and arranges them into a graphic image, showing how commonly a word occurs by its size.

Here's a video on how to use it.

Why is the content good for language learning?

This is potentially really helpful for learners, both in getting the gist of a text, but particularly for giving them an idea of which words are likely to be more useful to learn, given their frequency, in terms of the particular text used and in more general terms.  This kind of information isn't otherwise availabe without painstakingly searching through a learners dictionary, so this is a really nice site. 

How might you use it in a language teaching context?

Here are some ideas that our MA group came up with.....

We think it is a good way to learn new words especially how words are used in context. It is also very useful for sharing ideas with visualgifty at 12:46 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

It could help learners to know exactly what kind of words they can use in different contexts.Jill & Khadiga at 12:46 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

Some words are accompanied by pictures or videos to demonstrate the meaning of it.Farah at 12:45 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

A great way to get the gist of the text.As an activity we could ask students to write a text using these words & compare it to the originalGeorge at 12:44 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

Wonderful to practice reading skills such as scanning the key words and guessing the main idea.Leah at 12:43 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

With key words, Ss can try guessing the main idea of the text. Then, Ss can discuss and form meaningful sentencesVanessa and Ray at 12:41 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

to help students to grasp the main idea and key words in an authentic text or a reading materialJessie&Jenny at 12:41 PM, 25 Jan 2011 via web

Great for pre-reading. Get the students to look at sift and guess what text is about

Limitations

The only small thing is that this site doesn't produce such aesthetically pleasing images as Wordle (see other blog entry on this site), but the compensation for this is that you can do so much more with the result.