Words .. Words.. Words..

One of the key elements in teaching ESOL is getting our students to increase their vocabulary .
They are expected to make connections among words thinking about their meaning and incorporating them into their active vocabulary . By getting our students to dig into the meaning of words, we are helping them better understand what they read and improve their ability to express themselves through the written and spoken word.
As a result of all the blog reading I have been doing lately, I have found these two great web sites. The first one ,recommended by Pat Hensley is called Vocab Ahead which provides very nice short videos and flash cards for more than 1000 words. It not only illustrates them , but gives nice examples of situations in which these words can be used. After sharing it with the students and letting them use it , I’m going to ask them to make their own little videos of words.
The other web I have been playing with and have found very interesting is Tagul. It is more than just a word cloud. Each word is a tag that is linked to an URL and when clicked on , it gives you the meaning of the word.How cool is that !!