KNOW IT ALL with WORDSIFT!!

What is Wordsift?

Wordsift is a tool for creating word clouds demonstrating the commonness of words in a text of your choice. The most common words come in larger font while the less common ones appear smaller as can be seen in the attached word cloud. All you need to do is to find a text on a specific topic, copy it, and paste it on Wordsift, and it will do the rest for you. I personally prefer Wikipedia texts, for they are generally objective, long and detailed, which more authentically demonstrates the frequency of words in a text. Look at the word cloud above which I have created using a Wikipedia article on Linguistics. By looking at the word cloud, it becomes clear that in the field of linguistics, potential common words could be: language, linguistic, study, grammar, and theory, while words such as discipline, documentation, writing, and speaker, though absolutely relevant to the field of linguistics, may be less common when talking about linguistics in general.   

How Relevant is Wordsift for Language Teachers and Learners?

As can be seen from the example I have just given, Wordsift demonstrates the common words in a specific field, i.e., the jargon of the field. Therefore, teachers as well as students can test their knowledge of a specific field by creating word clouds with Wordsift, checking how many words they are familiar with and learning about the ones that they have not encountered before.

Due to my knowledge of their courses, I recommend students of English at An-Najah National University to create word clouds at the beginning of a certain module, like Drama, Shakespeare, Phonology, Syntax, etc., to keep the word cloud, and to highlight the new terms they encounter throughout the semester. In this way, the students get the chance to track their development of a specific field. In fact, it might be overwhelming at the beginning when the students encounter several technical terms that they are unfamiliar with; however, when they start to track their development gradually, they will definitely start feeling more secure and knowledgeable.

Moreover, Wordsift encourages learning vocabulary in context and through visualisation; therefore, it can function as a reliable tool for learning new vocabulary in context without having to translate the words into their first language. Here are some features of Wordsift which demonstrate how vocabulary learning becomes more visual and context-oriented through Wordsift:

First, after creating the word cloud, you will have the option of selecting any word which you want to learn more about, and Wordsift will create a simple map which illustrates the different contexts where the word is used and will organise related words in categories. In this way, your learning of vocabulary becomes wider, deeper and more systematic, for you will begin to learn vocabulary along with morphologically, syntactically and semantically related structures.

Second, Wordsift gives you the chance to select any of the words and to see the exact context where it occurred in your text. Therefore, learning vocabulary becomes more contextualised, for it is believed that knowledge of context makes it easier to remember the word and to use it more accurately in language production.

In addition, Wordsift has an image and video search options that are powered by Google. When selecting any word, you will be able to do a google image/video search on the same page, which also makes learning vocabulary more visual and interactive.

The last point I would like to talk about in Wordsift is that you can highlight words which belong to a certain genre like academic or scientific words, which also enhances vocabulary learning through grouping the words which fit together into categories.

Any concerns?

All the features mentioned above show that Wordsift is a very efficient method of learning vocabulary through contextualisation and visualisation. Nevertheless, you need to keep in mind that it is a computer programme that does all these tasks, and therefore the results might involve some inaccuracies on some occasions due to having words with multiple meanings. For instance, a google image search of the word discipline. which is synonymous with field in the context of linguistics, gave me results related to its meaning as will and self-control, which might leave students confused. Therefore, it is necessary when using Wordsift to have a look at the context in addition to the other features, for it demonstrates the word in the specific context that you have chosen.