Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from April, 2013
Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
List of the Week: Jonathan Safran Foer
List of the Week: Jonathan Safran Foer
Having logged many years teaching English and theatre at New York City high schools, Shannon Reed now teaches freshman English Composition at the University of Pittsburgh. Here Shannon shows how teachers can work with students to improve their writing by focusing on five overused words.
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Under the HoodThe science of vocabulary building
How Do We Learn Words? Ask Your Weatherman
Call them chunking, call them clichés, they're how we learn
"Hot enough for you?" "Lovely day!" "It's raining cats and dogs!" Weather clichés serve us well. Not only do they give us the means of exchanging a pleasantries with friends and neighbors, they're an example of language chunking, the process through which our brains attaches meaning to words.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
Vocabulary Shout-Out: Novelist Amity Gaige for "Gloriole"
And why this kind of precision in language matters
In the following description from her novel O My Darling (2005), Amity Gaige uses the words gloriole and mote to describe the effect of light and snow.
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Blog Excerpts
A High School Teacher is "Wowed" by Vocabulary.com
"Students can...focus their energy on learning the words instead of...writing them down."
In a first look at Vocabulary.com, high school English teacher and blogger Lee Ann Spillane calls the site "the first tool I've seen that contextualizes vocabulary in ways similar to what we do in class."
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
Ten Words from The NY Times - Apr. 24, 2013
Ten Words from The NY Times - Apr. 24, 2013
Learn Ten Words from The NY Times - Apr. 24, 2013. Then see "Vocabulary Begets Vocabulary: The More You Know, the More You Learn" to understand why learning these words will help you absorb even more as you read.
Last year, Vocabulary.com made TIME's list of the top 50 websites. Now, TIME senior editor Jeffrey Kluger has reviewed the site in depth, finding that, of online resources to help you learn new words, Vocabulary.com is "a leader in the sector." He judges the site on how well it addresses the questions, "Does this really help you learn? Do the words stick, or do they run out of your head the second you pour them in?"
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