Friday, June 26, 2009

Using GoogleBattle for Better Word Choice

Have you ever been bewildered on which synonymous word you would choose in your writing?
Is it spacious or large? Enormous or gigantic? Splendid or wondrous? All of these and much more are synonymous words that you might know but you do not know which one is more often used. If you are writing in a website,a blog, or even doing composing an academic essay, you have to use googlebattle to help you find out which word is more used on the WWW.

Using googlebattle
The name says it all. It is a battle between two words in the google search engine. The word that wins will be the lucky one to be chosen in your writing. You simply type in each word in its keyword text area (keyword1 and keyword2) then click "go" as shown in the images below.

After you enter each word, you click " go" which result in have a smiley face for the winner word and a frowning face for the losing word. If you scroll down you will see how many times each word is used on the WWW as recorded by google search engine.
Let's say , for example. that I want to choose between the two words : loquacious and garrulous.
I enter each word and hit "go'




The number of times each word appears is also shown.



But remember, not every two synonyms can be used properly in the same context. Some words are not used often as their synonyms but might be more powerful in certain contexts, conveying a clearer meaning.
Try some of the words that you were baffled of choosing between and share your results in the comments. I will be glad to hear how this is evolving. Go to googlebattle and check it out.
Best
Ammar

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

SAT vocabulary - Cluster 1- Words Relating to Using Few Words or Being Quiet

Often, students who want to learn SAT words try to memorize them in an alphabetical list, but a better way to learn these words is if they are put in categories or clusters. This is the first cluster of a series of SAT vocab clusters that will help your students to know and retain SAT words.

The following words relate to using Few words or being quiet.
brevity, concise, laconic, pithy, quiescent, reticent, succinct, taciturn, terse


Group A : brief, using few words in speaking or writing
brevity, concise, laconic, pithy, succinct, and terse

Words in Video
Watch the following video clip on the three words concise, pithy, and reticent. After you watch the video clip use each displayed word in a sentence using the text area below.





Watch succinct in a video





























Words in Context
If you do not know how to use each word in a sentence then click each word below to see it in context. Try to use each word in a sentence as in the examples in the links:
Concise, brevity, pithy, reticent, laconic, quiescent, terse, succinct, taciturn

Words in Slide Show

Now you are going to make a slide using photos and images to define and use each word in a sentence. I have, as an example ,designed a simple slide to show how simple and fun it is using 280slides embedded below.



Now it is your turn to use the words above in a slide, and then embed it in your blog :). Right click here to open a new window for the presentation workspace. You first need to register before you will be able to edit the slide. It is easy to use and fun. After you are done, click "share" on the right hand side and then click "embed" in the pop up window that appears. Copy the embed code then paste it in the comment in the HTML view and the compose view.

The following captured images explain how you can embed your slide after you finish it.






























After that you can paste the code in your blog and make a link in the comments here for all of us to view, but make sure you click on the "edit Html" above the text editor before you do that.
www.280slides.com