Try hover over the keywords!
Introduction of this post
This post is aiming at English teachers of all abilities of students. It includes seven parts which are:
1.What is word cloud?
2.Tagul-my favourite word cloud generator
3.How to use Tagul? (with my video tutorial)
4.My ideas on using word cloud in classrooms
5.Connections with English learning
6.Pros and Cons
What is word cloud?
A word cloud is a graphical representation of word frequency.You can create a picture with the words that you wish to show on the picture. If a word is more frequently, it would attract more attention by the size or colour. Different online word clouds have different levels of customization on the words. The creation of word cloud is so easy to learn that it can be widely used by students or teachers.
There is a great number of word cloud generators online, for example, Word It Out, Make Word Mosiac, Tagul etc.
Tagul---My favourite word cloud generator
Tagul is one of the online word cloud generators that is free and gives you more than 15 shapes to choose from. From my perspective, it is similar to wordle but it is even better than wordle. There are mainly 2 reasons why I favour Tagul over Wordle.
Accessibility
Tagul: It requires users to sign up with emails or other social medias like Facebook or google.
Wordle: It doesn't require us to sign up to use it. HOWEVER, it is necessary to have Java on the computer in order to see the graphics. Even though you have Java, the loading speed of the graphics will still put you off. Below is the picture of wordle. It has been loading for ages.
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| Wordle has been loading for over a minute |
Freedom of choice
Tagul: It is highly customizable. You can choose what shape you wish your graphic to be. My word cloud, which is on the top of the page, is of the shape of a "thumb up". After the decision of the shape, you can customize the font and colour or even the layout of the text.
Wordle: As shown in the picture, you can also choose the font, layout and color of the picture. Compared to Tagul, it can't choose the shape and the choice of color is more limited. Wordle has provided you some sets of matched colour. However, if you want to customize your color, it is not as easy as you do with Tagul.
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| wordle has limited customization |
How to use Tagul?
1. Sign up: Sign up at https://tagul.com and click on "get started".
2. Initiate it: "Get started" will take you directly to "My word cloud art". Click on "create my new word cloud", then you will be able to see the seemingly very complicated interface as the image below.
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| seemingly very complicated interface |
4. Customize the vocabulary: After inputting text or web," Import words"! Then you will see the left column are filled up with words. The words on the top are probably those of higher frequency in the text of web.Notice that we can change the font, color, angle, size of each word or even the spelling of it. Just try to click on the word and you will see miracles!
5. Visualize it: You may ask me why there are no changes on the right column even though you have made some alternations. Don't panic. Just lick on "visualize", then you will see it!
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| It generates random shape. I will show you how to change it! |
6.Change the shape: If you don't like the shape, you can absolutely change it. Click on " shapes" then you can choose one that is closest to your expectation. Don't forget to visualize it after your click!
7. Download and share: You can change the font, size, and layout. Don't forget to "save changes" and download and share it. Click on "download ad share" and you will see there are many options. You can embed it in your blog (just like the word cloud at the beginning of this post), in which way you can still keep the animation. Or you can save it as PNG, but it will be a still image.
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| The still image. |
My ideas on using word cloud in classrooms?
These activities are all applicable to middle school English classroom in Hong Kong. Teachers can adjust activities in accordance to the need of different age group.
Activate schemata---by showing the keywords from the context of the target lesson, students' knowledge of the lesson can be initiated.
Creative writing----Students can be asked to write a story based on the vocabulary in the word cloud.
Finding antonyms and synonym---students can be divided into groups and each group is given the same word cloud. Every group should try to find all the antonyms and synonyms in it as soon as possible.
Make a sentence---Students can pair up and one student can find a word in the word cloud and ask the other to make a sentence using this word immediately.
Brainstorm vocabulary---Students are given a picture of a person conducting a certain task. They have to come up with verbs or adjectives or adverbs to describe the image.
Link vocabulary to image---Students are asked to fill up the shape of the word cloud that the teacher chose for them with words relevant to the shape, for example, a student is given the shape of a dog, he would probably fill up the shape with words like " loyalty", "puppy" and "adorable". (applicable to Tagul)
Link vocabulary to image---Students are asked to fill up the shape of the word cloud that the teacher chose for them with words relevant to the shape, for example, a student is given the shape of a dog, he would probably fill up the shape with words like " loyalty", "puppy" and "adorable". (applicable to Tagul)
Connection with English learning
I have to admit that I was quite shallow when I realized all the word cloud does is to present vocabulary. I thought it was not useful as it seemingly doesn't help students with anything. However, when I dug deeper, I came up with more and more great ideas of it for the classroom use. It is awesome that a single picture with words in it can inspire me that much.
Link between word cloud and English learning
There is a very strong link between this web tool and language learning. As I showed in the last part, even though it only demonstrates words to students, Word Cloud can no doubt be of great use in class as it explores possibilities for English teaching, for example, students can fill up a word cloud according to the shape of it. It also saves a lot of time for teachers as they could sort out the vocabulary in a short time with the help of word cloud. What's more, it motivates learners by using visual aids.
There is a very strong link between this web tool and language learning. As I showed in the last part, even though it only demonstrates words to students, Word Cloud can no doubt be of great use in class as it explores possibilities for English teaching, for example, students can fill up a word cloud according to the shape of it. It also saves a lot of time for teachers as they could sort out the vocabulary in a short time with the help of word cloud. What's more, it motivates learners by using visual aids.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
1.This tool is very handy and easy for teachers and students to use.2.It is very engaging due to the color and font.
3.It automatically sorts out the most commonly used words in a text, which saves a lot of time for teachers.
Cons (limitations):
1.Even though the large variety of color and font makes word cloud look appealing, it can be distracting to students as well.
2.When users import text, there is a chance that basic words like "me", "the" are of bigger size due to the high frequency of occurrence.
Sources of information
Definition of "Word cloud" is retrieved March 17th, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud
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