WordSift

Screenshot 1: Home page of WordSift

Description

The tool for introduction today is WordSift. It is a very simple and easy to use application currently maintained by Stanford University. This tool can generally be used to manage the demands of vocabulary and academic language in a text. First of all, you can try the video tour at the home page to listen to the tutorial videos. I have done it and it is quite useful and helpful for new users. If you are too lazy to go to the website, I have make it easier for you to click the link to the video tour below. Have a try.

Video tour
Click HERE for a free video tour! (of how to use WordSift)

Steps

1. It is very simple to use WordSift. First you need to have a text according to any language you prefer. Then copy and paste part of the text you want to have a check on. Then click 'Sift'.

2. Then you will find words in random sizes connected to your text. Here comes the interesting bit. You can arrange the words to appear according to your liking.

Screenshot 2: Sort the text from Common to Rare or any other and check on the outcome

3. Next below the random words, you can have a look at the images which appeared and choose the image you might want to use. Besides that, you can also find some examples from your text sources with highlighted words. The highlighted word is the word clicked from the diagram above. You can also click on any sentence you want and have a look at the entire text yourself with an indication to the sentence you clicked earlier.

4. By clicking on a word too you will find a cloud of inter-related words in the Visual Thesaurus section.

Screenshot 3: On the right the Visual Thesaurus. On the left the images from the internet suggested by the search engine.

Advantages

1. WordSift helps you sort out your text to find out common words or information useful for your lessons or text reading.

2. There is also a choice of images from the internet you might want to use.

3. You can also separate the text and read by sections.

Disadvantages

1. Some of the images might not be be appropriate or even related to the word clicked.

2. Words can be quite confusing when students need to look at so many words with different sizes at the same time.

Suggestion to improve

One way to improve is by filtering the images to make sure the images that appeared are related to the word clicked.

Next it will also be useful if the tool has the function to make notes and save it as readable document for users to use in the future.