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Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html
Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com
Using the Internet
You can use the internet as an aid to vocabulary development by exploring the abundant opportunities for reading available on the World Wide Web. Capital Community College maintains an extensive list of online newspapers and commentary magazines. Choose magazines such asAtlantic and Mother Jones that challenge your mind and your vocabulary with full-text articles. At least once a week read a major article with the purpose of culling from it some vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to you. We also recommend the New York Times Book Review (which might require an easy, one-time, free registration).
You can use the internet as an aid to vocabulary development by exploring the abundant opportunities for reading available on the World Wide Web. Capital Community College maintains an extensive list of online newspapers and commentary magazines. Choose magazines such asAtlantic and Mother Jones that challenge your mind and your vocabulary with full-text articles. At least once a week read a major article with the purpose of culling from it some vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to you. We also recommend the New York Times Book Review (which might require an easy, one-time, free registration).
Vocabulary University is a new online resource for working on groups of related vocabulary words in a puzzle format. Vocabulary U., a graphically rich Web site, is broken into beginning, intermediate, and college-level work. Vocabulary for English Language Learners is a treasury and nicely organized resources for ESL students. It is maintained by the College of Arts & Sciences of Ohio University.
There are also at least two services that send you an e-mail message every day with a new word—with definitions, pronunciation guides, and examples of its use. Get in the habit of reading these messages regularly. Print out the words and definitions you think will be really useful, or write them down and carry them around with you on your personal vocabulary builder.
You can also go to the web-site of the Scripps-Howard Annual National Spelling Bee and listen to words on Audio Paideia. The words are arranged in interesting groups. With RealAudio on your browser, you can hear the word and its definition and then try to spell it on your own. Have a dictionary handy! This Guide to Grammar and Writing also has a series of spelling tests that can be used as a vocabulary builders: go to the section on Spelling and choose the spelling tests (bottom of the page) that use sound (the words you're asked to spell are accompanied by brief definitions).
Javascript Vocabulary Stretchers, maintained by John Gales, offers a new computer-graded vocabulary test (ten words) every week. Michael Quinion maintains a series of articles about the English language called Wide World of Words (also available as a weekly e-mail newsletter). You can spend days wandering through the maze of word-games and language resources listed in Judi Wolinsky's Word Play.
Crossword puzzles are an excellent way to develop your vocabulary. Do the puzzles that appear in your local newspaper on a daily or weekly basis or try these interactive crossword puzzles on the internet:
http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/vocabulary.htm
Five-Dollar WordsAn extensive vocabulary can be a powerful writing and speaking tool; it can also be misused, made to make others feel powerless. Never use a five-dollar word where a fifty-cent word will do the job just as well or better. Do we really need utilize when a three-letter word, use, will nicely suffice. Risible is a lovely word, but is it worth sending your readers to the dictionary when laughable is at hand? It's a good question. On the other hand, don't cheat yourself or your readers out of some important nuance of meaning that you've discovered in a word that's new to you. At some point you have to assume that your readers also have dictionaries. It's sometimes a tough line to draw—between being a pedantic, pretentious boor (Oh, there are three dandies!) and being a writer who can take full and efficient advantage of the English language's multifarious (another one!) resources.
Source: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/vocabulary.htm
There are also at least two services that send you an e-mail message every day with a new word—with definitions, pronunciation guides, and examples of its use. Get in the habit of reading these messages regularly. Print out the words and definitions you think will be really useful, or write them down and carry them around with you on your personal vocabulary builder.
- Garner's Usage Tip OF the Day Bryan Garner, author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Oxford University Press), offers this invaluable, free, daily e-mail service. Subscription is easy. http://www.us.oup.com/us/subscriptions/subscribe/?view=usa .
- Vocab Vitamins (formerly "MyWordaDay"): Colin O'Malley maintains this Website, a treasure for people who know that developing an adequate vocabulary is not a short-term project. Users can visit the Website or have the WordaDay e-mailed to them. Words are arranged in meaningful groups and defined in painstaking and useful detail, with plenty of examples. http://www.vocabvitamins.com/.
- WORDSMITH: To subscribe or unsubscribe to A.Word.A.Day, send a message to [email protected] with the "Subject:" line as "subscribe " or "unsubscribe." The Wordsmith has thousands of subscribers. It does a great job of discovering interesting themes and sources of words and then exploring those words—a word a day—for a week or so and then goes off to another theme and series of words.
- Word of the Day: Maintained by Merriam Webster, Inc., the dictionary people. Go to the online WWWebster Dictionary and click on Word of the Day. From there, you can either subscribe to their free daily service or explore their archives. The guides for pronunciation are easier to follow than Wordsmith's and the examples are well founded and even fun. The Merriam-Webster people also provide a neat link directly to their word database so that you can highlight a word on a Web-page, click on their icon in your personal toolbar and get an instant and authoritative definition for that word.
The following resources do not go to your e-mail account, but they are easily available online — if you can just remember to visit them on a regular basis. - Word of the Day from the OED: Although the online version of the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary is not available without a hefty price tag, you can get a free Word of the Day from the OED. You will find more information there about each word presented than you could ever imagine existed.
- The New York Times Word of the Day: every weekday, a word chosen from the archives of the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/wordofday/.
- Michael Quinion's "World Wide Words": investigating the use and creation of English words, from a British point of view. Fun to read, always something new.http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm.
- The Atlantic section on Language: from the Atlantic Monthly's online journal. Select from "Word Court," "Word Fugitive," and "Word Police." http://www.theatlantic.com/language/.
- Word Safari challenges web surfers' knowledge of vocabulary, and then sends them off on expeditions to see the chosen word used in context on the web. Aiming her Web site at building academic vocabulary skills, Ruth Pettis adds new vocabulary words every week.http://home.earthlink.net/~ruthpett/safari/index.htm.
- The Maven's Word for the Day was maintained by the Reference division of Random House. It went belly-up in December 2001, but the archives are still available online. http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/.
You can also go to the web-site of the Scripps-Howard Annual National Spelling Bee and listen to words on Audio Paideia. The words are arranged in interesting groups. With RealAudio on your browser, you can hear the word and its definition and then try to spell it on your own. Have a dictionary handy! This Guide to Grammar and Writing also has a series of spelling tests that can be used as a vocabulary builders: go to the section on Spelling and choose the spelling tests (bottom of the page) that use sound (the words you're asked to spell are accompanied by brief definitions).
Javascript Vocabulary Stretchers, maintained by John Gales, offers a new computer-graded vocabulary test (ten words) every week. Michael Quinion maintains a series of articles about the English language called Wide World of Words (also available as a weekly e-mail newsletter). You can spend days wandering through the maze of word-games and language resources listed in Judi Wolinsky's Word Play.
Crossword puzzles are an excellent way to develop your vocabulary. Do the puzzles that appear in your local newspaper on a daily or weekly basis or try these interactive crossword puzzles on the internet:
- The Christian Science Monitor Interactive Crossword Puzzle
- Crossword of the Day
- Michael Curl's Puzzles and Wordplay (This stuff is a real challenge!)
http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/vocabulary.htm
Five-Dollar WordsAn extensive vocabulary can be a powerful writing and speaking tool; it can also be misused, made to make others feel powerless. Never use a five-dollar word where a fifty-cent word will do the job just as well or better. Do we really need utilize when a three-letter word, use, will nicely suffice. Risible is a lovely word, but is it worth sending your readers to the dictionary when laughable is at hand? It's a good question. On the other hand, don't cheat yourself or your readers out of some important nuance of meaning that you've discovered in a word that's new to you. At some point you have to assume that your readers also have dictionaries. It's sometimes a tough line to draw—between being a pedantic, pretentious boor (Oh, there are three dandies!) and being a writer who can take full and efficient advantage of the English language's multifarious (another one!) resources.
Source: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/vocabulary.htm