Word Cloud: Wordsift &Wordle

Transform your text into word clouds with Wordsift and Wordle!

What is word cloud?

Word cloud is an attractive arrangement of randomly positioned words. It is a representation of word frequency. Words that appear more frequently than others are displayed in bigger fonts. this implies that they are the possible key words of a text.

Both wordsift and wordle are two famous sites that help in generating word cloud.

How they work?

Both wordsift and wordle can immediately capture and display the vocabulary structure of texts. You just have to cut and paste any text into wordsift or wordle, and in a blink of eye, the text is transformed into a visually captivating word cloud. The programs help to quickly identify important words that appear in the text. They then give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently than others in the source text. 

Differences in their features:

A) Features of wordsift:

The outlook of word cloud presented by wordsif

1. can sort the key words from common to rare, rare to common word, or alphabetically from A-Z and Z-A
2. includes 'examples from source', i.e. the range of sentences in which a particular vocabulary can be found
3. provide thesaurus
4. show related images

B) Features of wordle:

The features of wordle

The outlook of word cloud presented by wordle

1. can tweak the cloud with different fonts, layouts and colour schemes.
2. may look more visually appealing and colourful as compared to wordsift 
3. can be printed out, saved in the wordle gallery for public view.
4. can choose to remove the 'common language', i.e. preposition, article, etc. 

How can teacher include wordsift and wordle into language teaching?

1. As a pre-reading/ writing activity

• Word cloud is an interesting way of introducing students with the possible vocabulary, which is related to a reading text or a writing task. The set of vocabulary builds up students' schemata and gives students a framework on the content of the upcoming text. 

2. To practise reading skill

• Word cloud, which summerises text with key words, can be a method to train students skimming and scanning skills. Having the knowledge of the key words in minds, they can then skim and scan the reading text with ease and get a better overview in their first reading. 

3. To set up an information gap activity

• Teacher may ask each student to make a word cloud of the text that they read. Then, working in pairs, they need to exchange their word clouds with their partners. From there, they need to guess the content and provide a rough description to their partners just by looking at the word clouds. To do this activity, students explore on their creativity and thinking skills (making prediction from clue, analysing, etc) 

4. To compare and contrast the key words in the text

• Teacher may ask each student to write an essay (let's say "A Sports Day") and generate a word cloud out of the text. Then, working in groups, they exchange their word clouds with one another. In this activity, students need to compare and contrast the key words they use. This allows them to see which words they have in common, which words are use more frequently, and who tends to use certain words in their essay more than others. Looking at these words, students can learn the topic-related vocabulary collaboratively. 

5. To write story creatively 

• Teacher may present students a word cloud without telling them the possible topic of the text. Students are then ask to write any possible story with reference to the set of key words in the word cloud. 

The advantages of wordsift and wordle

1. Students learn the use of vocabulary in a contextualised text. 

• Wordsift provides a range of sentences, in which a particular vocabulary is embedded, from the source / text. This allows students to learn how particular word can be used in sentences. In this case, vocabulary is not learn in a discrete method. Students learn the vocabulary in a more meaningful and natural way.

2. They promote visual learning.

• The interesting font, colour and layout of the wordle are believed to draw greater attention from the students towards the key words. Same goes to the more prominent words are enlarged.  Additionally, the interesting features of the tools are also believed to enhance students' memorisation towards the key words. This, in turn, is useful when students are learning unfamiliar words. 
• Wordsift, on the same notes, include related images to the words. This helps students to visualise the meanings of the vocabulary. 

The limitations

1. The tools cannot differentiate word family. For example, walk and walked are not distinguishable. 

2. We need to install a Java Plug-in in order to produce word cloud.