Word Clouds in the EFL Classroom

The best teaching and learning occurs in a stress-free environment when we combine learning with fun activities. In this blog entry we are going to focus on revising vocabulary in a rather alternative and fun way through word clouds. 

More specifically, we are going to focus on Wordle which is a tool that extracts all the words from a text, then randomizes them and then organizes them in a word cloud. You basically copy/paste a text in the Wordle and click on “go”. You have the option to change the shape of the world cloud and play with the colours.

For a detailed tutorial click here. 

Applications of word clouds in the EFL classroom

Example 1 => World clouds work best in group work. A typical instance of this could be that a student describes or acts out a word and the other student tries to find it from the word cloud.

Example 2 => Word clouds function very well as warm up activities. Let’s assume we have inserted the text that we intend to teach into Wordle and created a word cloud. Before proceeding to the actual text we present the world cloud to the class. We give the students half a minute to read the words and start guessing the topic of the text and what it is about. Such guessing techniques trigger the student’s attention. Bellow is an instance of this. The original text is here.

Does example 1 ring any bells? Can it relate to any teaching methods that you have consciously or unconsciously used in the past?

With reference to the Total Physical Response (TPR) teaching method, example 1 is a good instance, as one student acts out the meaning of a word and the other student associates the action with the actual word. Proponents of this teaching method support that learning is more successful by associating a meaning of a word/notion with motor activity.

Additionally, this teaching method facilitates Kinesthetic language learning. Kinesthetic language learning is about experiencing what one learns using his body. Although kinesthetic language learning is frequently associated with learning difficulties/differences, it is beyond doubt that ordinary learners proliferate a great deal from kinesthetic learning.

Benefits

• Applying a variety of teaching techniques in a lesson not only maintains student’s interest in the lesson but expands their attention span. In more detail, including multiple teaching techniques (as mentioned above) keeps the student’s awake. Any new technique that you introduce or recycle throughout your lessons will attract the student’s interest because of the human’s innate desire to discover something new. Hence, they will concentrate better to anything new and exciting you bring in the lesson.

Drawbacks

• Such activities can be time consuming when you are following a school syllabus. Especially when you have large classes and you want to give equal opportunities to everyone to participate.

All things considered, technology can be easily integrated in traditional teaching methods (e.g. Total Physical Response (TPR) teaching method).

It would be a great dismiss for you, the EFL teacher, as well as your learners not to incorporate such great teaching techniques in your EFL classroom.