2. What?
Dictionary definition
An image composed of words used in a particular text or subject, in
which the size of each word indicates its frequency or importance:
Louise generated a word cloud of lyrics from the new album.
Taken from: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/word-
cloud
3. What?
Word cloud creators:
www.tagxedo.com
www.tagul.com
www.worditout.com
Word clouds for kids
http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm
Other word cloud creators (lists)
http://www.edudemic.com/word-cloud-generators/
http://www.edudemic.com/9-word-cloud-generators-that-arent-wordle/
4. Why?
Visualising word frequencies / synonyms / word
fields
English language teaching
Reading skills
Writing skills
Vocabulary
Group dynamics
Culture, politics, history
5. Example
Compare Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s acceptance speeches at their party
conventions
13. How?
General teaching ideas
Guess/brainstorm a topic
Words they know / don’t know concerning a topic (to start)
Summary/revision of a topic using key words
Presentations/group work: one aspect of a larger topic per group (e.g. one country,
politician, time period per group) create a word cloud
Finding certain words in the word cloud
Compare and contrast: 2 articles in the newspaper, 2 speeches by politicians, 2 lyrics…
Using it as a cover for a project booklet, a class book, etc.
14. How?
English language teaching
Synonym word clouds
Collocation word clouds
Students’ texts: show them which words they use often (e.g. nice, go, say improve
text)
Words that are often misspelled
Poems: can they guess the poem? Or the topic of the poem?
Quotes: can they put the words into the correct order
15. How?
Group dynamics:
Class clouds (names, characteristics [classmates write characteristics for each student], certain
topics [eg holidays]
Class poll (favourite…)
To introduce the students: each student makes their own word cloud
End of the year activity: each student creates a word cloud representing their version of the
past year
Some ideas adapted from: http://blog.tagxedo.com/101-ways-to-use-tagxedo-completed
16. Any challenges?
Technology
Internet connection
Software
More sophisticated layout not free anymore
Adapting texts from websites
Does it display what you want to focus on
