Wordplay: The Angry Birds of Language
Sometimes the simplest tools can be the most creative places to play and learn. The trick is approaching them with some curiosity and playfulness — making a game of it.
Try MoreWords. This very simple tool, apparently designed to help you cheat at crossword puzzles, word scrambles, and other word games, is also a lot of fun for finding new words and playing with letter combinations, prefixes, suffixes, and more. (You WILL have to ignore some annoying ads.) I tried entering crypto—— and found several new words all related to codes. What a great way for kids to get hooked on words. Try entering various numbers of blanks before a suffix or around a root. You could even make it a “gambling” challenge: I predict there will be seven words that have seven letters followed by the suffix proof. How many do you predict? Before we enter it, how many can you name? OK, I was wrong in my prediction. How close were you?
Here’s another one: WordCount. It analyzes English statistically to tell us word frequencies. Sound like something Google would do, right? But imagine predicting or asking which word is used more frequently: wrestle (rank = 25905) or fight (rank = 1484) ? (To enter a word and find its rank, click just to the right of the tiny text “find Word” and type it in.) Think of other word pairs you might test. Ask students to choose one word in a draft they have written and suggest a lesser-used word to replace it. How do you know? Use WordCount.
Looking for more word fodder? Try Alan Cooper’s Homonym List. (What’s the difference from “homophones”? Click Go to All About Homonyms to decide what to call them). This innocent looking, alphabetical list of homonyms begs us to write clever sayings, sentences, or tongue twisters. Can you figure out why some have red squares and some blue? This list could become a series of writing prompts. Choose a set of homonyms . Create a clever, visual way to show them in correct use in writing and show their differences, perhaps with images, comic characters, or even video.
If we gamify word choice and word study through wordplay, words can become as much fun as apps, and a LOT more productive. If all of us played with words as much as with Angry Birds, imagine how articulate the average American could become. Surely, there would be lasting benefit in that.
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