Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus has launched a new tool called VocabGrabber (http://vocabgrabber.com) that helps teachers and students target the key vocabulary from a text within seconds. VocabGrabber extracts words from any document and demonstrates how those words are used in context. It's intended for language arts teachers, students of English at all levels of proficiency, or anyone who wants fresh insights into how language works.
VocabGrabber compares how often words appear in the text with the frequency of these words in standard written English overall. Grabbing the vocabulary from the United States Bill of Rights, for instance, highlights significant legal terms like probable cause and cruel and unusual punishment. Grabbing the opening of the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist, meanwhile, will quickly zero in on words like workhouse, gruel, and pauper.
Teachers and students can use VocabGrabber to highlight vocabulary specific to a subject area -- focusing on just the science-related words from the latest news coverage about swine flu, or just the artistic and literary terms in an article about the history of poetry. Additionally, VocabGrabber can be used to select only those words that are typically taught in vocabulary instruction, useful for students preparing for local standardized tests, or national tests like the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, and TOEFL.
For more information, visit VocabGrabber and The Visual Thesaurus.
