Name:Word of the Day
Brief Description of the Site:
Part of the excellent New York Times Learning Network site, this page is a good place for high school students to work on their vocabulary skills, especially if they plan to take the SAT or ACT. Each day the page offers its Word of the Day followed by a Merriam-Webster definition plus an example of the word as used in a recent NY Times article. To the right, courtesy of the Kaplan test-preparation organization, is a question, in SAT/ACT format, that makes use of the word. Attempting an answer brings up a dialogue box succinctly explaining the correct answer. But the site offers more than just one word. There are links to the ten most recent words plus an Archive link that brings up a seemingly-endless alphabetical list of words, each of which had been a Word of the Day.
How to use the site:
Have students work with that day’s word plus the ten that accompany it, trying the SAT/ACT questions or using the words in original sentences. The idea is to build their sight-recognition vocabulary for the verbal portion of the SAT, ACT, and other tests, where very often vocabulary makes all the difference between a low and high score. Another possibility is to have students click on the Archive link, select a word at random, and proceed as explained.
Submitted by:
Anonymous
