Saturday, September 3, 2011

More goodies from Merriam-Webster

As well as being a dictionary, Merriam-Webster Online has several resources that could be useful to advanced learners, including a new Top Ten Words

Easily confused words

These are the subject of Merriam-Webster's latest Top Ten Words, which you can find here, with pairings such as desert and dessert. And remember this is a dictionary aimed at native speakers, some of whom are probably more confused than you are.

Random quiz - Confusing words

This gives me the opportunity to plug my own quiz of confusing words - which includes most of those from the M-W list, and much, much more. At the moment there are 40 questions which you can do in random batches of ten. It's my aim to build this up to about a hundred questions.

Other goodies at Merriam-Webster

While poking around on Merriam-Webster I also found these resources:

Most popular words

This page lists the 25 most looked-up words of the past 24 hours, the past week, and the past four months. Most of them seem to be medium difficult to difficult, without being impossible. I think this could be an excellent vocabulary source for advanced students. Popular words

Trend watch

This features words that have been used a lot recently in the media, and tends to reflect current affairs and events in the United States - again a good vocabulary resource. Trend watch

Videos

And don't forget their videos, which I blogged about quite recently here.

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