The Faculty of Languages and Translation Online Resources Project aims to provide useful links for English Language Teachers and Learners. Please see the vocabulary skills table below. We welcome all suggestions. For any enquiries or suggestions, please email Dr. Munassir Alhamami (mhamame@kku.edu.sa).
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SL |
Title |
Web Link |
About |
Contributors |
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1 |
Visuwords |
VisuWords is a web-based visual dictionary and thesaurus tool. Search for words to look up their meanings and associations with other words. When you look up a word in this tool, it shows a neat graph which connects that word to various other words based on different relationships between them. You can hover over each word to get its definition and also zoom-in and zoom-out using your mouse wheel. It’s certainly an excellent dictionary plus thesaurus. |
Mahmud |
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2 |
Definr |
Definris an incredibly fast dictionary. It starts suggesting the nearest possible word as you start typing a particular word. Most of the time you get the required word after typing 3 or 4 letters and then you can just click on the word to look up its meaning. Definr also provides some nice tools which makes this service more useful. |
Mahmud |
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3 |
MetaGlossary.com |
MetaGlossary.com approaches the task of finding meanings of words in a different way. It aggregates various links on the web which provide an explanation of the term and shows the results. Hence it does the job of pulling definitions of the word from the entire web. |
Mahmud |
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4 |
Thsrs |
Thsrs helps you to get shorter synonyms of long words. Although it’s not dead accurate, it still can be useful at times. It also provides a browser plug-in to easily look up shorter synonyms of words with a right click. |
Mahmud |
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5 |
Wordsmith |
Wordsmith is a nice resource for new words, especially its ‘ A Word A Day ‘ newsletter, which is immensely popular and delivers new words every day to your email inbox. |
Mahmud |
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6 |
Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus |
Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is a free-to-try visual tool which shows related words in an interactive map and helps you to find their meanings and listen to their pronunciation easily. |
Mahmud |
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7 |
AskOxford |
AskOxford is the online version of the famous dictionary by the Oxford University Press. It’s comprehensive without a doubt and includes various other vocabulary resources and a quotations dictionary. |
Mahmud |
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8 |
Alpha Dictionary |
Alpha Dictionary doesn’t directly show you the meaning of a word. Instead, it searches all the available online dictionaries (most of them) and displays the results in the form of links to the meaning of that word in those dictionaries. So choose your favorite dictionary (if at all you have one) and click on the corresponding link to view its meaning.Each of the aforementioned websites tries to accomplish the same task in a different manner and hence helps you to refine your vocabulary further and get a stronger grip on the world’s most cherished language. |
Mahmud |
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9 |
Kindersayt |
Kindersay is a new free site that offers an excellent multimedia experience where Beginning English Language Learners can learn about 500 basic words. I wish the examples included sentences where the words were used in context, but, again, II guess you can’t have everything… |
Mahmud |
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10 |
VocabAhead |
VocubAhead is one of the best vocabulary-learning sites for English Language Learners and mainstream students. It uses SAT words and shows the word and representative image, plus provides audio support for text showing the word being used in context. |
Mahmud |
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11 |
Starfall |
Starfall is the established site that is rivaled by no other in providing accessible literacy activities to Beginning English Language Learners. |
Mahmud |
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12 |
USA Learns |
USA Learns is an incredible website to help users learn English. Even though its primarily designed for older learners, it seems very accessible to all but the very youngest ELLs. It’s free to use. Students can register if they want to save their work and evaluate their progress, but it’s not required. One of its great features is that learners can report and record words that they’re learning and listen to how they sound. |
Mahmud |
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13 |
Learning Chocolate |
Learning Chocolate is designed for English Language Learners to gain basic vocabulary through many interactive exercises. |
Mahmud |
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14 |
Vocabulary Strategies in 15 Minutes |
It is a useful post and contains effective strategies for learning vocabularies. |
Mahmud |
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15 |
ESOL Courses: English Vocabulary |
https://www.esolcourses.com/content/exercises/vocabulary/english-vocabulary.html |
It is a great website. It has categorized vocabularies by different levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced). It also contains vocabularies on many practical topics. It is one of the highly recommended websites for improving vocabularies. |
Mahmud |
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16 |
Vocabulary Exercises |
https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/grammar-vocabulary/vocabulary-exercises |
Here you can learn new words and practice your vocabulary. Also, you can listen to the pronunciation of the words and then do the exercises. There are worksheets too for offline practice |
Mahmud |
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17 |
Free Rice |
Freerice is a non-profit website that is owned by and supports the United Nations World Food Programme.It has two goals: Provide education to everyone for free and help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. It has vocabulary quizzes, and If you get a correct answer, they donate 10 grains of rice through the World Food Program to help end hunger.
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Mahmud |
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18 |
Test Your Vocabulary |
TestYourVocab.com is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates. The site provides accurate results for virtually everyone, from very small children (with answers input by parents) to professional linguists. It can calculate vocabulary sizes from less than 100 words to more than 40,000 words. |
Mahmud |
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19 |
Ozdic |
www.ozdic.com brings you a completely new type of dictionary that will help English learners write and speak natural-sounding English. Collocations - common word combinations such as 'bright idea' or 'talk freely' - are the essential building blocks of natural-sounding English. The dictionary contains over 150,000 collocations for nearly 9,000 headwords. The dictionary shows all the words that are commonly used in combination with each headword: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions as well as common phrases. The dictionary is based on the 100 million word British National Corpus. Internet searches were made to ensure the most up-to-date usage for fast changing areas of language such as computing. |
Mahmud |
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20 |
Language Guide |
This is an online picture dictionary, with everything from the alphabet to parts of the body to farm animals. |
Mahmud |
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21 |
The Phrase Finder |
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/american-phrases-and-sayings.html |
This website has a large number of American idiomatic expressions not only with their meanings but also with their origins. So, if your students are interested in the etymology of idiomatic expressions, this website would be a great resource to use. |
Mahmud |
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22 |
Vocabulary.co.IL |
Activities offered on this website can be used as an assessment tool after particular idioms have been taught. Students can use these activities for their independent learning of idioms as well. |
Mahmud |
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23 |
Open English World |
This website would be great for someone who likes to learn random vocabulary on a consistent basis. Each week, the website offers a new idiom with its meaning and a short dialogue in which the idiom is used. The dialogues also come with audio versions (which, of course, can be used in a classroom activity). |
Mahmud |
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24 |
The Idiom Connection |
This website has a list of idioms organized both alphabetically and thematically. Some of the themes include food, money, clothes, body, business, and medicine. This thematic organization allows the teacher to find interesting idioms for a particular topic quickly. If learners would like to acquire the most common idioms, the list of 100 most frequently used English idioms would certainly be a helpful resource for them. For assessment purposes, the teacher can use quizzes (multiple-choice items) provided on the website. |
Mahmud |
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25 |
Learn English Today |
https://www.learn-english-today.com/idioms/idioms_proverbs.html |
It has a list of idioms organized in alphabetical order and thematically. However, the website does not offer assessment quizzes. |
Mahmud |
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26 |
Vocabulix |
This online tool is designed to help jumpstart students’ vocabulary skills, with more than 90 vocabulary lessons, and the option to create lessons of your own. |
Mahmud |
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27 |
Lexipedia |
Lexipedia is an online visual semantic network with dictionary and thesaurus reference functionality. |
Mahmud |
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28 |
VocabGrabber |
VocabGrabber analyzes any text you'reinterested in, generating lists of the most useful vocabulary words and showing you how those words are used in context. |
Mahmud |
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29 |
Snappywords |
It’s an online interactive English dictionary and thesaurus that helps you find the meanings of words and draw connections to associated words. You can easily see the meaning of each by simply placing the mouse cursor over it. |
Mahmud |
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30 |
Wordia |
Wordia is a free games-based learning platform - built on the foundations of a dictionary - that blends word-based learning games with interactive video vocabulary. |
Mahmud |
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31 |
Graphwords |
It’s a free English online thesaurus that helps you find the meanings of words and show connections among associated words. You can easily see the meaning of each by simply placing the mouse cursor over it. |
Mahmud |
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32 |
WordThink |
WordThink provides you with a daily reminder to use many of the words you already know, and add many new words to your vocabulary that you can actually use every day! |
Mahmud |
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33 |
Wordhippo |
Wordhippo is a great vocabulary web tool that lets you easily provide antonyms and synonyms to your words. |
Mahmud |
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34 |
Word Spy |
Explains new words and phrases with new entries added regularly, plus archives of previous entries. |
Mahmud |
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35 |
Vocubsushi |
Build your vocabulary with thousands of sentences from news articles and 8000 vocab words. The most fun you'll have learning vocabulary! |
Mahmud |
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| 36 |
IELTS Vocabulary Flashcards |
https://ielts.magoosh.com/flashcards/vocabulary/decks | Students can master the 600 most important IELTS words with free online flashcards from Magoosh website. | Dr. Wafa Saud |
Last Reviewed: 1/1/2019
Contributors: Dr. Munassir Alhamami and Mohammed Mahmudul Haque