Welcome to a new Visual Thesaurus feature for educators, the weekly worksheet! First up is a worksheet to help students explore the Latin root "bene." Click here to download, and check out our related lesson plan, "Rooting One's Way to Meaning," here.  Continue reading...

When I entered Edward R. Murrow High School after 22 years of teaching English and journalism at another Brooklyn high school, I entered a different world. No bells rang to begin and end periods. No hallway passes required; to go to the bathroom during class, students simply left the classroom without asking permission. In the hallways no adult ever asked, "Where do you belong?"

Where was I? In college?  Continue reading...

Okay, let's be honest. I'll go on record and say it. Some students are naturally more gifted at writing essays than others. Oftentimes these are the students to whom writing simply springs forth. It doesn't matter if it's narrative, persuasive, expository or descriptive, these students' paragraphs simply flow and their choice of words seems innate. These students naturally gravitate to the honors level classes, expanding their essays in ways that make teachers' eyes tear up with joy.  Continue reading...

Fitch O'Connell is a longtime teacher of English as a foreign language, working for the British Council in Portugual and other European countries. Here Fitch examines some of the most treacherous pitfalls of the English-language classroom: "false friends," or words that appear to share a common meaning across languages but are actually different.  Continue reading...

We recently heard from Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer about the "chunking" approach to English-language instruction, which focuses on teaching students how stretches of words ("lexical chunks") tend to fall together in high frequency. Brett Reynolds, a professor of academic English at Humber College in Toronto, has long been somewhat skeptical of chunking, and we asked him to offer a contrasting perspective on the value of the approach for language teaching.  Continue reading...

The past week or so, while I wrestled with trying to tackle another column on the five-paragraph essay, I found myself monitoring all those little things I say in class. So, as the school year begins to rev up into high gear, I thought maybe something more lighthearted would be fun.  Continue reading...