Wordsmyth Blog

Author: Wordsmyth

  • Introducing the Wordsmyth Word Explorer Children’s Dictionary Suite

    At Wordsmyth.net, we are dedicated to empowering young learners with tools that enhance their understanding of language and the world around them. Our latest addition, the Elementary Children’s Dictionary, has transformed our original Children’s Dictionary into a comprehensive leveled suite designed for students from elementary school through middle school. This blog post introduces the suite and highlights its features, benefits, and educational value.

    What is the Wordsmyth Children’s Dictionary Suite?

    The Wordsmyth Children’s Dictionary Suite is a multi-level dictionary system tailored to meet the needs of learners across different age groups and grade levels. It provides a seamless experience for children to explore words at a level appropriate to their vocabulary skills while offering flexibility to move between levels for deeper understanding.

    Here’s an overview of the suite:

    • Elementary Children’s Dictionary: Ideal for grades 3-5, this newly released dictionary features simple, full-sentence, explanatory definitions; child-friendly example sentences; vibrant illustrations; and photos.
    • Intermediate Children’s Dictionary: Perfect for grades 6-8, this dictionary includes over 35,000 entries covering essential vocabulary across subjects like science, social studies, emotions, and everyday life.
    • If a word is not found in these dictionaries, learners can access entries from the Wordsmyth Advanced Dictionary, which contains over 100,000 entries, and which are filtered for age appropriateness using a parental control feature.

    Key Features of the Elementary Children’s Dictionary

    The newly released Elementary Children’s Dictionary is a key addition to Wordsmyth’s leveled dictionaries. Specifically designed for students in grades 3 to 5, it becomes the elementary level of the Word Explorer Children’s Dictionary Suite. Below are its standout features:

    1. Simple, Full-Sentence Definitions
      Word meanings are explained to children using clear, full sentences that are easy for children to understand, making it ideal for learning both basic and academic vocabulary.
    2. Child-Friendly Example Sentences
      Each definition in an entry includes examples that put the vocabulary word in contexts that children can relate to, reinforcing meaning and helping young learners grasp usage effectively.
    3. Visual Enhancements 
      Entries feature engaging illustrations and/or photos to support comprehension and keep students visually engaged.
    4. Support for Multiple Meanings
      The dictionary provides explanations for each of the fundamental meanings of headwords, ensuring comprehensive understanding of words with a wide range of senses.
    5. Integrated Learning Across Levels 
      Students can seamlessly navigate between the Elementary and Intermediate levels within the dictionary suite to explore definitions that match their learning needs.
    6. Word Explorer Feature
      A unique tool that allows children to discover words associated with specific topics (e.g., “art,” “technology,” “culture”) through keyword-based exploration, fostering curiosity and knowledge expansion.

    This dictionary is an invaluable resource for elementary school students, combining readability, visual support, and interactive features to enhance vocabulary learning.

    Benefits of the Multi-Level Dictionary System for Different Grade Levels

    The leveled approach of the Wordsmyth Children’s Dictionary Suite ensures that every child can learn at their own pace while having access to content that grows with them. Whether one is an educator looking for classroom tools or a parent seeking resources for one’s child’s development, Wordsmyth provides an unparalleled experience in vocabulary learning.

    The Wordsmyth Children’s Dictionary Suite, with its multi-level design, offers a range of benefits that cater to the diverse needs of students across different grade levels. Here’s how this system supports learners at various stages:

    1. Tailored Learning for Different Age Groups

    The suite provides dictionaries designed specifically for distinct grade levels:

    • Elementary Children’s Dictionary: For grades 3-5, offering highly comprehensible and relatable definitions and examples for both basic and academic words.
    • Intermediate Children’s Dictionary: For grades 6-8, offering more advanced vocabulary and greater comprehensiveness within entries.
    • Advanced Dictionary: providing a hidden level of support for the vocabulary needs and interests of more advanced readers.

    This ensures that each student engages with content that matches their developmental stage, reading ability, and curiosity.

    2. Seamless Transition Between Levels

    Students can move between dictionary levels as their vocabulary grows, or when they encounter words at at a different level of complexity in their reading. For example:

    • Just as a younger student using our K-2 dictionary, WILD, can explore definitions in the Elementary level of the suite if WILD doesn’t provide enough depth, a student using the Elementary level of the Children’s Suite can look to the Intermediate level of the suite for additional support.
    • Older students can refer back to simpler definitions when encountering challenging concepts in the Intermediate level.

    3. Inclusivity for learners at all levels of ability

    The multi-level system accommodates students with varying abilities within the same classroom or age group. For instance:

    •   Advanced learners in lower grades can explore higher-level dictionaries.
    •   Struggling learners in higher grades can access simpler definitions without feeling excluded.

    4. Encouragement of Independent Exploration

    The leveled approach allows students to independently explore words at their own pace, fostering curiosity and confidence. Younger learners can enjoy the extra support of visual aids and audio pronunciations, while older students can delve into more detailed explanations and examples.

    5. Support for Cross-Curricular Learning

    The suite includes general academic vocabulary from across all areas as well as more specific vocabulary used in areas such as science, social studies, language arts, and everyday life. This helps students across grade levels build subject-specific language skills while reinforcing general literacy.

    6. Motivation Through Progress Tracking

    As students find themselves advancing through dictionary levels, they gain a sense of accomplishment by knowing they are mastering increasingly complex vocabulary. This gradual progression motivates continued learning.

    7. A Resource for Diverse Classrooms

    In classrooms with mixed-grade or mixed-ability students, the multi-level system provides a unified tool that meets individual needs without requiring separate resources for each learner.

    By providing age-appropriate content and fostering flexibility and inclusivity, the Wordsmyth multi-level dictionary system ensures that every student has access to meaningful language learning experiences tailored to their unique needs and abilities.

  • New Customization Feature in WILD: Display Only What You Need!

    New Customization Feature in WILD: Display Only What You Need!

    We’re excited to introduce a new customization option in the Wordsmyth Illustrated Learner’s Dictionary (WILD), designed to make learning even more adaptable for young learners, teachers, and parents!

    What’s New?

    Now you have the power to choose which dictionary fields to display or hide within WILD. With a simple selection process in the settings, you can tailor the learning experience to best fit your students’ or children’s needs.

    Fields You Can Show or Hide:

    ✅ Syllabify Headword – Break down words into syllables for easier reading.
    ✅ Text Pronunciation – Display phonetic text to help with pronunciation.
    ✅ Part of Speech – Identify whether a word is a noun, verb, adjective, etc.
    ✅ Word Form – Show different forms of a word when applicable.
    ✅ Examples – Include example sentences for context.
    ✅ Images – Display visual representations of words.
    ✅ Spanish Translation – Provide Spanish-language support.
    ✅ Chinese Translation – Provide Chinese-language support.

    Why This Matters

    WILD is already a rich, interactive, and engaging dictionary for young learners in Kindergarten to 2nd grade. This new feature empowers educators and parents to customize the learning experience, ensuring that students get exactly the level of support they need—whether focusing on vocabulary development, pronunciation, or multilingual learning.

    Unlock the Full WILD Experience

    While WILD offers free access to looking up words, a Wordsmyth subscription unlocks even more tools to enhance vocabulary learning. Subscribing gives you full access to World, Collections, interactive activities, and additional customization options that make learning even more effective and engaging.

    How to Use It

    1. Click on the Settings icon on the footer in WILD.
    2. Check or uncheck the fields you want to display or hide.
    3. Enjoy a personalized, distraction-free learning experience!

    At Wordsmyth, we’re always working to enhance our tools to better support young learners. We hope this update makes WILD even more useful in your classroom or at home!

    Try it out today and let us know what you think!

  • Grammar Glossary: Further discussion of ASPECT, with special focus on the Present Perfect

    Grammar Glossary: Further discussion of ASPECT, with special focus on the Present Perfect

    This article expands on an earlier post that dealt with the notion of “aspect.”  This post goes further in discussing the difference between the three aspects (simple, progressive, and perfect) and focuses particularly on the perfect aspect and use of the present perfect verb form.

    The Simple Aspect

    The simple aspect is often concerned with what feels like an unchanging or inactive state (“I live in this brown house”; “I know her”; “We always had a dog”) or with actions that repeat in an unlimited sort of way in the present, past, or future (“I usually get up at seven”; “We always went to the beach in the summers”).  Alternatively, the simple aspect often looks at an action as a single complete package happening at one specific point in time (“I sent her a text this morning”; “We left around eight”; “Here comes Durant now…he shoots…he scores!”). 

    The Progressive Aspect   

    Use of the progressive aspect signals that the action of the verb has some duration and is ongoing, either at the time of speaking or at some other point in time. The action is viewed from a point between its beginning and its end.  The progressive aspect is concerned with change.  It demonstrates an awareness or acceptance that an action or situation has its limits in time  (“We’re working in the other office while the construction is going on”; “They’re having a big sale this week”).  The action may be happening now (“I’m writing”), but this currently ongoing action is seen as something that will come to an end at some point. Another action may have been happening at two o’clock in the morning (“I was sleeping”), but it was going to come to an end at some point. The progressive is also concerned with newness, some change from what was before (“I got a new job, and I’m making more money now.”).  

    The Perfect Aspect

    The perfect aspect is another thing altogether.  The perfect aspect allows the speaker to refer to an action or state that occurred earlier in time without moving the time focus away from the one that is currently set.

    So what does that mean?  

    First, it must be said that marking of time is extremely important in spoken and written English.  We mark the time of an action by use of time expressions such as “yesterday,” “now,” “Friday” and “tomorrow,” and we also mark time by our choice of tense (past or present) in the verb.  

    It could be said that the present is our default point in time when we speak.  We don’t feel a great need to mark the present time except with the use of one of the present tense forms.  We can say “I have a headache” without generally feeling the need to say “I have a headache now” or I have a headache at present.” Just using the present tense “have” is enough to say that we’re talking about the present.  The time indicator would only be said for emphasis and contrast, i.e., “I didn’t have a headache before, but I have one now.”  With the present progressive form, it’s fairly common to add a time reference, such as  “now” or “nowadays,” but only when we wish to emphasize, for example, the newness of an action (“I’m taking a course in French now”) or the possibility of change in the future (“Women are wearing their skirts longer these days”).  

    Again, besides these exceptions used for emphasis, it’s typically unnecessary to indicate time in the present beyond the use of a present tense form.  In general, If we wish to move the time focus away from the present, then we usually feel the need to put in a special time expression to signal that fact, in addition to changing the verb tense.  In other words, if we are switching our focus to the past (and away from the default), we not only use the past tense, we use a time expression like “yesterday,” or “two years ago,” or “this morning.”  In fact, it’s somewhat rare to just start talking about an action in the past without putting in such a time expression or without having the time of the action already indicated by some other means.  Using a time expression like this is like putting in a flag that says “We’re here now in the past. This is the time I want to talk about. This is the new default.”  Once the time flag has been planted, so to speak, we no longer need to keep marking the time in this way for things that happen within this new time frame–we just simply continue to use the past tense. The past time is now the default time.

    Similarly, when we want to move our time focus to the future, we not only use a device like “be going to” or “will” with the verb, we usually add a time expression like “tomorrow” or “next Friday”-–a sort of “We’re-in-the-future-now” flag.  

    All of this discussion about flags is to try to explain that the perfect aspect is used when we want to mention something that happened or began BEFORE the established time focus, and yet we don’t want to move our focus away from that marked point in time.  We want to stay focused there. This is most easily seen with what is typically called the past perfect form.  If we say “I didn’t play in the game yesterday because I had injured my ankle,” the time flag is set at the time that the game was played–yesterday–and the injury occurred sometime before that set time. It’s sort of like it occurred in the past of the past.  This particular sports discussion will probably continue to be focused on the things that happened in the game “yesterday,” and the simple past form will continue to be used until another flag is planted: maybe something like, “When did you injure your ankle?” (moving the flag even further into the past)  OR  “How is your ankle now?  Does it still hurt?” (moving the flag back to the present).

    Simple Past form  vs. Present Perfect form

    One of the trickiest things for English language learners, with regard to the use of tense and aspect, is understanding the difference between use of the simple past form and use of the present perfect form.  It’s not so confusing when we’re talking about something that began in the past and continues right up to or into the present time, as in “I have lived in this city all my life.”  But it is more difficult to understand why we might say “He has left” instead of “He left.”  Or “I’ve stayed in that hotel many times” instead of “I stayed in that hotel many times.”   All of these sentences refer to actions occurring and completed in the PAST.  Why would we ever use a so-called PRESENT tense?

    Well, to be perfectly honest, some English speakers don’t use the present perfect when an action occurs completely within the past.  They understand the meaning when someone uses the present perfect but they don’t make the distinction themselves.  Some English speakers make the distinction but don’t make it consistently for this type of meaning.  Most English speakers will use the present perfect when the meaning is of the type discussed earlier; that is, they will say “I have lived here all my life” when they are still living in a place.  They use the present perfect consistently for this type of meaning because changing to the simple past (“I lived here all my life”) carries the meaning that they don’t live here anymore.  This is an important distinction for most people, obviously.  Some English speakers will omit the auxiliary verb “have” but switch to the perfect progressive for this meaning:  “I been living here all my life.”  This usage, even though it omits the auxiliary, still constitutes use of the perfect aspect.

    For many speakers, however, the distinction between the simple past and the present perfect is an important one for all meanings, and it relates to the flag discussion above.  Using the present perfect allows the speaker to refer to an event (or series of events) that took place in the past without changing the time frame to the past.  In other words, it doesn’t move the flag. It sort of says:  “This thing happened at some point before now, but I’m still talking about things in the present.  My focus of attention remains in the present.  I’m not really talking about the past right now.”   Let’s say that a person, currently in the United States, makes the statement “I have been to Italy three times.”  Using the present perfect allows this person to stay in the present and say things like “I really love Italy, and the food is wonderful.  I don’t speak Italian well, but I do try to study it sometimes.”  On the other hand, they can use their initial statement as an introduction to the topic of their experiences in Italy and now put in a time marker to switch the time focus to the past:  “The first time I went was ten years ago.  It was fantastic.  I spent two weeks in Rome and then we traveled all over.”  Now notice how the verbs all change to simple past now that the “flag” has been moved.

    Use of the present perfect where the meaning refers to an action or state that began in the past but continues into or right up to the present is quite consistent on the part of English speakers.  There is more variation in the use of the present perfect when it refers to completed actions or states in the past.  Yet the distinction described above in the use of the simple past versus the present perfect still remains strong, especially in writing, and serves a useful purpose in discourse.

  • Grammar glossary: modifier

    The word “modifier” is derived from the verb “modify.”  In grammar, when a word “modifies” another word, it adds to its meaning so that it becomes clearer and more fully-described–a dog is not just a dog, for example, it’s a small, white, fluffy dog.  A pepper isn’t just spicy; it’s incredibly spicy.

    A “modifier” is a word that refines or adds information or description to the meaning of another word, phrase, or sentence.  The most typical modifiers are adjectives and adverbs.  Adjectives describe nouns (“soft fur”; “excellent progress”).  Adverbs describe adjectives (“extremely hot”; “very disappointing”) or verbs (“walked quickly”; “immediately refused”).  Adverbs also modify phases (“completely in the dark”) and whole statements (“Unfortunately, we can’t go on vacation this year”).  Nouns can often be used as modifiers of other nouns “(laboratory tests”; “cancer research”).  Present and past participles of verbs are often used as modifiers too (“He arrived at my door, breathing hard and sweating”;  “She finally returned my bowl, chipped in two places”), and sometimes participles become considered adjective modifiers in their own right (“a boring lecture”; “a broken promise”).

    Prepositional phrases can be modifiers too.  If we say “the man in the blue shirt,” the prepositional phrase “in the blue shirt” makes it clear which man we’re talking about. Similarly, relative clauses are modifiers too.  If we say “the neighbor who lives upstairs,” the relative clause tells us which neighbor we are referring to–the one who lives upstairs.  Because of the modifying function of relative clauses, they are also called “adjectival clauses.”  They can be used to make clear which person or thing in the world we are talking about, as in the example just given, or they can be used to simply insert more information about a person or thing (“The singer, who really wasn’t a soprano, attempted to sing the high notes”;  “The cheese, which had been sitting at the very back of the refrigerator, had gone bad”).

  • Grammar glossary: mood

    “Mood” is a grammatical concept that is connected with verbs and statements. In English, there are five so-called moods:  indicative, subjunctive, imperative, interrogative, and conditional.  Grammatical mood is something that indicates a certain perspective on what is being said.  It has to do with things like what is considered to be real, what one desires or recommends to become real, what would be real under a particular condition, or what one knows to be purely hypothetical or impossible.  For example, verbs in the indicative mood express what is considered reality (“I listened to the song twice,” “She’s going to stop at the store on her way back.”) The indicative mood could be described as the ordinary, everyday mood expressed in most statements.  

    Statements in the imperative mood (e.g., “Sit here, please.” “Stop that!”) indicate that what is being said is a request; that is, a request made by the speaker to the listener or listeners.  Typically, statements in the imperative mood simply imply that the subject of the verb is “you,” but occasionally, the “you” is supplied in the statement:  “You get out of here right now!” “You leave me alone!”  Verbs in the imperative mood use a form identical to the infinitive without the word “to.”

    The conditional mood is created by the use of “would” or other modal auxiliary preceding the verb–the verb itself does not have a special form to show conditional as it often does in other languages. A typical conditional clause is in the form of “If I were you, I would tell him the truth.”  The conditional mood conveys what would, could, will, or might be the case under a certain condition, e.g., “If we left now, we could get to the station just in time.”

    The interrogative mood indicates that we are asking a question.  It is created by simple subject-verb inversion (“Are you ready?”) or by employment of an auxiliary verb before the subject while keeping the main verb following the subject (“Do you think so?”  “Have they left yet?”  “Is she sleeping?”). Nowadays, we really only invert a subject and main verb when the main verb is “be” or, less often, the verb “have” (“Have you any idea what you’ve done?”). It was more common in previous centuries with verbs other than “be” or “have.” In Shakepeare’s time, one might ask:  “Goest thou to the town?”  “Thought he to frighten us?” “Stay you here for the night?

    Verbs in the subjunctive mood indicate that the action or condition it describes is hypothetical.  It is perhaps proposed or recommended but not currently real or certain, or it may be counter to reality altogether (e.g., “If I were you…”). For a more detailed summary of the subjunctive mood, please see SUBJUNCTIVE in this glossary.

  • Grammar glossary: ASPECT–simple, progressive, and perfect

    Grammar glossary: ASPECT–simple, progressive, and perfect

    Most people are familiar with the notion of tense in grammar.  We know that the difference, for example, between “I go” and “I went” is one of tense: “I go” is an example of the present tense and “I went” is an example of the past tense.  But what is the difference between “I go” and “I’m going”? Or between “I went” and “I had gone”?  The difference between these is not one of tense but of aspect. In English, there are three aspects:  simple, progressive, and perfect.  (“Progressive” is sometimes called “continuous.”)

    Forms for the “simple” aspect are, in fact, the most simple.  They consist of a single word, whereas forms for the progressive and perfect aspects consist of an auxiliary verb (“be” or “have”) plus either the “-ing” form of the verb (for the progressive) or the past participle form (for the perfect). 

    Simple Aspect : Composed of a verb as a single word 

    They walk to school most days.
    He worked late last night.
    The people next door bought a new car.
    I will ask her.

    Progressive Aspect : Composed of the auxiliary verb “be” + “-ing” form of the verb

    She is sleeping.
    I was working.
    They will be arriving at noon.

    Perfect Aspect: Composed of the auxiliary verb “have” + past participle of the verb

    I have been there twice.
    He had forgotten about the appointment.
    Next month, they will have been married for twenty years.

    It should be noted here that future time in English is most often expressed by placement of the modal auxiliary “will” or the phrase “be going to” before the verb. However, use of one of these or any other expression of futurity with the verb does not have an effect on the aspect of the verb. Constructions such as “will go” or “am going to go” are considered to be using the simple aspect of the verb, for example. The verbs seen in such sentences as “We will be expecting you” and “We’re going to be meeting at two o’clock on Friday” are considered examples of the progressive aspect. And the verbs in “They will have arrived back in Chicago by Tuesday” and “They’re going to have learned a lot by the end of the semester” are considered to be using the perfect aspect.

    Difference between the aspects

    Simple aspect

    The simple aspect often shows that the action of the verb takes place repeatedly (“I get up around 6:00”; “He works as a plumber”; “We always took the bus to school back then”; “They usually played tennis on Sundays”). When we say something like “They sell good coffee” or “They sold good coffee,” we refer to repeated acts of selling over time. However, the simple aspect can also be used to describe a single completed action that is considered to occur at a single point in time (“I left around noon”; “They moved in last week”; “I will call you when I get there”).  The simple aspect is also typically used when the verb doesn’t describe any action at all but rather a condition, state of being, or opinion.

    She likes her art class.
    He wants to leave now.
    They seem tired.
    I know she works there.
    They have a swimming pool.

    Progressive aspect

    The progressive aspect is used to talk about an action that is ongoing at a certain point in time.  The action might have just begun or might be ending soon, but most importantly, it is viewed from some point between the beginning and the ending.  We often associate the progressive form with actions that are happening right now in the present, but it is the ongoing nature of the action that is really most important, because the action could be ongoing in the past or in the future:  “At six o’clock last night, we were having dinner,” “When they get here, I’ll probably still be cleaning.”

    Perfect aspect

    The perfect aspect is a little more complicated to explain in brief terms.  The perfect form is used to show that a single action or state occurred at some point before some other action or point in time. (“She had already left when I tried to call her at home.”  “The party will already have started by the time we get there.”)   It is also used when we view an action or condition as extending over a period of time and continuing up to and into a different phase or point in time.  For example, when you use the present perfect form and say “I have lived here for five years,” you are speaking about an action that began in the past but extends up to and into the present. However, if you just moved out of your apartment, you’d probably feel forced to switch to the simple past form, i.e.,  “I lived in that apartment for five years.” This would communicate for certain that you don’t live there anymore.  You feel that it is finished.  But if you still live in this apartment (or feel like you do still) and you want to talk about those five years before this point, your only grammatical choice is the present perfect.  In some languages, you might use something like the present progressive form: ”I’m living here for five years,” but this usage is not generally acceptable in English.  Neither is “I live here for five years,” which seems even more unacceptable.  The present perfect allows you to talk about something that has been happening mostly in the past but isn’t or doesn’t feel finished in the present.

    It has to be noted that tense is always combined with aspect in a verb phrase, and these combined notions are commonly referred to as “tenses,” e.g., “simple present tense,” “present perfect tense,” “past progressive tense,”  ”simple past tense,”  “past perfect tense.”  Furthermore, the progressive aspect sometimes combines with the perfect aspect so that we have constructions like “I had been sleeping” and “they have been waiting.”  Some grammarians consider these constructions examples of a fourth aspect, which they call the “perfect progressive.”  On the other hand, some grammarians consider English to have only two aspects:  progressive and perfect.  These linguists don’t use the word “aspect” to refer to verbs in their simple forms. Whether “simple” is actually a formal aspect or not, it is nonetheless important to contrast that notion with the notions of “progressive” and “perfect.”  Obviously, aspect is a rather complicated grammatical concept, which is only given a brief introduction here.

    Read more…
    Grammar Glossary: Further discussion of ASPECT, with special focus on the Present Perfect

  • Sorting your lists on the Wordsmyth site

    Sorting your lists on the Wordsmyth site

    When you select words for your wordlist in the customization process, you may want to sort the list to help with your selection. (To learn more about wordlist maker, please check out the Wordlist Maker User Guide.)

    1. Click anywhere on the head of the list to open the sorting option:

    2. Click the upward or downward triangle to sort the list by ascending or descending, respectively. “Ascending” means counting up for numbers (1,2,3…) and starting from A and moving down toward Z for letters. “Descending” means the opposite sequence. Click “apply” when you are satisfied with your sorting options.

    3. You can sort multiple columns in your table at the same time. The order of sorting priority will be marked by the number inside the triangle. For example, if you set the level for “WVI” (Wordsmyth Vocabulary Inventory) as the first sorting priority and “Word” as the second, you will get all words sorted by WVI level from high to low. And within the same WVI levels, words you will get words sorted alphabetically.

    Please note, the same sorting function is also applied to other lists on the Wordsmyth site–for example, in Teacher Tools, you can sort your lists of students, classes, lessons, and assignments using the method above.

  • Wordsmyth for Educators: Parts of Speech

    Wordsmyth for Educators: Parts of Speech

    Explaining parts of speech for young children

    The Wordsmyth Illustrated Learner’s Dictionary (WILD) is adding a new collection–Parts of Speech–to its Language collections. With fully animated explanations, now you can help your students get a clear and basic understanding of concepts such as noun, adjective, verb, or adverb. Here is a quick peek:

    The full Parts of Speech collection will be available in WILD this summer. Watch for it in the Collections under the Language category. While waiting, subscribe and check out the amazing features already in WILD such as the following:

    And so much more…

    Helping older children understand part-of-speech concepts as well as how to use a dictionary

    The Wordsmyth Children’s Dictionary, designed for upper elementary students, offers simply-written but slightly expanded definitions of the different parts of speech, which can be accessed by clicking on the part of speech labels that are listed for any particular word in the dictionary—the word “plant” for example, has various definitions for “plant” as a noun and “plant” as a verb.  Clicking on the Part of Speech label for “noun” or the Part of Speech label for “verb” will bring up animated explanations of these concepts.  Understanding of the parts of speech, besides being important for language and academic development generally, is important for understanding how a dictionary functions, as they are key to the way dictionaries organize and present information about a word.  As words tend to have multiple meanings, understanding the parts of speech will help children locate the particular sense of the word they are looking for when they use a dictionary by themselves.

    And now, for your convenience, we’ve gathered all the explanations of Parts of Speech contained in the Children’s Dictionary into one post in our blog!  It’s called “Parts of speech explained for grades 3 to 6,” and it’s there to support you in your teaching of these important concepts.

    Advanced support for teaching ESL students and older students the parts of speech and related concepts

    A unique feature called Grammatical Patterns in the Advanced level of the Comprehensive Dictionary provides even more support for ESL students and teachers.  In addition to offering a guide to verb constructions in English, the feature offers a glossary of grammatical terms, which are explained in quite simple language but go into a fair amount of detail in order to answer often-ignored questions about parts of speech and other fundamental grammatical concepts (such as “clause,” “phrase,” “direct object,” “participle,” “gerund,” etc.). These are truly a must-read for teachers!  Click here for a look in our blog to see how the grammatical patterns feature explains the parts of speech. We also hope you will look at the additional comprehensive offerings we have in the Grammatical Patterns Glossary. We’re sure you will enjoy exploring all the topics!

  • Grammar Glossary: the definite and indefinite articles

    In English, there are two little words whose part of speech is called “article.”  These are the words “a” and “the.”  (“An” is an alternate form of “a” that occurs before a word that begins with a vowel sound.  It is not a different word from “a.”)  Although there are only two articles in English, they are very different in the way they function and what they signify.  One of the articles is called the “indefinite article” (“a”) and the other is called the “definite article” (“the”).  The function of these two different articles will be discussed separately below.

    Indefinite article

    The indefinite article, “a,” is used before a noun (or a phrase functioning as a noun) to indicate that one is talking about one thing or person out of a particular category.  When we say “a cat,” the word “cat” is the category of thing we are talking about, and the word “a” says that we are referring to just one of that category, one of all the cats in the world.  The word “cat,” by itself, refers to a category of thing.  Putting the word “a” in front of it just narrows the category to one individual, but not to any particular individual.  In this way, the word “a” can have the same meaning as “any.”  If someone asks you to “pick a card,” it is the same as asking you to pick any card.  It doesn’t matter which card you pick.  “A card” doesn’t specify any particular card, so you could pick the one in the middle, for example, or the one on the end, or that other one over there….

    It’s tempting to say that the indefinite article is used only when there is no particular item in mind when speaking, but that is not always the case.  In fact, we often use it when we do have a particular item in mind.  For example, if you say to someone “We adopted a cat yesterday,” you are certainly thinking of the particular cat that you adopted–the gray one with the green eyes and injured ear, for example.  The one that is hiding under your bed.  Here, the item is particular, but it is particular only to you, the speaker.  For your listener, the information that you adopted an item in the category of “cat” is new and therefore the cat is just one within the category of cats and not specific.  Choice of the indefinite article, in these cases, reflects the awareness of the speaker that the exact item being referred to is not known or not clearly identifiable by the listener.

    Use of the indefinite article places something in a conversation or text so that it can be talked about afterwards with both speaker and listener knowing the exact identity of it.  However, we use “a” even when we first identify something to ourselves:  “What’s that on the floor?  Let me see….  Oh, it’s just a piece of dust.”

    Many languages do not have an equivalent for the word “a,” but, in English, using the word “a” before a noun changes one’s meaning from simply mentioning a category of things (“cat”) to mentioning an actual member of the category.  In a certain sense, the article brings that thing into existence.  English really has little use for singular, countable nouns with no article in front of them.  If someone says “I have cat,” the actual meaning is not really something English speakers can process: “You have the category cat? What do you mean?”  Of course, we make allowances for non-native speakers’ usage, but when we process the sentence, we convert “cat” to “a cat”:  “Oh, you have a cat!”

    Definite article

    The definite article, “the,” is used before a noun (or a phrase that functions as a noun) when both speaker and listener know exactly which thing or person in the world the speaker is talking about. For example, a speaker usually feels free to talk about “the sun,” because he or she has confidence that the listener knows which sun of all the suns in the universe the speaker is talking about, i.e., our sun, the one the earth revolves around.  If there is only one hospital in town, the speaker can feel free to call it “the hospital” because he or she can trust that the listener knows which hospital they are referring to.  But let’s say you, the speaker, tell your friend that you adopted the cat yesterday.  If your friend knows you were planning to adopt a particular cat, then using “the” would be appropriate.  The friend might say, “Oh, great. Have you decided a name for her yet?”  But let’s say the friend didn’t know of your plan to adopt a cat, the friend would probably respond with “What cat??  You never told me you were going to adopt a cat!”

    “The” is called the “definite article,” but why is it called  “definite”?  It’s because it refers to things that are fully defined; i.e, things that are unquestioned as to their identity.  As mentioned above, if both people know the same thing, they can use “the” to talk about it:  A husband of a couple might ask his wife, “Did you go to the bank yesterday?” She will not be confused about which bank it is.  But something can become definite in other ways as well.  In speech, things can become definite very quickly.  Once something is entered into a conversation, it can become definite to the listening person even if the listener has no real experience or knowledge of that thing or person.  For example, let’s say you tell your friend that “a strange man got on the bus yesterday.”  At this point the man is indefinite because he is just being introduced into the conversation. His existence is just now being established.  But in the next sentence the man becomes definite when you say “The man was wearing a very tall hat.”  Why is he suddenly “the man”?  The man is definite now because he was introduced to the listener with the first sentence, and now he is “the man” to the listener because he is “the man that my friend says got on the bus.”  Again, the listener doesn’t have to know much at all about this man and doesn’t have to actually know who he is.  It’s enough that the listener knows that the speaker has introduced him into the conversation, so now he has a spot there.  He is identifiable.  He is definite.

    It must be admitted that sometimes speakers go through an intermediate stage between using “a” and moving on to “the.”  Sometimes the speaker feels the need to point at the thing that he or she introduced to make sure the listener knows what is being talked about.  The speaker might say “this man,” for example, before switching to “the man.” (This strategy is used especially in writing.)  One thing is clear: “the” is used when the speaker feels no need to point at or further identify the thing or person that he or she is talking about.

    The explanation of the articles given here is necessarily simplified.  There are exceptions and special uses for “a” and “the,” that are not addressed here.  But this explanation hopes to make clear the essence of the difference between these two very important items.

  • Grammar Glossary: verb

    A verb is generally described as a word that represents an action.  In many cases, verbs do indicate actions; words like “jump,” “fly,” “walk,” “scream,” “flirt,” and “stomp” are verbs.  However, some verbs contain no action at all in their meaning.  Verbs like “seem” “be,” and “believe” do not involve any movement or activity at all.  A better test of whether something is a verb or not is whether it can change its form to show that it agrees with a grammatical subject (e.g., I wonder,  she wonders; They are here, He is here; We help, he helps) and/or whether it can shift to show present or past time (e.g., He forgets, He forgot; We walk every day, We walked this morning).  A word that we call a verb in English must be able to change its form to show person (first person singular, third person singular, etc.) and time.*

    Another feature of verbs is that they can combine with “not,” or with auxiliary forms plus “not,” to create negative statements.

    I am tired!I am not tired!/ I’m not tired.
    I like cheese.I do not like cheese./I don’t like cheese.
    He runs every day.He does not run every day./He doesn’t run every day.

    Verbs also play a crucial part in sentences, as each sentence is composed of a subject element and a verb element.  The verb element always shows non-past or past time.

    SUBJECTVERB 
    Theyleft.
    Iknow.
    Sheis sleeping.
    Heforgotto return the book.
    The manborroweda lot of money.
    The neighborshave beenaway for three weeks.
    Iwas havinga wonderful dream.

    Modal auxiliaries (“can,” “must,” “will,” “may,” etc.) are sometimes called  “verbs” (i.e., “modal auxiliary verbs”) even though they do not change form. This is because, historically, they were more like ordinary verbs with past and non-past forms, and because they currently operate like ordinary auxiliary verbs in sentences (e.g., “I did go,” “I might go,” “I will go”). Furthermore, a sentence composed of just a subject and modal auxiliary is considered a full grammatical sentence just as the sentences above are.

    SUBJECTVERB
    Ican.
    Shemight.
    Theymust.

    Whether or not modal auxiliaries are technically verbs, they do function as major sentence elements the way that ordinary verbs and auxiliary verbs do.

    *Some “irregular verbs” do not have a past tense form that looks different from the present tense form (e.g., “quit,” “put”), but every verb has a form with “s” that is used for the third person singular (e.g., “he works,” “she works,” “it works”) in standard English.