Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles from 2015
Have you encountered a transition counselor lately? I hope not. In the real world, a transition counselor is a diabolical euphemism for a profession made famous by George Clooney's character in Up in the Air: someone who fires people for a living. But in Matt Kindt's extraordinary conspiracy thriller Mind MGMT, the term has an even darker sense: assassin.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
Nothing's "Quixotic" About This School's Vocabulary Bowl Ambitions
If they can "dream the impossible dream," so can you!
This year's Vocabulary Bowl has just kicked off, and already one school has big dreams. A teacher celebrates his school's strong early showing with a video. We challenge you to watch it without smiling.
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Topics:
Vocabulary Bowl
Dept. of Word Lists
A Current-Events Mini Lesson: Trans-Pacific Trade
Teach Trans-Pacific Trade Using 10-Word Vocabulary List
Social studies teachers: For a current-events mini lesson on the historic Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, check out our 10-word Vocabulary List, drawn from five key sentences in the New York Times article announcing the agreement.
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Announcements
The 2015-16 Vocabulary Bowl Kicks Off!
Preseason is over. Let the yearlong word learning competition begin.
Teachers, administrators, and students, it's go time! Following the September "preseason," the second annual Vocabulary Bowl officially kicks off on October 1st, 2015 and will run through April 30, 2016. If you aren't signed up to play yet, this is a great time to get in on the action.
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I live in the heart of a small lexical explosion—Boulder, Colorado, home to about 100,000 people (of whom 30,000 are university students), and about two dozen retail marijuana dispensaries. The lexical explosion is in the marketing vocabulary of a product that until recently, despite its being universally known and widely used, was contraband.
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Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
You Say To-MAH-to: Everyday Shibboleths
Finding words whose use or pronunciation mark you as an outsider.
Some years ago, there was a series of stories in a magazine about dates that did not go well. In one of the stories, a woman met her date at a Mexican restaurant. When they ordered dinner, her companion asked for tortillas, but he pronounced the word "dor-dee-yas." Although he did not know it, the hapless gentleman's pronunciation proved to be a shibboleth that meant there would be no second date, and got me thinking about other encounters we may have with shibboleths in our personal experience.
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Teachers at WorkA column about teaching
Three Steps to Schoolwide Vocab Learning
How teacher Erin Vanek gets her colleagues hooked on Vocabulary.com.
If you're a teacher using Vocabulary.com, a great way to bump up your students' word learning is to take Vocabulary.com schoolwide. Class-to-class competition will create a word learning culture within your school, and your students' Words Mastered numbers will climb. Here's how one teacher made that happen within her school.
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Topics:
Vocabulary Bowl
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