Dave’s been asking us to make a word cloud of our recent blog content (click the link to see his challenge).
I did mine, which you can see below, using Wordle. The word questions is pretty big, which means it shows up frequently on the blog at the moment. What could this mean? (Actually it’s probably something to do with me mentioning questions a lot in this post)
Ok so I said analysis would come, and here it is!
Big words
‘Questions’ I’ve already tackled the whys and wherefores above; so to look at other words that Wordle has picked out as particularly high-frequency recently: ELT – well, directly work-related, also it’s conference season, so I’m probably using the acronym a fair deal; International and Language would also be related to work, but the capitalisation leads me to think that I’ve been using the terms mostly to write about the IELTS training course I’ve just done, hmm; ‘going’ is pretty big too. Am I going anywhere? Yes, actually: Istanbul for ISTEK next weekend, and then Brighton for IATEFL just a couple of weeks after. Hope to see some of you there =)
Number of words
Something I notice comparing my cloud to those that other bloggers have created is the distinctly smaller size of my cloud. Perhaps I’m not actually writing all that much. I usually pad out my posts with something visual, but haven’t ever done a mammoth 5,000-word-long monster of a post yet, so perhaps I don’t write so much. I would hope that the content is at least concise and coherent!
Range
Hmm, not very wide. Recent posts have focused on lesson ideas, so I guess trying to keep the instructions for the process parts of these posts simple accounts for me keeping my language relatively simple.
Shape
Completely random, true, but Fiona Mauchline mentioned on Twitter that my word cloud looks a little bit like a bull! Perhaps, subliminally there is something there about chasing down all this stuff that is happening at the moment!
So, analysis over, for now. Wonder if I’ll ever hit that 5,000 word post. Maybe next year, eh?
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Nice title
Thanks for contributing to the challenge and sharing your reflections Mike.
One question for you – any idea why the number three appears so prominently? I spotted that one as everyone else is commenting on the frequency with which they must have used ‘One’ for it to appear on their word clouds!
Do you know what, I have no idea!! I scoured the page for a bit but couldn’t find the word ‘three’ anywhere. I found it written as a number, so perhaps via the RSS feed Wordle picks it up as a word rather than a figure. I think it’s from the instructions I’ve given for activities (‘get students to work in pairs or groups of 3′)
Only explanation I can think of. Does it pick up comments as well, or just what’s in the post body, I wonder…
IMHO there’s no such thing as a teacher asking too many questions Mike
So I think questions should continue being the biggest word in your cloud!
See you in a couple of weeks!
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