MED Magazine – Fun with words

MED Magazine - Issue 57 - April 2010

MED Web Watch
by Mairi MacDonald

Next in a series of short articles looking at web resources useful for teachers and learners of English. As a rough guide, each site is marked out of 25 in terms of content, design and ease-of-use.

Fun with words
www.funwithwords.com

At first glance, Fun with Words looks like some sort of online shop; books and games for sale and large banner ads for Disneyland Paris. Look closer and down the left hand side of the home page, though, and there's a list displaying a wide range of language topics such as oxymorons, etymology, spoonerisms, and my own personal favourite, Tom Swifties.

To find your way around the site, use the menu down the left hand side. The navigation is clear and consistent – each link takes you to a brief introduction, and the menu on the left expands into subsections. If you're looking for something specific, go to the site index, where there is an alphabetical list of the site’s contents. Alternatively the list of most popular pages on the home page is a good place to start – popular topics such as Ambiguous Headlines (part of the Ambiguities section) and The Devil's Dictionary are worth a look, but aren't immediately accessible from the home page menu. The content goes into great detail, beyond the knowledge of most native English speakers. For trivia lovers, there's a page on how you could score 1830 points in Scrabble^® in one move, and a section on words that can by typed using only the top row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard.

So, is this type of information relevant to learners? Although it is detailed, it never assumes you know what an anagram, for example, or even a pangram is. Each introduction is clear and helpful. Even better for teachers, there's a printer-friendly version of each page. Funny signs and Rebus puzzles (word picture puzzles) provide a fun visual resource. There are tongue twisters for pronunciation and an online version of Boggle™ and Hangman to play.

Above all, what makes this website work is the idea that English is fun, and the more you study it, the more fun it is. Once you adjust to the ads, there is a lot of sound material that would be an asset at any level. To be fair, when you think of the amount of free material on this site, we should expect to put up with a few adverts, and the book ads are relevant to the content.

So, lots of fun here and something new for native speakers and learners alike.

Score
current and archived content
up-to-dateness/topicality
graphic design and navigation
speed and technical performance
features and functionality
overall score	20 out of 25