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Online tools

Search engines (accessing information)

Simple online search can be finetuned using various tools. If you are looking for a specific combination of words or even whole sentences, use quotation marks: “searching for phrases”.

Truncation (also known as wildcard searching) helps you find not only the term itself but also all its forms (endings and spellings). To trigger this type of search, use asterisk: e.g. bank*, will include all word forms derived from the basis ‘bank’: banking, banks, banked etc.

To specify your search further, you can use a combination of your keywords linked in a meaningful way, using words AND, OR, and NOT. These words are called Boolean operators.

As a general rule, the more words you connect with ‘and’, the fewer results you will obtain. In this way, using ‘and’ narrows your search.

Another frequently used operator works in the opposite way, broadening your search. It is the ‘or’ operator, which is used to include synonyms for keywords.

Finally, ‘not’ is used to exclude irrelevant items.

Task

Decide which of the search options is better.

1.
2.
3.

Online dictionaries

Each of the dictionaries listed below provides extensive information about words that users search. Focusing on English learners, they include ample examples of use, extra sample sentences (based on various corpuses, such as Cambridge Corpus, Collins Corpus), synonyms and antonyms, and word origin.

The two major monolingual dictionaries are the following:

Oxford Advanced Learner’shttps://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ Macmillan Dictionaryhttps://www.macmillandictionary.com/

Other online dictionaries also offer translations from English into various languages, and vice versa.

Cambridge Dictionaryhttps://dictionary.cambridge.org/ Collins Dictionaryhttps://www.collinsdictionary.com/

Besides indication of word frequency and pronunciation offered by most online dictionaries, Collins Dictionary also provides word trends, i.e. frequency of use through time; and equivalent terms in other languages.

Reverso Online Dictionaryhttps://dictionary.reverso.net/

This dictionary largely focuses on translation. Offering a variety of languages, the software displays various contexts in which a given term is used. Whole texts can thus be translated at once.

Text tools

There is a variety of online tools allowing an efficient and effective reading. This is a brief overview of the most common ones.

Snap&Read

Snap&Readhttps://learningtools.donjohnston.com/product/snap-read/#.VkKa-KJJ9QF

A toolkit allowing students to read, organize and annotate texts. Students can:

• adjust the readability of text without changing its meaning
• translate text into more than 100 languages on any webpage
• listen to text as it’s read aloud across websites, PDFs, and Google Drive (even text embedded in images or PDFs)
• gather information from various sources, organize, take notes; drag and drop text from their outline right into a Google Doc for use in writing
• discard distracting content and adjust fonts, spacing, and number of characters per line
• focus on text by masking the reading area with colour line guides
• annotate PDF files

Inspiration 10

Inspiration 10https://www.inspiration-at.com/

This software allows you to create concept maps, mind maps, diagrams, graphic organizers, outlines and presentations.

Rewordify

Rewordifyhttps://rewordify.com/

This programme simplifies difficult English, thus allowing students to comprehend faster.

Scrible

Scriblehttps://www.scrible.com/

The software allows you to:

• save webpages for later
• bookmark websites in the cloud
• store files in the cloud
• build your own library of articles
• organize your library with tags
• full-text search your library
• annotate articles in your browser
• make comments directly on webpages
• share annotated articles with others

Immersive reader

Immersive readerhttps://www.onenote.com/learningtools

This software helps you to boost your concentration and reading fluency by suppressing distractions.

Translation tools

Currently, there are these major translation engines:

Google translatorhttps://translate.google.com/ DeepLhttps://www.deepl.com/translator Bing translatorhttps://www.bing.com/translator Yandex translatorhttps://translate.yandex.com/ Reverso (language offer is limited)https://www.reverso.net/text-translation Lingueehttps://www.linguee.com/

This translation tool combines a dictionary with a search engine, so you can search for bilingual texts, words and expressions in different languages to check meanings and contextual translations. Linguee also searches the web for relevant translated documents and shows you how a word is being translated throughout the internet.

The Free Dictionaryhttps://www.thefreedictionary.com/

This is a dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopaedia in one, offering free access to medical, financial and legal dictionaries, as well as an extensive collection of idioms, acronyms, and quotes.