Vocabulary-related links

Five links to online resources related to vocabulary development are below.  We have looked at all of these together in class:

- The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
- The Oxford Collocations Dictionary
- The Academic Word List Highlighter
- Google Fight
- Wordle

Graduate Diploma Week One : Suggested Sources for Reading Diaries

The Economist, Financial Times, and New Scientist websites are good sources of texts for students to use for reading diaries. Articles you might find interesting from the Economist website right now are:

• Hot spots and blind spots : The mounting human costs of Japan's nuclear disaster.
• Not just rubies and polyester shirts : an article about the Indian economy
• Now is the time - an article about "women and the Arab awakening"

And from New Scientist (which isn't just for scientists):

• Drowning a sea of misinformation - about problems that museums face
• Cops on trail of crimes that haven't happened - about some computer software designed to identify places where crimes might be committed

You could also visit the BBC, Guardian, Independent, or Telegraph websites for current news stories.  The Guardian, for example, has a story about how rents in Britain have become unaffordable for many families and a bizarre tale of a man who somehow managed to use a shark as a surfboard.

Reading lists from the university module directory are also a good indicator of the types of texts students need to deal with in their postgraduate studies.  For more general news from the University,Essex Quarterly is an interesting publication with short articles, primarily about research conducted at the university.