This Is Teachit's Wonderful New Word Whiz; It Is More Flexible, Adaptable and Pedagogically

Word Whiz

Welcome to Teachit's wonderful new Word Whiz; it is more flexible, adaptable and pedagogically interesting than the early experiments with random regenerators. Students don't have direct access to the word-lists that underlie the activity (the temptation to include risqué material or obscenity is very high and can instantly wreck all the good things that will emerge – so this restriction is actually very useful). However, they do have control over the structure of the randomly generated texts, and they can copy and paste especially felicitous accidents of words into Word for later polishing.

The program offers users two screens – an input screen and an activity screen.

The input screen for 'Haikuwhiz'

It works like this:

In the input screen, the basic building blocks of the text (word classes, or any other verbal elements) are presented as tiles along the bottom of the screen.

Above the tiles there is a ruled workspace.

Users simply drag the tiles into position on the ruled lines, arranging them in any order that they feel is appropriate. When they are satisfied with the pattern, based on their sense of normal word order, they press the Whiz button.

This takes them to the activity screen and displays a random-generated text based on their pattern.

Result in activity screen

If they like a particular word, they can freeze it by clicking on it, and Whiz the rest again. Everything, except for the frozen words, will change.

If they are happy with the whole text they can press Copy.

This brilliant feature appends a plain-text copy of the text to the clipboard – every time Copy is pressed the current text is added to the clipboard, without deleting what's there. When at last you paste the text(s) into Word you can see the fruit of the entire session.

Sometimes the text doesn't quite 'work' because the tiles in the input screen have been arranged in an odd way (eg Noun Adjective could generate a French-sounding 'house big'). In this case one can click on Edit and return to the input screen – alter the word-order/tile-order and have another try. In other words, pupils are encouraged to experiment and play. This is crucial – you can only learn so much from definitions of word classes – very often pupils actually remain ignorant about their real functionality. Word Whiz, uniquely, allows you to play with the elements of language, make mistakes, correct them and in the process of attempting to teach the computer to compose poetry, discover how word classes really work.

Word Whiz enables a few other things too:

You can copy the word patterns as well as the texts that they generate
In the input screen you can colour tiles to emphasise a learning point (eg verbs and adverbs in yellow and orange, nouns and adjectives in green and blue). To add a colour, click on a tile to select it and then click on the colour you want.

Why use WordWhiz? Well, it's essentially an experimental space that delivers shots of laughter or delight. You can simply play with the application, attempting to teach the computer how to write a brilliant poem, It isn't intelligent – it doesn't know any rules. The rules and the patterns of words come from the users. They must do all the thinking. The computer provides the delicious reward – and if students get the patterns 'just right' it is immensely satisfying.

There are four basic approaches illustrated here:

Sentences, understanding of word classes and word order. An activity that simply generates funny sentences. The sugar-coating of humour disguises all the work pupils have to do to create viable sentences and workable word-order. The laugh motivates hours of experimentation.
Exploration of a poetic form. The Haiku Generator. Much more sophisticated, and not as daunting as it may at first appear. This activity shows the number of syllables in each word. You can arrange the words and count the syllables to achieve the classic 5 – 7 – 5 pattern of the haiku. The words were drawn from translations of oriental poetry (Chinese and Japanese) so the results can sometimes seems uncannily real!
Analysis of a language feature to identify its rules. The Compound Laboratory. Compound words are like compressed metaphors; the yoking of disparate concepts frequently leads to vigorous, sparky marriages. Compound words go right back in history to the origins of Anglo-Saxon, yet they seem absolutely contemporary when you find them in Ted Hughes. Shakespeare uses thousands of them. Dickens is very fond of them. They can be created for humorous purposes or constructed to add edge to satire. Each fresh compound word is like a mini-poem in itself. Compound words are peculiar – they can be pressed into service as any word class; they can be created from a combination of any word class. Or can they? The Compound Laboratory enables pupils (and teachers!) to explore what the hidden rules are. Try out combinations. Do they seem to work? Are there any patterns that are definitely 'out'? If you get inspired, research the use of compound words in poetry and prose! (Tip: This can be done by electronically searching a text for the hyphens, which picks up around 90% of compounds.)
Engaging with the language of Shakespeare. The Insult Generator. This is a bit of fun, extending the pedagogical potential of those ubiquitous Shakespeare insult generators. Here it's up to the user how many insulting adjectives to stack up in front of the noun.