Here are some good websites we recommend to our students when writing essays or doing written work in class. These sites help with the key skills of paraphrasing and summarising.

1.Cambridge Online Dictionary (English to English)

This dictionary provides in-depth explanations, key pronunciation and example sentences. At university level English learning it’s a good idea to use an English-to-English dictionary to check unknown words and improve your lexical repertoire (knowledge of words).

2.Longman Dictionary

This dictionary provides a lot of information on word forms: noun, adjective and verb (analysis/analyses, analyst, analytical, analyse). It highlights plural forms and acknowledges if the word is in the AWL (Academic Word List). It also includes pronunciation sounds and common collocations (do/carry out/conduct analysis).

3.Google Synonym Search3.Google Synonym Search

Use Google to search for key synonyms (similar words). This can be done through typing the word  ‘analysis’ followed by ‘syn’  ‘analysis syn’. This is the type of search you will receive:

4.Thesaurus Synonym Search

The www.thesaurus.com is a versatile website that offers a good range of synonyms (similar words). It divides the lists into two key groups of dark orange for most frequent/associated to light orange not so frequent/associated. Below is an example of a search with the word ‘analysis’.