Visuwords is a combination dictionary and thesaurus that gives you a visual “cluster” of meanings and synonyms for a word.  It’s similar to the well-known Visual Thesaurus, but one major difference is that Visuwords is free.

It doesn’t provide the words in the context of a sentence, but it can nevertheless be a helpful tool to English Language Learners.  Plus, it looks cool!

I’ve placed the link in both the Dictionaries and Thesaurus categories on the English Themes For Beginners and Early Intermediate page of my website.

I should point out that I recently read a critique from a teacher saying that some synonyms Visuwords came up with were inappropriate for students.   I’ve tried it quite a bit, as have my students, and haven’t experienced that problem at all.  But you might just want to be aware of that concern.

This link has been on my site for a couple of months, but it’s so good I thought it was worth highlighting in case people have missed it.  Answers.com will not only pronounce the word you are looking-up, it will also show and pronounce a sentence accurately using the word.  After you type  a word in the search box at the top of the page, you just have to click on “Word Tutor” to bring you to where you can get the audio sentence.

Many online dictionaries allow you to hear the word.  And most dictionaries show the word being used in the sentence.  But this is the only one I’ve found that actually says the sentence, too.

This option is very helpful to my students when they have to write sentences using the vocabulary words we are studying.

I have placed this link under Dictionaries on my English Themes for Beginners and Early Intermediate  page. You can also find other links to dictionaries there that are appropriate for English Language Learners, including many that have audio and show pictures.