Problem: Students with limited English proficiency often struggle to find the right word. Younger students can have difficulty with the reading and comprehension levels of many Web sites. When editing their own work or the work of others, even older students sometimes need help thinking of more appropriate words.

Solution: Use the Thesaurus feature to help students understand new words and improve their vocabulary.

Classroom Application: The thesaurus feature is especially helpful for students with special needs, limited English proficiency, and emergent literacy. Use it with those students and others in grades 2 through 12.

Directions:

• In Microsoft Word, highlight a word in your text.
• On PCs, hit Shift and F7 at the same time. On Macs, hit Option, Command (the Apple key) and the letter "R" key.
• In Replace with synonym, browse possible synonyms.
• To learn more about a suggested synonym, click the synonym, and then click "Look Up" to find synonyms for the suggested synonym.
• When you've chosen a replacement word, click it, and then click Replace.
• To find synonyms for words found on Internet sites, copy the word or passage to a Word document and follow the steps above. (To copy text from a Web site to a Word document, highlight the text, right click, select Copy, open a Word document, right lick and select Paste.)

Next: Translation help with tables.