Add Google’s Ngram Viewer to Your List of Research Tools

Ngram Viewer is a search tool that students can use to check out the usage of words and names in books published in between 1800 and 2019. The Ngram Viewer reveals users a chart showing the first appearance of a word or name in literature and the frequency with which that word or name appears in literature considering that 1800. The Ngram Viewer will let you compare the use of multiple words or names in one chart.

By the method, the book that I discussed in the video is That Wild Country by Mark Kenyon..

Applications for Education.
As I discussed in the video above, the Ngram Viewer can offer an excellent way to begin a research activity for students. Have them enter a couple of words then take a look at the chart to determine peaks and valleys in the frequency of the words usage. Ask them to try to determine what would have triggered those words to be used more or less regularly at various durations in history.

The Ngram Viewer will let you compare making use of multiple words or names in one chart. The example that I offer in this video is to compare using the terms “National Parks,” “National Forests,” and “National Forest Service.” By taking a look at the Ngram Viewer for those terms I can see that they begin to appear more often around 1890, have a lull in the 1940s and 1950s, and then appear more often once again in the 1960s..
Ngram Viewer is based upon books indexed in Google Books. That is why below every chart produced by Ngram Viewer you will discover a list of books about each of your search terms. Those books are organized by date..
A third part of Ngram Viewer to keep in mind is that it deals with multiple languages including English, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, and Spanish..

Googles.
Ngram Viewer is a search tool that students can use to explore using words and names in books published between 1800 and 2019. The Ngram Viewer shows users a chart illustrating the very first appearance of a word or name in literature and the frequency with which that word or name appears in literature considering that 1800. The chart is based upon the books and regulars that are indexed in Google Books.

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