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

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

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

The Ngram Viewer will let you compare making use of numerous 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 looking at the Ngram Viewer for those terms I can see that they start to appear more often around 1890, have a lull in the 1940s and 1950s, and after that appear more regularly again in the 1960s..
Ngram Viewer is based on books indexed in Google Books. That is why below every graph created by Ngram Viewer you will discover a list of books about each of your search terms. Those books are set up by date..
A 3rd component of Ngram Viewer to note is that it works with several languages including English, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, and Spanish..

Applications for Education.
As I discussed in the video above, the Ngram Viewer can provide a good way to begin a research study activity for students. Have them get in a couple of words then examine the graph to recognize peaks and valleys in the frequency of the words use. Ask them to attempt to determine what would have caused those words to be used more or less often at different durations in history.

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

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