READING & VOCABULARY LEARNING TOOLS

After having a good time creating a 3D pop-up book a few weeks ago, I spent some time during the weekend looking deeply into the websites used for teaching reading and vocabulary. Among all the websites that were introduced in the CALL classroom last week, the Complete Lexical Tutor, to me, was the best tool to practice reading and vocabulary. Teachers can create vocabulary and reading tests according to students’ language proficiency level. They can also use this tool in the classroom to teach vocabulary through corpus by using the concord writer provided on this site.

However, one thing that I don’t really like about this tool is the layout of the website. It’s not an interesting tool at first glance and it can make your head spin around because of its backgrounds and font colors. I spent quite some time to figure out how this tool works. Although I think the Lexical Tutor is very useful in teaching reading and vocabulary, I don’t think I will use this website in my classroom. Its poor design makes it difficult for learners and teachers to use this tool.

After spending some time on the Lexical Tutor, I decided to stop learning about this tool and searched for the other tool instead. I found an interesting website for learning vocabulary. The site is called vocabulary.com. Its plain background as well as its design/layout make it more interesting than the Lexical Tutor. This tool allows learners to connect their Facebook accounts with the website so that learners can compete the vocabulary challenge with their Facebook friends. Learners will be asked to identify the meaning of each word. If they have no idea what that word is, they can click on “Word in the wild” button, providing the sentence samples using that specific word. If their answers are correct, they will earn points for each round.

I like this tool because it makes learning vocabulary fun. It’s likely that learners will use this tool almost every day because to be a winner, they need to answer as many questions as possible (and it needs to be correct!). However, the drawback is that learners cannot choose the vocabulary test according to their proficiency. The site will randomly chooses for learners. Some vocabulary can be difficult for some learners and it can discourage them to learn English. Therefore, it would have been better if the tool provides different levels of vocabulary test for each individual student.

The other feature that I like is that teacher can create a word list and send a link to students to practice and compete with one another. It also implements the spelling bee section where learners can click on the “Play word” button. A word from the word list will be pronounced and learners need to type the word they hear. I like that learners are asked to practice listening and vocabulary at the same time.

I’m not only going to implement this tool in my future classroom, but I’m also planning to use this tool for my GRE vocabulary learning.