Sunday, February 5, 2012

Use Language Guide English to build vocabulary




http://www.languageguide.org/english/

What is it, how does it work?
Language Guide English is a vocabulary learning website on which students can build their vocabulary systematically in a straightforward way.




Some ideas of how we can use this website.
  • Choose a set of vocabulary to teach/learn, as a warm-up activity (pre-reading/pre-listening). Learners would learn some new words and their schemata would be activated by the pictures.
  • After learning the words, set students into pairs. As one student pronounce a word, the other student should move the cursor to the corresponding picture to listen and compare the pronunciation.  
  • Use this website as part of the WebQuest designing to guide students to learn the new words autonomously.
  • Integrate this website and Jing to assist learners' vocabulary learning. First, Assign a set of words as their homework, ask them to learn the words by themselves. Then, with the assistance of Jing, ask students to video themselves pronouncing the set of words one by one following the sequence of pictures. Last, send the video to the teacher, and the teacher could help them correct their pronoun cation. 

Why is the contend good for vocabulary building?
  • Vocabulary can be built systematically: it is ordered consistently into 11 large categories, each category is further divided into more subcategories. 
  • All the vocabulary is equipped with visual aids (picture) and pronunciation recordings, so it is very intuitive and straightforward to learn the words, especially for younger learners.
  • The classification of vocabulary displays good quality with considerable details.
  • All of the vocabulary learning is in close connection with practices and quizzes by which learners could strengthen their memories.
  • Most sets of vocabulary are arranged in three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced level, learners could approach the vocabulary accordingly.


Limitations and points to improve.
  • The vocabulary mainly covers words about objects and nouns. Not enough verbs and adjectives, etc. are introduced.
  • The exercises do not drill students' spelling, it only deals with listening and speaking.
  • Teachers could not add new sets of vocabulary on the web.
  • Learners do not have access to the record of their learning history.







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