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Tech Talk

Vocabulary: flashcard, root word, frequency, circumlocution and word association applications

Lucius Von Joo Kanda University of International Studies, Japan

Lucius Von Joo currently teaches at Kanda University of International Studies, Japan. He holds an Ed.M. in Comparative and International Education and has teaching experience in deaf education, elementary education and EFL/ESL in California, Japan and New York. His research interests include computer assisted learning, film and documentary content-based learning, student educational backgrounds and learning approaches, video-cued multi-vocal ethnography, and family and communities as educators. E-mail: lucius-v@kanda.kuis.ac.jp

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n my most recent Tech Talk I covered reading applications. I focused on extensive reading skills for content and exposure to language. For this Tech Talk I am going to focus explicitly on vocabulary. Many language learners have goals in which they focus on vocabulary. This could be because vocab practice gives the feeling of quick results and is easy to do alone. However finding a routine that is worth your time and fits your personal style is very important. There are many different ways to approach learning new vocabulary. Every learner and teacher have something different that works for them. In this Tech Talk I mention a few different methods and some corresponding applications. Learning new terminology to talk about a concept you would like to explore can be empowering, but it also takes time. Finding a balance between learning and using new vocabulary is worth considering.

This Tech Talk will be separated into 5 sections of vocabulary applications: 1) Classic flash card strategies; 2) Root word approach; 3) Frequency and use of word; 4) Circumlocution for when you don’t know the word to express a concept; 5) Game applications that have vocabulary incorporated in them. Just as in the former Tech Talk, the sections can be read independently or as a set. For each section, I will be mentioning the best applications I have found and ways in which they could be incorporated for individual and classroom settings.

1) Flashcards There are many different types of flashcard applications with different strengths and weaknesses. As with most Tech Talks I have tried to focus on applications that are free so if the method does not work or the app is being used for an entire class there is no money lost in trying. The three aspects for flashcard apps that I focus on are premade flashcard libraries, apps that allow you to make your own cards, and apps that are test specific. A few of the applications have all three of these features so I have listed them in multiple areas. I did this so that the applications are seen as a tool for something you want to accomplish as opposed to a distracting platform to navigate.

Flashcard libraries Some flashcard applications have their own premade flashcard libraries and others use a crowd-based system, where the user community upload flashcard decks they have made.

Needless to say, the range of difficulty and clarity of the flashcards decks is vast, and each

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application has a different system for sorting them. Many flashcard applications work differently offline so as always please test the application in the setting where you are going to share it with others to see how it works. I will explain about the premade library apps first and then follow up with the open source library apps.

Brainscape (iOS) uses a popular premade series called vocab builder. The premium decks are free to access when you have an Internet connection, however if you would like to use them offline you have to purchase a subscription. When you first turn on the application you must sign in and make an account. After that you will be brought to a list of card deck options. You can then click on the library you want to study.

If you are online you will be able to study the sets for free,15 cards at a time. You will first be shown the word on the card, and then tap to get the answer.

After you see the answer you can tap a number from 1-5, rating how well you know the card: this will then determine how often the card will be repeated in your study session.

Mywordbook (iOS, Android) also offers premade decks: there are a few free decks and you can buy additional sets as well. This app works perfectly offline, however you have to first be connected to download the sets. When you turn on the app you can take a test to check your vocab level so that you can pick the appropriate decks to study. Mywordbook also

has a very comprehensive design platform to make your own cards. From the home screen of the application you can choose to learn, practice or review your word list.

In the learning mode you will see the word: you can then choose to see the definition, translation, image, sound or example. You can also make your own notes about the word as well. After you have learned the words through the flashcard setting you can practice the words.

The practice option for Mywordbook produces a mix of multiple choice and type-in-the-blank type questions.

Next, I am going to explain about how crowdsource flashcard apps work. Both Quizlet (iOS, Android) and Dictionary Flashcards (iOS, Android) have crowd-sourced flashcard decks to study for almost any grade level, subject, or test.

Dictionary Flashcards needs to be online to run, but Quizlet will work offline as long as the flashcard sets have been saved.

Quizlet is perhaps the most practical and well thought-out platform for the classroom.

Students and teachers can easily share lists with each other to study. There are also many free downloadable flashcard sets on a gamut of subjects. When you first open Quizlet you sign up or log on. This log-in will also work for the PC version of the application, which is more robust.

After signing in you will be brought to a blank screen where you can store all your card sets.

In the top corner you can type in any term to find flashcards. After you pick the deck you want you can save it to your folder:this will allow you to use the cards offline. These flashcard deck files are very small so you shouldn’t have to

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worry about storage. After you have saved the deck you can use it to study, gap fill, match, or take a quiz with many different question styles.

Mywordbook is the easiest app of the four to make flashcards offline in the application itself. The other applications mentioned either need an Internet connection or PC version of the app to make multimedia flashcards. You can see in the image below that you can type in the word, translation, form, definition, example, notes, image and audio for each card.

In the gap fill mode, if you type in the incorrect term, it will call it mistyped and will flash the correct answer for a second. It will then ask you the question again and you can type what you were just briefly shown. I felt this helped with retention without being discouraging.

Dictionary Flashcards is also a very straightforward crowd-sourced flashcard library. One thing to remember is that you must always be online to use this application. Open the app and log in, so that you can save your flashcards. Click on the menu and go to ‘Browse All.’ You can then search for cards by term, subject grade level, test, or foreign language (French, Latin or Spanish). Once you have found the topic you want to study you can learn from the flashcards or take a multiple-choice test on the wordlist.

Flashcard Creators You can create your own flashcards with all four of the applications I previously mentioned. The options concerning how the cards are created vary greatly between the apps.

Both Quizlet and Brainscape are wonderful apps for sharing card sets that you have made. This is great for classes studying the same subject. However, they only offer word and definition options in their tablet and smartphone app form so the depth of the cards can be limited. Both programs have online PC versions of the app that sync with your account on the mobile app, so you can add images and audio on the PC.

Dictionary Flashcards works offline if you want to type in your own definitions as with Quizlet and Brainscrape. However if you are online and type in any word it will give you a list of dictionary definitions to choose from. This makes creating a deck very quick. However, the definitions will be worded in typical dictionary form, which may be hard for language learners to understand.

Test Specific flashcards One reason learners often cram vocabulary is for high stakes tests. Both Quizlet and Dictionary Flashcards have lists for many tests that users have posted. There are also many pay applications with test specific vocabulary flashcards, however there are a few free applications as well. At the time of this Tech Talk, Magoosh, a test prep company, makes many free test-specific flashcard study apps for both iOS and Android.

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The interface for most Magoosh applications has simple menus and difficulty level choice options.

The cards themselves are nothing special, just classic word and definition with the option of clicking ‘know’ or ‘don’t know’.

2) Root Word

One way to study and remember new vocabulary is by studying the root word. I have always admired teachers and learners who have mastered root word methods. Using only the prefix and suffixes of words to identify many words at once. This method can be really helpful when approaching the Academic Word List (AWL). Brainscape has a premade deck entitled English Word Elements which has about 300 different elements, but there are also apps that specifically focus on these.

Painless Roots (Android only) is a free application that also works with word roots. The application shows you common word roots with examples and offers activities like multiple choice tests.

reading an article about neuroscience and I see many new words that are unfamiliar to me, how am I as a language learner to gauge which of those new words is common or not? If the word is so specialized that this article will be the only time I come across it, memorizing the word may not be practical. One way to gauge new L2 vocabulary is to check if the L1 translation of word or term is familiar. However, if the translation of the unknown L2 word is poor, or if the word is new to me but not uncommon in either language, this method may not be accurate.

Lextutor is a very useful software program that many researchers use to test word frequency amongst other things. The program uses the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC) amongst others to compute how commonly used a word is. So for example a word like ‘car’ is amongst the first 1000 most common words from a sample of a million or more spoken and written texts. Whereas a word like ‘album’ would be less common falling under the first 3000 word list level.

The program is free and open source, the only drawback is that the user interface is a bit complicated, especially for someone who is just informally exploring the software in their second language. However, Lextutor does have some simplified components on the website that work well on mobile devices. The items are called mobile apps, however this means that they work well on mobile devices from a web browser, they are not standalone apps. The mobile apps are called Flash, VP1, Conc.

(iOS) Roots to Words does this for Apple, but is not highly rated and costs a fee to use. There are online applications that also do this, often using matching exercises, but most are not very user friendly, and can be very confusing for language learners.

Flash has the first 4000 words from the BNC and Coca combined and grouped into 100 card decks that can be studied.

3) Frequency and word lists

One useful element in studying a language that is not your own is to find out how common a word is for L1 speakers. For example if I am

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VP1 is a useful tool for testing the frequency of any new word. All you have to do is type in the new vocabulary word that you are interested in and hit enter, and the app will tell you how common the word is to the nearest 1000. In the example below I have typed in the word ‘album’ and the app shows that it is amongst the first 3000 most common occurring words from both the COCA and BNC.

Lastly the Conc. or concordance app shows you examples of how the word appears in the text samples. This can be helpful in seeing collocations for a vocabulary word you are interested in. In the example below I again put the word ‘album.’ Type in the word, pick a corpus you would like the samples from, and hit enter. For this example I am using the BNC-COCA 14 million sample corpus (there are many other corpora including Wikipedia, Brown, Academic General as well as many others).

Below you can see some of the samples of text that the word ‘album’ appeared in, alphabetized by collocation.

circumlocution. The person you are speaking with can often guess and perhaps give you the word you were searching for. However, when you are on your own this can prove to be a harder task. This can be especially difficult if it is an expression or phrasal verb. Enter the concept of the reverse dictionary. This type of app works exactly as you would imagine you type the definition or concept you are looking for and the program spits out the single word or phrase you are searching for.

Revictionary (iOS, Android) is an example of this concept. The application is free for Android and very cheap for iOS. You type in the idea you want a word for and Revictionary will give you a list to choose from.

I am putting this application here because it is currently the only mobile version around.

However, there have been better mobile applications in the past that did the same thing but are no longer around. Revictionary is more of a placeholder for the idea of future reverse dictionary applications to come.

There is a very good online application called Onelook Reverse Dictionary. This is a much stronger tool that searches many online dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference sites.

In the screen capture below I typed in the concept ‘a person who hates technology’ and clicked ‘find words’, producing the list you see below.

4) Circumlocution

When you are speaking with someone and can’t find the word you are looking for you can often try to describe the word’s meaning using

5) Vocabulary games

There are many vocab game apps for both iOS and Android which you can play alone, against a friend or against a random online opponent. It was challenging to find games with multiple language levels. Many of the word game apps are designed to challenge L1 speakers, which

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can put them beyond the reach of second language learners. The vocab games that were designed for second language learners or younger L1 speakers were often lacking in design and content. Two applications that are well structured but challenging are Quizzitive (iOS) and Synonyms Quiz (iOS, Android).

Quizzitive (iOS) has 4 different types of games that have different levels. Speed Drill is a classic timed multiple choice quiz; Tunnel Vision shows one multiple choice answer at a time; Name That Thing has a picture with multiple choice text and Hidden Letters has the answers partially blanked out.

The words are repeated through the game series which I felt helped my retention of the words.

Word to Word Association (iOS, Android) is a game that has you do exactly what its name says. You get two lists of words and click one word in the left column and associate it with a word in the right column.

What’s the Word (iOS, Android) is also an association game, however in this game you are given four different photos and you must spell out the word that the photos have in common. For example, the answer to the image that follows would be ‘Shake’. Some words work better for this app than others.

Summing up Here are a few of the benefits and limitations for the 5 different types of vocabulary applications I have discussed.

Flashcards Flashcards are a classic way of studying any subject. One drawback I have personally found when I use paper flashcards is that after I use them once I often lose the deck.

Storing the cards electronically allows easier access in greater quantities. Also, having the cards usually with you would allow you to study during free moments of the day. Many of the flashcard libraries I mentioned don’t stop at vocabulary; they also have new concepts from many other subjects. The range of quizzes you can do with these cards is also very helpful. One physical difference is that the kinesthetic moment of turning over the card is lost to a flick or tap. I am not sure if this makes any difference for retention but I will miss it. I can also imagine amassing too many cards which might hinder retention.

Root word As I mentioned before, I am always captivated when I see someone use this method to understand language, but I have never laid the groundwork for following this method myself. The amount of work it takes to learn this process before it becomes useful can be daunting. This is a very strong argument for an application that organizes the root words in a logical manner that you can study at your own speed. This system is particularly useful for someone studying for a test in which they may see many unfamiliar words; as they learn to dissect the word to somewhat understand its base meaning.

Frequency A big part of learner autonomy is finding out what you as a learner want to know.

Teachers will often emphasize the words they are using as keywords that must be

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learned, which can at times be oppressive.

Learning to find the frequency of a word and understanding how common it is from a large-scale corpus can empower a learner to make choices about what they feel is most important to learn. The big drawback to this method currently is that it takes time to do, and is currently not that user friendly. Also if the user is using an outdated corpus this may give misinformation.

Circumlocution Learning to talk about a concept that you do not know the perfect word for is a very functional part of communication. When learners feel comfortable doing this in verbal communication it can really enhance their confidence and limit communicative roadblocks. The reverse dictionary applications are one way of practicing circumlocution when you do not have someone to speak with. The mobile app market for this type of application is currently limited but there are online applications that do this.

Games Association word games can be a fun way of learning vocabulary. If they are well made they can even entice the learner to practice for pure enjoyment. As I mentioned, finding the right level may be challenging. Many applications can either be too easy, making the user apathetic, or too difficult, causing anxiety.

Final thoughts Learning new vocabulary is part of enhancing your ability to communicate. Whether you are just starting out, looking to improve, or focused on a specific test, new vocabulary has a big role.

Memorizing vocabulary is one of the most common ways in which learners take matters into their own hands. Autonomy through self- study is all about finding what works for the learner. With all the applications mentioned in this Tech Talk it is helpful to address them as tools for something you would like to accomplish. You will then be able to find ways to measure if the technology is working for you.

Find ways in which your level of skill is appropriately challenged by what you are attempting to learn. The basic principles to learning something new don’t stop at memorization, even in learning an idiom or a new word association the learner has a chance to exercise a new connection. These connections are empowering and help to make better communicators.

Dear Readers,

If you have any requests for future Tech Talks please feel free to contact me. Any request is greatly appreciated and can range from a specific program you want explained to a general lesson that you want to incorporate technology into.

Thank you,

lucius-v@kanda.kuis.ac.jp

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