I’m always interested in seeing how other companies and individuals develop educational technology and have tried quite a few. Though it wouldn’t really be kosher to review a direct competitor, there are many online educational sites that have a different market than Praxis and I’d like to share some of the better ones. Vocabulary.com, a site made primarily for native English speakers who wish to improve their vocabulary, is one such website I’ve come across recently that has some nice things going for it.
Screenshot of the homepage if you just can’t be bothered to click on the above link.
Learners have the option of selecting or making their own list of words, or just jump in and let the system find your level of vocabulary. The latter method is how I tried the site, and it found my level fairly quickly. By the third ’round’ (lesson), the system began to introduce words that are on the SAT and GRE vocabulary lists and not long after that I started to get stumped on words that are new to me. The program gives further repetition of words that you get wrong, and as far as I could see the repetition schedule seems consistent with spacing effect research.
As all the questions are multiple choice, you will occasionally guess correctly on a word that you do not know.
I shan’t indite the answer to this question. Look it up yourself.
In some exercises which provide the word in a sentence (see example below with the word prorogued), you can use contextual clues to guess the correct meaning. This does not fool the system, however, as these words appear again in latter rounds to make sure you really know them.
Here’s another example sentence to help you remember this word:
“If only Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, had been indefinitely prorogued, the world would be a slightly better place.”
One issue with the program is that some of the definitions of the simpler words taught in the program use vocabulary that is more difficult than the target word itself. For example, with the word mistake, the correct definition that learners need to identify in the exercise reads, “A wrong action attributable to bad judgment or inattention.” The definition has three words that are arguably more advanced than the target word itself. Mistake is a fairly common word (within the 1000 most frequent words), as is judgment. I would say that the majority of students who do not know the word mistake also do not know what judgement means. Inattention and attributable are both lower frequency and thus even less likely to be known by the average learner. In another exercise for the word planned, the learners need to match it to devised. If a student doesn’t know a rather common word like plan, the chances of the student knowing devise are near zero.
This happens quite often with the easier words and is the main reason why I wouldn’t recommend the site for non-native speakers below the advanced level. To be fair, vocabulary.com definitions are simpler than your average dictionary, but I don’t think they have succeeded in making the definitions as accessible as most learner dictionaries on the market. I don’t mean to be too critical of the site here, though, as the site is designed primarily for native speakers and in any case definitions always pose a major challenge to teaching words.
Even a Rhodes Scholar can have trouble defining a simple word like ‘is.’
One interesting feature is their ‘hint’ function. If learners do not answer right away, some hint options appear under the exercise. One hint is ‘50/50’, which takes away two of the wrong answers (think ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’). The next is ‘Words in the Wild’, which gives another example of the word in a sentence. The word is taken from a corpus database of authentic English (with the source properly given), so it’s not likely that the sentence will be less complex than the original example given, but still, it could be helpful. The final hint is ‘Definition’, which, unsurprisingly, gives the definition of the word in question. Clicking on any ‘hint’ does seem to cause the program to assume you need more work with the word, though you do seem to get more credit than if you just got it wrong without using the hint.
After solving a problem, learners can click on words for definitions of all answer choices. Learners can also hear how the word is pronounced in North American English.
After finishing a round, you can see your score and receive some ‘awards’ (small icons that are collected on your home page) if you do particularly well. Reading through the site’s white paper, they discuss using gamification principles to enhance the program, such as giving awards for good effort. I don’t think the award system really qualifies as gamefication, though. Rewards have to be, well, rewarding. Seeing a small icon congratulating me for getting all the answers correct or getting X number of exercises in a row correct didn’t do much to encourage me to do more on the site. The 50/50 hint described earlier is a bit closer to gamefication principles, but as the benefit is fairly small, I don’t think it has much of an effect.
The site has a pay option which allows teachers to set up classes and monitor student progress. It allows a free trial, but doesn’t seem to give information on prices (you need to contact their sales rep.). I understand the business reasoning behind this, but it still turns me off. Yes, a simple call or email can get me some answers, but I’d just rather have the information up front. If by chance the prices are out of range for my students or school budget, then time spent contacting their sales rep, let alone doing the free trial, is just wasted.
Despite these relatively minor quibbles, I like the site and recommend it for anyone wanting to expand their vocabulary. It should be particularly useful for native speaker high school and university students preparing for tests like SAT and GRE. For second language learners, I don’t think the site would work well for students at the low to intermediate levels, but it could be useful for advanced learners of English. The ESL/EFL teacher would do well to introduce it to their more advanced students, and perhaps even use it herself!