Mozuku

This month I’d like to focus on some search tools that mostly specialize in vocabulary. I don’t feel really comfortable using the term “search engine” since most people associate that with the Google-powered tool that sits prominently somewhere on the page that opens when you launch your browser. But most people are now making use of multiple search tools—Google books, image or video search tools, etc.—on a daily basis and just as you would use certain search tools to search for images, the tools here can be used to help you investigate and better understand lexical items (words, phrases, or longer fixed expressions).

First and most impressive this month is Visuwords. Type in a word or phrase and get a visual “map” of the word’s meanings and associations. Hover your cursor over any term to get more explanation or definitions. This must be seen to be believed. You will be impressed: I promise.

Next is ERek, a search tool that brings up instances or examples from either the whole web or only .edu (academic) sites or only news sites. This can be very helpful in identifying collocations or just seeing how the lexical item is used. A great tool.

Amazon.com allows you to search inside many books. If you would like some good examples of a lexical item in use in a certain area (economics, TESOL, etc.) you just choose a book in that area and search in the book for your item. For example, I just chose the book Understanding Motivation and Emotion by Johnmarshall Reeve (Wiley) and did a search for the word “identity.” My search produced 30 examples from the book.

If you would like to know how two similar terms (start vs. begin, for example) compare  in usage volume (frequency) on the web, Googlefight can help you. Just input the two terms and the system returns the number of times they can be found on the web. This can also be used to check out cultural items (hambuger vs. hot dog, or Pokemon vs. Dragonball, for example).

And finally, there is a new search engine in development that may just be the way all search engines work in the future. It is called Wolfram Alpha. It tries to understand your questions and return data in a way that matches your needs. It is still in development, but vocabulary searches seem to work well. If you search for a term, you get definitions, origins, frequency information (written and spoken), pronunciation, and much more. Give it a try and taste the future.

The thing above is a QR (Quick Response) code. QR codes can contain various information including text, links, phone numbers, and even some images. They are primarily aimed at cell phone users recently and are becoming increasingly common in advertising. At the recent Wireless Ready conference, one presentation discussed the way in which QR codes can be used in classes. You see, these codes are easily generated with one of the many online generating services (just google QR cod generator). And once you have the code squares, you can print them out or paste them into a blog or website. You can use the codes to have learners put short texts (up to about 140 characters) into their cell phones. These messages can be saved and learners can take them with them. The presenter at Wireless Ready was doing interactive treasure hunts with groups of his learners. Of course, you could also give some important vocabulary or usage information. The best part is it involves no downloading for either the creator or the user, and no internet access fees.

A teacher at my college recently introduced me to iKnow, a vocabulary self-study site for Japanese learners (the interface is only in Japanese at present). It teaches vocabulary and then provides dictation exercises a little bit similar to the Nintendo DS　えいご漬け (Eigo-zuke) games, which are very popular. The interface is very clean and the audio quality is good and it loads quickly. Like Eigo-zuke, my only complaint is that it is a little too focused on sentence-level language and there is not a lot of context provided. However, iKnow seems to be making a lot of use of collocations and that is quite a nice characteristic to have (instead of the usual semantic groupings of items we find on most vocabulary sites) and the recordings used in the dictation are clear and at a good speed not painfully slow (or overly_separated_and_annunciated) as is often the case . A very nice resource, especially for self-studiers.

Some of language learning requires rote memorization, and rote memorization can be facilitated by technology, which can help in the organizing and delivery of content. It can also play an important role in feedback. Of course, a learner with flashcards or a classroom activity can often accomplish this as well, but computers can do it all faster and more efficiently. These days, however,  it sometimes seems that it is not fashionable to talk about rote learning in EFL because of the bad name the audio lingual approach still has, and the educational technology field to still pretty busy exploring social technologies and trying to distance itself from the time when CD-ROM-based fashcards and multiple choice questions was what people meant when they talked about using computers for language learning. But while social learning is very important, some rote memorization can go a long way in improving proficiency, especially (but not only) for less-proficient learners. Learning vocabulary requires much more than just memorizing meanings, however. To “know” a word, learners must know the meaning, written form, spoken form, grammatical behavior, collocations, register, associations, and frequency of that word (Schmitt, 2000). Last week, I  found out about 2 recently developed vocabulary learning sites, Learnit Lists and Quizlet. Each site uses a different approach and focuses on different vocabulary.

Learnit Lists focuses on the 1000 most common words and aims to help you learn 10 words daily in your target language by serving you a new list every day. There are 15 language pairs available, including English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese & Czech (you choose which language you want to go to and which language you want to go from). More languages will be added they say. The lists are simple one-to-one translations of important words and thus are out of context. I also found many errors in the Japanese translations of English words (nouns for verbs, particles as verbs). But even meaning aside, the site cannot help you with the spoken form, grammatical behavior, collocations, register, or associations. It can only give you the written form of high frequency vocabulary words (and no phrases or fixed expressions as far as I can see). Also, there is little learner control of content. Possibly useful for entry level learners, when the developers get the translations cleaned up.

Quizlet attempts to marry the best of rote learning techniques with the power of social networking. It bills itself as the “end of flashcards” and provides a nice system of self training and testing that you plug your own content into. If learners can be educated a little about the nature of vocabulary, they can then use this tool to learn it more efficiently. They can also share lists with others, reducing the time needed to input the vocabulary (which while it will facilitate learning, may cause some learners to avoid using this tool).  Some very common content is already available (important SAT vocab, prefixes and suffixes, for example) and there are groups creating ESL vocabulary with pronunciation and other content as well. The author lists the features as follows: the system keeps track of your progress, facilitates sharing with e-mail notification when others contribute sets to your  lists and allows chat boxes so learners can talk to each other while learning. Also, any language can be input and accent buttons for non-English letters can be used. The learning system is also nicely designed. It  provides pages that allow learners to familiarize themselves with the vocabulary, a call and response learning function and a testing function. Combine this with easy input and editing and sharing and you have a very powerful tool. Highly recommended!

Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.