Websites to Learn Vocabulary

Are you Indonesian English teachers or learners? does not a matter who you are. If you want to learn or teach vocabulary to yourself or to your students, you need to know a better platform available in internet. 

Vocabulary mastery is an essential activity to learn new language. How can we learn language (speak and write) without knowing its words? Acquiring an adequate vocabulary is initially high problematic for L2 and foreign learners. Hence, an English educators should find a best solution. Luckily, the development of technology gives us so many benefits to develop our vocabulary. What I mean with technology is the use of ICTs in language classroom especially English. Here are the websites which can be applied by English teachers in class to learn vocabulary.

Four websites to learn vocabulary:

1.Vocabulary.com. 

Vocabulary.com is a website which mission is to expand access to education and understanding through vocabulary instruction. For us it’s not just about words, it’s about improving literacy. 

This platform helps learners to unpack the complexity and nuances of English language in a way that was systematic, engaging and adaptive. The print screen below is vocabulary.com interface. 

To begin with, you just sign up by clicking sin up with google and face book. Type down your account whether you are a teacher or learners. 

There are some navigation on the header which have different usage. Play, look up, list.

- Play, to navigate you if you want to play words game
- Look up, to navigate you to search for new words
- List, to navigate you to find out vocabularies according to  the subject list, such as fiction, news. 

For example, you click play, then you come to the surface such follow: just pick up one of the options. If you click featured activity, you will play some words meaning, here you can listen the word pronunciation on the below button icon. Get started!

vocabulary.com 

2.Describing words.

This digital tool helps your learners to find more adjectives for things that you want to describe. 

describingword.io

For example, you enter a word home then click search. You will see that you can find adjective and more words related to home.

3.Word sift.

Word sift is an online platform which was created to assist English teachers to set the demands of vocabulary and academic language. The word sift.org allows teacher to create word cloud, word net by pasting a text into the box. Also you can group your learners to make some sentences based on the word cloud style you show. Here is the picture of word sift. Let's play!

word sift.org

4.playknoword.

Knoword is a fast-paced game which challenges your vocabulary, you can test your typing skills and stimulate your mind. This website will give your brain a good workout. 

playknoword.com

Those are the online modes to learn vocabulary in your class. Change your classical teaching and learning style with cutting-edge platforms. There are a lot of homepages which you can select in internet, however the four mentioned above you may try. Have a blast !

References:

Lan, Y.J 2013, 'The Effect of Technology-supported Co-sharing on L2 Vocabulary Strategy Development', Educational Technology & Society, 16 (4), 1-16. 

Bridge, D., Grisham, L.D 2011, 'eVoc Strategies: 10 Ways to Use Technology to Build Vocabulary', International Literacy Association and Wiley, vol.64, no. 5. pp. 306-317.