Who doesn’t want to increase or enhance his or her vocabulary? Of course most of us want to have the greatest command over vocabulary in order to write well and explain in a much better way. For this we need a good vocabulary and today we are going to explore vocabulary.com — a site that helps master new words in no time.
The primary function of the site is to increase the vocabulary through various challenges by playing an adaptive learning game. The site is free but to go through its main features, one has to sign up and then start the ‘Challenge’, an interactive game in which the user is asked to define a series of words. Correct answers give out explanation and then new words appear with multiple answers to choose from.
The site also has a dictionary and claims it to be the world’s fastest responding on the internet. And the best thing about this dictionary is its relationship with the user’s ongoing progress while playing the ‘Challenge’. If the user doesn’t know the meaning of the word and looks up that word, the dictionary adds it to his/her learning queue so that they can track the words in their next visit.
The site saves the progress and one can easily pick up right where they left off in ‘My progress’; other interesting features include, ‘Words I’ve mastered’, ‘Words I am learning’, ‘My trouble words’, ‘My achievements’, to name a few.
Apart from that, users can read articles which mostly focus on current events and how they impact our vocabulary. The good thing is that there are no ads, since most free sites are bombard with ads. Therefore, navigation becomes truly simple as there is less focus on design and colours. Users are prompted immediately to begin answering questions which can be confusing to some.
The site claims to use ‘a proprietary technology called Adaptive Vocabulary Instruction (AVI).’ To put it simply, it’s just like a personal trainer, who monitors user’s work and suggests new words and challenges on his/her level thus making it easy to learn words that are not too easy or not too hard.
To built or enhance vocabulary, check out: www.vocabulary.com
Published in Dawn, Young World, October 8th, 2016
