Today's website: Wordia
What is it about?
It is a brilliant unique and interesting on-line dictionary for intermediate to advanced English learners to learn vocabulary. As the slogan of the website goes, Wordia “bring words to life”. This website provides not only standard definitions of words from Collins English Electronic Dictionary (Digital Edition: 2008 © HarperCollins Publishers 2008) but also videos in which both famous and ordinary people can give their own definitions and connotations of words.
Why is good for language learning?
l For visual and audio learners, learning vocabulary through videos may help them memorize the word more easily.
--Click here to hear to hear a tennis commentator, Greg Rusedski, gives the definition to the word: “positive”.
l Students can also see the standard definition of the words along with the example sentences or collocations. They can easily obtain more information of the words from the online Collins English Electronic Dictionary simply by clicking “view all”.
l Students can hear different people giving definition and connotation to the same word. Seeing one thing in various angles might build up students’ critical thinking. Besides, teachers might encourage students to explore the meaning of the words in the individual context.
l Students can enhance their listening ability while learning vocabulary. Besides, the speakers of videos might come from all over the world. Therefore, they can hear English spoken in various accents. It is also a good opportunity to encourage students to speak English even without a standard accent.
l Learning vocabulary can be motivating since the styles of videos ranges from normal talk to rap or poetry. Click here to see an unusual video about the word “style” by Mr. Midas.
Classroom use
l After teaching all the vocabulary in a lesson, teachers can show one or two videos of the website to students. Teachers can start by reviewing the definition and example sentences provided by Collins Electronic on-line Dictionary and then have students watch the videos.
l Afterwards, teachers can ask students what connotation the speaker gives to the word. To give students more challenges, the teacher can also ask students about the occupation and background of the speaker (Normally the speaker will mention it in the video).
l To do more speaking ability, after watching two or three videos in which different people give various connotations to the same word, students can be allocated into small groups to discuss which one they like best and the reason.
l To encourage students’ autonomous learning, teachers can also encourage students to watch any video about the words they would like to learn and share it to other classmates in the next class.
Limitations
l Since there is no subtitles for these videos, students might find it hard to understand what the speakers are talking about and lose interests.
l Sometimes the content of the video is more like advertisement. Therefore, teachers should be careful when selecting the videos for the use of classroom.
l There are still limited data of videos because Wordia is a collaborative website. Only when people make and upload the videos can we watch the videos.
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