▲ ▼ Teach me vocabulary without spending extra time
I'm trying to improve my vocabulary to sound sophisticated when I speak and write emails. There are several tools which helps me to learn a new word every day, but since it's out of context I usually forget most of them.
I was wondering that it would be nice if I can learn better vocabulary while doing routine tasks like browsing the web, but most of the web articles use dumbed-down vocabulary for the benefit of general audience and so I'm not learning any new words.
Have any of you faced this situation? How can this be solved?
I conceived of an augmented reality display of labels on top of objects in the language pair of one's choice in a concepticon subreddit called r/SomebodyMakeThis.
See the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/comments/o1uqfj/smt_a_smartphone_camera_augmented_reality_app/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
That's a cool idea to get familiar with day-to-day objects in another language, Very useful when traveling foreign countries. But I'm not sure whether it can improve learning new vocabulary as it requires sentences.
I have tried a multitude of tools, from LWT (learn with texts) to Readlang web reader and even Language Learning with Netflix, but nothing has beaten the good old fashioned notepad or journal.
I learn languages as a hobby and I know that vocab and memorization is the first step but natural word choice and syntax come with practice.
With my own students I offer a 3x4 grid containing columns of "past, present, future" and row of "positive, negative, question, imperative".
If you learn a recycable expression in Spanish like "que ver con" (to do with), I will create sentences across the grid.
Esto no tiene nada que ver contigo.
Esto tiene todo que ver con ella.
¿Tiene esto algo que ver con la historia que me contaste la semana pasada?
Tendrá algo que ver conmigo si no respondes a mis preguntas.
etc etc
until I am comfortable with the simple tenses, I will not move on to perfect, conditional, subjunctive.
It "is " hard work but no app will do the work for you,
Thanks for telling me about https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ , I didn't know it existed. It has large number of users and reading from the reviews it seems like they're like me who would like to get some more value out of menial tasks like watching a movie and in this case the value is learning language.
I agree that there are tried and tested methods from professionals like you which are definitely better for those who are ready to invest time for it. I appreciate sharing your grid method, I will give it a try.
I needed to pass C1 German exam recently and my vocabulary was a bottleneck. I also wanted to learn words in context + using interesting texts, which I would enjoy reading. Thus, I made VocabBoost - https://vocab-boost.online/ - a Chrome & Firefox extension to make a language test out of any website.
I think the problem with other suggestions is that they help you practice your passive vocabulary (i.e. understanding a word). I don't think this would help with actually using words in your writing. In order to use a word, you need to actively map it from the current context (because that's effectively what you do when you write). That's precisely what VocabBoost does. You read the text (see the context) and it asks you to fill in blanks (can be multiple choices test to simplify the task) - i.e. actually use a new word.
I am still developing the extension. Feel free to reach out if you have suggestions.
I could add "tricky words" mode :)
Excellent, this addresses exactly what I was asking for! It's like you have read my mind. I will use VocabBoost for a while and let you know my feedback.
I also posted another language problem recently which you might be interested in looking at - /problems/201 .
Thank you! Looking forward to hearing your feedback! I am developing the extension right now. There are already additional options - just click on the extension icon for menu or open the extension options through your browser interface. I will add post-install intro page soon.
https://donquixote.fun/ solves this problem by translating classic literature to different languages with simple interactions while we read it.
We've been recently working on an app that makes it super easy to catch and learn unknown English words and expressions from virtually any movie or TV show. The point is exactly to sound sophisticated as a native person rather than sounding like someone learning from text-book like English. And since we build it on top of the habit of watching movies, we believe it will simply integrate into one's daily routine. Any feedback is welcome since we are not 100% percent sure, where to go with this :) It is available for free on iOS and Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skeebdo.learn.english
https://apps.apple.com/app/id1539896648
This is very interesting and innovative. Thank you for sharing.
I didn't think movies, TV shows as a platform for learning vocabulary asynchronously and there seems to be different levels too.
So Skeebdo would help me recall dialogues from my favorite movie/TV shows and help learn vocabulary through that? It would be great if you could integrate a video player within the app, So that I can learn vocabulary while I watch the movie e.g. Say I press a button or key while watching and Skeebdo pops out with the thesaurus for the word in the dialogue and stores the word for future training.
Not exactly what you're searching for, but I came across this super comprehensive series of short videos.
https://teachingenglishonline.nity.app/
Check them out ig, I just let them play in the background and it worked out pretty well.
Sorry, it might be a good course but it doesn't solve my problem of 'without spending extra time'.
There are a few chrome extensions already out there. I saw this one on producthunt which looks awesome. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/toucan-3
Thank you emma Toucan - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/toucan/lokjgaehpcnlmkebpmjiofccpklbmoci is what I wanted!
Nice! It can be easily solved with a browser extension which replaces common terms on a web page with 'sophisticated'(sic.) vocabulary from the thesaurus. This way, you needn't spend separate time for learning new vocabulary as you do it like browsing regularly.
That's exactly what I had in my mind, how can that be done? What would be the key issues to solve?
As I mentioned above, I think this will train your passive vocabulary (understanding of words). At least for me, this is different from using a word - to use a word I need much more certainty and it is usually much harder. I claim that there must be an active part of using a word, otherwise this won't help with writing.
Browser extension for replacing words in the web page from thesaurus would be straightforward, but determining which word to select for replacing would be the tricky part.
I remember a site that used to test vocabulary (e.g. word, 4 meanings, you pick which is correct) and the clever thing it did was to continually update the difficulty settings according to how well people actually did. You could do something similar here — e.g. have a "I already know this word" option which bumps up your difficulty a bit.