A couple of weeks ago, Noel, Amanda and I went to the ‘Innovate in ELT’ conference at Canterbury Christchurch University. We each sat in on three workshops/lectures, and one of those I attended was about Apps designed to help with language learning.
Some of those are beneficial for teachers (so I’m not going to tell you about those!) BUT many of them were designed for students, as part of their own self-study programme. So here are a few which might be useful for you and worth checking out…
‘Quizlet’
This is a great app which works on the basis of ‘flashcards’ – you name your own categories (e.g. ‘English food words’, irregular verbs’, etc) and enter the vocabulary you want. You could, for example, enter the word in English and then the equivalent in your language; or you could just write a definition; or for irregular verbs, you could write the infinitive and then the past simple and/or past participle. Then you can just call up the vocabulary (you choose whether you want English first or your language), and test yourself, before flipping the card to check. You can hear the word being pronounced correctly too.
There are lots of other variations on offer: spelling tests, matching activities, etc, many of which can be timed to test the speed of your responses! A new feature is the facility to record your own voice – although you need the upgraded versions for this. The basic app is free, but the upgraded options which you have to pay for ($15 or $25 USD). I can’t tell you what the extra functions are, as I’m too mean to pay for them…! But we’d welcome your feedback, if you try them out.
Here’s a link to the Quizlet website. At the bottom of the page there are links to the various app stores:
We will continue this series as we find apps that may be useful. If you have any suggestions, let us know and you may get published on the blog.