What is it good for?
This is a website used to study vocabulary that many already know of, but only uses a small part of. I would like to show how to explore it and how to get full benefits of it, both as a student and as a teacher. This is a simple website to use for kids in lower ages. They can help each other and it is a fun and effective way to study.
The web site was created in 2002 by some students who was reading advanced business English. They were bored by the “old fashion way” of learning vocabulary, so they created the site considering that it would be an accessible, fun and easy way to study words. Now it is one of the biggest internet based sites in vocabulary training.
The website address:
http://www.glosboken.se/
What is needed for using this website?
· Internet
· E-mail
To start the vocabulary training you need to fill in the English words and the translations of the words in a special list. When this is done, all the different exercises can easily be reached from any internet connected computer, telephone or Ipad and it does not matter where you are.
The website has three different stages with underlying categories:
STUDY
· Review: The English word will appear first and after some seconds the Swedish word will pop up too. To learn the words it is a good exercise to start with.
· Practice: Translate the English word into Swedish. If your spelling is wrong, the right word will emerge and you have to give it another try. There are also different settings for how you can deal with the wrong spelled words. One example is that the misspelled word will continue turning up until it is spelled correctly.
· Examination: The English words will emerge, but the right answers will not show until the end when you have finished all the vocabularies.
GAMES
· Hangman
· Memory
· Crossword
· Vocabulary puzzles
· “Banging” vocabularies
PRINTS
· Flashcards
· Vocabulary list
· Vocabulary test
· Vocabulary exam
How can it be used by teachers:
The good thing about this website is that the teacher can use it easily in different courses and different classes. The teacher can choose to create the vocabulary list and lock it, so no one else can change it. When the new exercise is created, the teacher can invite the students involved and send messages to them. Every change the teacher does, the pupils receive a message on their mail. In the classroom the website can be used to check out the pupils knowledge in a funnier way, using games like the flashcards, memory games and cross words. The ready-made vocabulary tests are also easy to print out to do final tests.
How it can be used by pupils:
If the teacher isn´t filling in the words, the pupils can do it themselves. If one student fill in the words, the other students in class can be “friends” on the website and use each other’s vocabulary lists. This way everyone do not have to write in the vocabulary every time, they can switch to do it. Once the words are entered, the vocabulary training can begin. It´s simple to use and it´s a fun and various way to practice.
Other considerations:
The website is mainly free and the users have full access to the exercises, but there is a possibility to get a premium membership if you like. The premium membership gives you extra exercises, more games and an opportunity to see the words in written meanings. The premium membership also have spoken vocabulary, so the pupils even can hear how the words sounds. That is a really good opportunity I think. If help is needed, just click on the Help-FAQ on the bottom of the page. It says all you need to know about how to get started, how to create an exercise and how to move one exercise from one course to another.
I hope you all find it even more useful now.
Try it out!
www.glosboken.se
Posted by: Tonje Natvig
Hey!
ReplyDeleteI have heard about Glosboken.se before, but I have never tried it… until now! Before I wrote this comment I become a member at glosboken.se to try it out! In my opinion Glosboken.se is an effective and fun resource when you want to learn vocabulary. I really liked this resource when I tried it. I have not captivate it before since I only have heard cheerless things about this website, but you made it sounds funny and simple the way you wrote about it. You got me interested by writing descriptive and simple! In the beginning it was a good initiative to write about the website itself, about the creators and the background and so on. It made me even more interested!
You wrote about a premium membership that was not for free, but I do not think that you mentioned that you must become a member to use Glosboken at all. That was the first thing I did before I use it and before I saw which games and such you could use at the website. According to me, this is a negative thing about Glosboken. I think that they should let people try to use the games and the things at the website before they become members. On the other hand it could also be a good thing since you can save your exercises.
I think I am going to use this website at my next vfu (since I nowadays are a member of the website ;)) and especially the games-part where you can choose among some different games to make the vocabulary training more fun. My students in first grade always wanted to do “hänga gubbe” with each other on the board. With Glosboken you can do it online in a much cooler way. They are going to be amazed!
Thank you
Louise Lidfors
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI have never tried glosboken.se myself but I will definitely give it a go in the near future. It seems to be a far more fun and satisfying way of studying vocabulary than to just repeatedly reading them on a piece of paper since many students lose their interest and motivation to study when using the old fashioned way. The games seem good and I think it is an important function to have for this kind of website. From my experience students learn very fast when playing these kind of games.
I think that getting premium membership might be a good investment (depending on the costs) for schools because seeing a word in a context makes it so much easier to learn. Hearing the words is also important.
I also think that the teachers using this find it very useful because it seems very easy to set up and use, which is important.
This website seems to have a lot of different uses. I am going to try this out in class and I am sure the students are going to love it.
Jonas Nilsson