ULTRALINGUA.com
I accessed the Food.inc website and looked up an article on Haiti, placing the URL in the Ultralingua.com site dictionary. This was the result when I double-clicked on Haitian
"Haitian n.
A native or inhabitant of Haiti.
Haitian adj.
Of or relating to or characteristic of the republic of Haiti or its people: “Haitian shantytowns.”
phrases
Haitian centime n.
100 centimes equal 1 gourde.
Haitian Creole n.
A creole language spoken by most Haitians; based on French and various African languages.
Haitian monetary unit n.
The monetary unit in Haiti."
I find this option the best of all that were discussed in the FIVE articles for this week's activities. This enables the reader (and since when did reading STOP being a JOYFUL activity????? Ref. Gruba) to remain on the actual reading text site without flipping back and forth between sites. In short, it looks like a thorough definition and explanation are provided, in a very non-invasive manner. It will be possible for the students to have a fluid reading approach. These definitions in English can be used to formulate the mini-concordance by assigned groups, or by class in the event there is a small class size. Students can negotiate for the most important words to include in their concordance or corpus. After the teacher edits the list by eliminating the passive or low frequency terms to assist the students in paying attention to the most high frequency and utilized vocabulary, a test can be given to assess their acquisition of the terms. It would be interesting to do an initial quiz immediately after the reading and before the students begin to put together a concordance, then again immediately after they have assessed and assembled the mini-concordance, and then finally after they have studied their self-selected mini-concordance to see if there is a marked increase in the internalization of the information.
WORDCHAMP.com
Placing the same URL address in this READ site yielded less definition and explanation. Further, in order to put the words in a list for later use as flash cards, etc., one is required to be part of a class which the instructor can apparently set up for free. However, the students must pay $12.50. This is not a bad idea if the instructor wants the students to create a wordlist, or if they want to have their students chat online with penpals. This last option would be an interesting one to pursue, as long as the total expenses of the class permitted it.
This site provides the technology for students to create their mini-corpus or mini-concordances online, and the same process can be applied as for Ultralingua.
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1 year ago
Your point about ultralingua providing a fluid reading experience is an important one. If students are taken out of the reading site and have to flip back and forth between the definition and the reading, in some ways that's not much different than reading with a dictionary in hand.
ReplyDeletePlease tweet the link to ultralingua with a short explanation of the tool and #ESL and #MATESOL at the end of the tweet. This is a tool worth trumpeting.
The role of concordance and the use of technology are crucial for vocabulary acquisition. I remember the time when I started learning German; I was not using e-net or technology to find the definition and explanation of an unknown word. Thus, the fluency of the reading was interrupted by searching a word in a paper dictionary (this could be time consuming and demotivating). Now I see how students can benefit from using technology in a foreign language classroom. I recommended ULTRALINGUA.com to my ESL students.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have the option of the e-dictionary or concordance either when I was learning French. I intend to have my students incorporate this in my advanced classes.
ReplyDelete