User:Javier Carro/Playground

In browse Mediawiki player
The player doesn't work with short files, such as words of different sizes:
 * Word samples

a1 syllable long word En-au-caught.ogg

a three syllables long word, En-us-abstinent.ogg

Image:En-us-Albuquerque.ogg

A file with three words such as Image:En-us-George Walker Bush.ogg loose the last word:

However, the player works well with long texts:
 * Text samples

Therefore, the records need two or three seconds unspoken spared at the end of the files.

Learning vocabulary activities
The meaning is not the only aspect a language learner should focus on when learning words in a second language. Learning vocabulary requires learning many different aspects of the words: spoken and written form, collocation, appropriateness, grammar, frequency, association and meaning. The dictionary is an efficient tool for learning some of these aspects, but there are many other ways for learning vocabulary. In the next activities I explore how the different aspects of word learning can be achieved by using wiki-quizzes.

Listening and comprehension

 * Receptive knowledge of the activity: how is the word pronounced?


 * Productive knowledge of the activity: how is the word spelled and written?


 * Incidentally, the learner also acquires receptive knowledge on collocations, such as the appearance at the right size of numeric data of "°F" for temperatures, "percent" for percentages, "times" for comparing sizes and "kms" for distances.


 * Listen carefully the first section of the following article and fill in the blanks:

{ { seventy } percent of the Sun is made of hydrogen.
 * type="{}"}

{ The temperature of the Sun is over { five thousand } °F at the surface.
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{ The surface of the Sun is over { a million|one million } kms.
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 * More information in Names_of_numbers_in_English

Grammar
The same kind of quizzes can be used for grammatical patterns of words. For example:

Fill in the blanks with one of these verbs. Choose either the verb + to or the ''-ing' form.

Squeal    -      stick     -     kiss    -    work

{ You will enjoy it as much as you would enjoy { sticking } that dainty tongue of yours out of the window. (from Cat and Mouse in Partnership by Brothers Grimm)
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{ Here, youngster, stop { squealing }. The dark never hurt anybody yet. (from The Jungle Book (Her Majesty's Servants) by Rudyard Kipling)
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{ In my childhood I could not imagine a more afflictive punishment than for my mother to refuse { to kiss } me at night. (from Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë)
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{ We promise { to work } for permanent peace in the world so that a new generation of Americans will never have to know the horrors of war. (from Proclamation 7099 by Bill Clinton
 * type="{}"}

Find meaning in text
This activity trains the learner to use reading strategies for guessing the meaning of words in a cotext. The learner must use contextual clues, such as grammatical class, function of the word, cotextual information and knowledge of the world.

This practice has the difficulty that the learner does not get any morphological information of the word. But, on the other hand, it prepares the learner to be in front of texts containing unknown words. Thus, this activity is very convenient for vocabulary learning because there are numerous evidences of the existence of correlation between reading and vocabulary assimilation (Ferris; Kiyochi; Pitts, White & Drashen; Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988).

{ { Deforestation } is the conversion of forested areas to non-forest land use such as arable land, pasture, urban use, logged area or wasteland. Generally, the removal or destruction of significant areas of { forest } cover has resulted in a degraded environment with reduced { biodiversity }. In many countries, massive deforestation is ongoing and is shaping { climate } and { geography }.
 * type="{}"}

Associations

 * Receptive knowledge: what other words do certain expressions (environmentally friendly, environmentally unfriendly, at home, transportation) make us think of?
 * Learning burden: some of the words included in this exercise refer to devices which may not be well known in countries where this technology is not being used. In those cases, the learning burden is higher for the learner because he or she cannot associate the English word to an equivalent word in the mother tongue. Furthermore, such new devices may not have a widespread translation into languages where they are already being used.

{Associate the following words with the correct options. Each expression may be associated with one or more options. You may look up in the wiktionary the meaning of those words you don't know by clicking over the word. If the term is not yet included in the wiktionary, you may request it on wikt:Wiktionary:Requested_articles:English.

+-+- greywater recovery +--- reforestation -+-+ offroaders +-+- solar heating +-+- Compact florescent bulbs (CFLs) +-++ carbon tax +--+ bike +-+- dual flush toilets +--+ electric car -++- incandescent bulbs +-+- recycling +-++ Energy Star rated products -+-+ old car +-+- dimmer +-+- recycling -+-- deforestation +-+- rainwater harvesting +-+- LED +-+- low flow shower heads +-++ carbon offset +-++ photovoltaic cell +-+- leaking toilet +-+- solar cooker +-+- Motion sensor +-+- reusing -+-+ airflight -++- dripping faucet +--+ hybrid engines
 * type="[]"}
 * Environmentally friendly / | unfriendly / | at home / | transportation