Go to an app store and you’ll find a number of unrelated products called VocApp. One of them, from a Polish-based outfit, has the https://vocapp.com/ url. From over 30 products in the catalogue, I selected the free ‘Top 1000 English Words’: this is, after all, the showcase app which will show you how fast and easy you can learn with us (sic). VocApp Founder, Marcin Młodzki, writes that learning languages and mobile devices are my two greatest passions. Unfortunately there wasn’t any language app on the market which satisfied me in 100% (or even in 70%…). Anki, Babel, DuoLingo, Memorize, Quizlet – each of them has some serious disadvantages. So I decided to create my own app. Prof. Ewa Lajer-Burchardt of Harvard University says it’s undoubtedly one of the best flashcard applications for learning foreign languages on the educational market. This is presumably the eminent Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, a Polish art historian and author of Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David After the Terror. So, how does the app stand up? Will users raise their understanding up to 83%? I was impatient to find out.
It’s a flashcard system with spaced repetition. This particular app has target items and audio recordings on one side of the flashcard, definitions in English, along with illustrations, on the other. It is, the makers say, multisensory. Users are then given two self-evaluation options.
And that, I’m afraid, is about all there is to say. Apart, that is, from the content. Many of the definitions have been culled from Wiktionary, not perhaps the best source of definitions for A1 / A2 learners. Others appear to have been made up in-house. Here is an opportunity to raise your own understanding by up to 83%. Look at the VocApp definitions below and see if you can guess what the target word is (answers below[i]).
1 a piece of a whole
2 a) a kind of box b) a formal word for a situation
3 something people do every day e.g. from 10 o’clock to 4 o’clock to get money
4 a group of people who deal with politics and who give new rules
5 when we are born our life begins, when we die our life comes to an end.
6 an object
7 a) where the cars drive b) a method of doing something
8 The place where we live, not only the Earth, everything which exists; ‘world’ is a general world
9 a location of something
10 a) 24 hours b) when the sun is up, not night
Sorry, Marcin. I’m afraid your app didn’t satisfy me in 100% (or even in 70%…).
[i] Answers: 1 part 2 case 3 work 4 government 5 life 6 thing 7 way 8 world 9 place 10 day
Adaptive Learning in ELT 