Vocab Victor: a review

Vocab Victor is a very curious vocab app. It’s not a flashcard system, designed to extend vocabulary breadth. Rather it tests the depth of a user’s vocabulary knowledge.

The app’s website refers to the work of Paul Meara (see, for example, Meara, P. 2009. Connected Words. Amsterdam: John Benjamins). Meara explored the ways in which an analysis of the words that we associate with other words can shed light on the organisation of our mental lexicon. Described as ‘gigantic multidimensional cobwebs’ (Aitchison, J. 1987. Words in the Mind. Oxford: Blackwell, p.86), our mental lexicons do not appear to store lexical items in individual slots, but rather they are distributed across networks of associations.

The size of the web (i.e. the number of words, or the level of vocabulary breadth) is important, but equally important is the strength of the connections within the web (or vocabulary depth), as this determines the robustness of vocabulary knowledge. These connections or associations are between different words and concepts and experiences, and they are developed by repeated, meaningful, contextualised exposure to a word. In other words, the connections are firmed up through extensive opportunities to use language.

In word association research, a person is given a prompt word and asked to say the first other word that comes to their mind. For an entertaining example of this process at work, you might enjoy this clip from the comedy show ‘Help’. The research has implications for a wide range of questions, not least second language acquisition. For example, given a particular prompt, native speakers produce a relatively small number of associative responses, and these are reasonably predictable. Learners, on the other hand, typically produce a much greater variety of responses (which might seem surprising, given that they have a smaller vocabulary store to select from).

One way of classifying the different kinds of response is to divide them into two categories: syntagmatic (words that are discoursally connected to the prompt, such as collocations) and paradigmatic (words that are semantically close to the prompt and are the same part of speech). Linguists have noted that learners (both L1 children and L2 learners) show a shift from predominantly syntagmatic responses to more paradigmatic responses as their mental lexicon develops.

The developers of Vocab Victor have set out to build ‘more and stronger associations for the words your students already know, and teaches new words by associating them with existing, known words, helping students acquire native-like word networks. Furthermore, Victor teaches different types of knowledge, including synonyms, “type-of” relationships, collocations, derivations, multiple meanings and form-focused knowledge’. Since we know how important vocabulary depth is, this seems like a pretty sensible learning target.

The app attempts to develop this breadth in two main ways (see below). The ‘core game’ is called ‘Word Strike’ where learners have to pick the word on the arrow which most closely matches the word on the target. The second is called ‘Word Drop’ where a bird holds a word card and the user has to decide if it relates more to one of two other words below. Significantly, they carry out these tasks before any kind of association between form and meaning has been established. The meaning of unknown items can be checked in a monolingual dictionary later. There are a couple of other, less important games that I won’t describe now. The graphics are attractive, if a little juvenile. The whole thing is gamified with levels, leaderboards and so on. It’s free and, presumably, still under development.

The app claims to be for ‘English language learners of all ages [to] develop a more native-like vocabulary’. It also says that it is appropriate for ‘native speaking primary students [to] build and strengthen vocabulary for better test performance and stronger reading skills’, as well as ‘secondary students [to] prepare for the PSAT and SAT’. It was the scope of these claims that first set my alarm bells ringing. How could one app be appropriate for such diverse users? (Spoiler: it can’t, and attempts to make an edtech product suitable for everyone inevitably end up with a product that is suitable for no one.)

Rich, associative lexical networks are the result of successful vocabulary acquisition, but neither Paul Meara nor anyone else in the word association field has, to the best of my knowledge, ever suggested that deliberate study is the way to develop the networks. It is uncontentious to say that vocabulary depth (as shown by associative networks) is best developed through extensive exposure to input – reading and listening.

It is also reasonably uncontentious to say that deliberate study of vocabulary pays greatest dividends in developing vocabulary breadth (not depth), especially at lower levels, with a focus on the top three to eight thousand words in terms of frequency. It may also be useful at higher levels when a learner needs to acquire a limited number of new words for a particular purpose. An example of this would be someone who is going to study in an EMI context and would benefit from rapid learning of the words of the Academic Word List.

The Vocab Victor website says that the app ‘is uniquely focused on intermediate-level vocabulary. The app helps get students beyond this plateau by selecting intermediate-level vocabulary words for your students’. At B1 and B2 levels, learners typically know words that fall between #2500 and #3750 in the frequency tables. At level C2, they know most of the most frequent 5000 items. The less frequent a word is, the less point there is in studying it deliberately.

For deliberate study of vocabulary to serve any useful function, the target language needs to be carefully selected, with a focus on high-frequency items. It makes little sense to study words that will already be very familiar. And it makes no sense to deliberately study apparently random words that are so infrequent (i.e. outside the top 10,000) that it is unlikely they will be encountered again before the deliberate study has been forgotten. Take a look at the examples below and judge for yourself how well chosen the items are.

Vocab Victor appears to focus primarily on semantic fields, as in the example above with ‘smashed’ as a key word. ‘Smashed’, ‘fractured’, ‘shattered’ and ‘cracked’ are all very close in meaning. In order to disambiguate them, it would help learners to see which nouns typically collocate with these words. But they don’t get this with the app – all they get are English-language definitions from Merriam-Webster. What this means is that learners are (1) unlikely to develop a sufficient understanding of target items to allow them to incorporate them into their productive lexicon, and (2) likely to get completely confused with a huge number of similar, low-frequency words (that weren’t really appropriate for deliberate study in the first place). What’s more, lexical sets of this kind may not be a terribly good idea, anyway (see my blog post on the topic).

Vocab Victor takes words, as opposed to lexical items, as the target learning objects. Users may be tested on the associations of any of the meanings of polysemantic items. In the example below (not perhaps the most appropriate choice for primary students!), there are two main meanings, but with other items, things get decidedly more complex (see the example with ‘toss’). Learners are also asked to do the associative tasks ‘Word Strike’ and ‘Word Drop’ before they have had a chance to check the possible meanings of either the prompt item or the associative options.

How anyone could learn from any of this is quite beyond me. I often struggled to choose the correct answer myself; there were also a small number of items whose meaning I wasn’t sure of. I could see no clear way in which items were being recycled (there’s no spaced repetition here). The website claims that ‘adaptating [sic] to your student’s level happens automatically from the very first game’, but I could not see this happening. In fact, it’s very hard to adapt target item selection to an individual learner, since right / wrong or multiple choice answers tell us so little. Does a correct answer tell us that someone knows an item or just that they made a lucky guess? Does an incorrect answer tell us that an item is unknown or just that, under game pressure, someone tapped the wrong button? And how do you evaluate a learner’s lexical level (as a starting point),  even with very rough approximation,  without testing knowledge of at least thirty items first? All in all, then, a very curious app.

One of the most powerful associative responses to a word (especially with younger learners) is what is called a ‘klang’ response: another word which rhymes with or sounds like the prompt word. So, if someone says the word ‘app’ to you, what’s the first klang response that comes to mind?

Revising vocabulary #2

In the last post, I suggested a range of activities that could be used in class to ‘activate’ a set of vocabulary before doing more communicative revision / recycling practice. In this, I’ll be suggesting a variety of more communicative tasks. As before, the activities require zero or minimal preparation on the part of the teacher.
1 Simple word associations
Write on the board a large selection of words that you want to recycle. Choose one word (at random) and ask the class if they can find another word on the board that they can associate with it. Ask one volunteer to (1) say what the other word is and (2) explain the association they have found between the two words. Then, draw a line through the first word and ask students if they can now choose a third word that they can associate with the second. Again, the nominated volunteer must explain the connection between the two words. Then, draw a line through the second word and ask for a connection between the third and fourth words. After three examples like this, it should be clear to the class what they need to do. Put the students into pairs or small groups and tell them to continue until there are no more words left, or it becomes too difficult to find connections / associations between the words that are left. This activity can be done simply in pairs or it can be turned into a class / group game.
As a follow-up, you might like to rearrange the pairs or groups and get students to see how many of their connections they can remember. As they are listening to the ideas of other students, ask them to decide which of the associations they found the most memorable / entertaining / interesting.
2 Association circles (variation of activity #1)
Ask students to look through their word list or flip through their flashcard set and make a list of the items that they are finding hardest to remember. They should do this with a partner and, together, should come up with a list of twelve or more words. Tell them to write these words in a circle on a sheet of paper.
Tell the students to choose, at random, one word in their circle. Next, they must find another word in the circle which they can associate in some way with the first word that they chose. They must explain this association to their partner. They must then find another word which they can associate with their second word. Again they must explain the association. They should continue in this way until they have connected all the words in their circle. Once students have completed the task with their partner, they should change partners and exchange ideas. All of this can be done orally.
3 Multiple associations
Using the same kind of circle of words, students again work with a partner. Starting with any word, they must find and explain an association with another word. Next, beginning with the word they first chose, they must find and explain an association with another word from the circle. They continue in this way until they have found connections between their first word and all the other words in the circle. Once students have completed the task with their partner, they should change partners and exchange ideas. All of this can be done orally.
4 Association dice
Prepare two lists (six in each list) of words that you want to recycle. Write these two lists on the board (list A and list B) with each word numbered 1 – 6. Each group in the class will need a dice.
First, demonstrate the activity with the whole class. Draw everyone’s attention to the two lists of the words on the board. Then roll a dice twice. Tell the students which numbers you have landed on. Explain that the first number corresponds to a word from List A and the second number to a word from List B. Think of and explain a connection / association between the two words. Organise the class into groups and ask them to continue playing the game.
Conduct feedback with the whole class. Ask them if they had any combinations of words for which they found it hard to think of a connection / association. Elicit suggestions from the whole class.
5 Picture associations #1
You will need a set of approximately eight pictures for this activity. These should be visually interesting and can be randomly chosen. If you do not have a set of pictures, you could ask the students to flick through their coursebooks and find a set of images that they find interesting or attractive. Tell them to note the page numbers. Alternatively, you could use pictures from the classroom: these might include posters on the walls, views out of the window, a mental picture of the teacher’s desk, a mental picture generated by imagining the whiteboard as a mirror, etc.
In the procedure described below, the students select the items they wish to practise. However, you may wish to select the items yourself. Make sure that students have access to dictionaries (print or online) during the lesson.
Ask the students to flip through their flashcard set or word list and make a list of the words that they are finding hardest to remember. They should do this with a partner and, together, should come up with a list of twelve or more words. The students should then find an association between each of the words on their list and one of the pictures that they select. They discuss their ideas with their partner, before comparing their ideas with a new partner.
6 Picture associations #2
Using the pictures and word lists (as in the activity above), students should select one picture, without telling their partner which picture they have selected. They should then look at the word list and choose four words from this list which they can associate with that picture. They then tell their four words to their partner, whose task is to guess which picture the other student was thinking of.
7 Rhyme associations
Prepare a list of approximately eight words that you want to recycle and write these on the board.
Ask the students to look at the words on the board. Tell them to work in pairs and find a word (in either English or their own language) which rhymes with each of the words on the list. If they cannot find a rhyming word, allow them to choose a word which sounds similar even if it is not a perfect rhyme.
The pairs should now find some sort of connection between each of the words on the list and their rhyming partners. When everyone has had enough time to find connections / associations, combine the pairs into groups of four, and ask them to exchange their ideas. Ask them to decide, for each word, which rhyming word and connection will be the most helpful in remembering this vocabulary.
Conduct feedback with the whole class.
8 Associations: truth and lies
In the procedure described below, no preparation is required. However, instead of asking the students to select the items they wish to practise, you may wish to select the items yourself. Make sure that students have access to dictionaries (print or online) during the lesson.
Ask students to flip through their flashcard set or word list and make a list of the words that they are finding hardest to remember. Individually, they should then write a series of sentences which contain these words: the sentences can contain one, two, or more of their target words. Half of the sentences should contain true personal information; the other half should contain false personal information.
Students then work with a partner, read their sentences aloud, and the partner must decide which sentences are true and which are false.
9 Associations: questions and answers
Prepare a list of between 12 and 20 items that you want the students to practise. Write these on the board (in any order) or distribute them as a handout.
Demonstrate the activity with the whole class before putting students into pairs. Make a question beginning with Why / How do you … / Why / How did you … / Why / How were you … which includes one of the target items from the list. The questions can be rather strange or divorced from reality. For example, if one of the words on the list were ankle, you could ask How did you break your ankle yesterday? Pretend that you are wracking your brain to think of an answer while looking at the other words on the board. Then, provide an answer, using one of the other words from the list. For example, if one of the other words were upset, you might answer I was feeling very upset about something and I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing. I fell down some steps. If necessary, do another example with the whole class to ensure that everyone understand the activity.
Tell the students to work in pairs, taking it in turns to ask and answer questions in the same way.
Conduct feedback with the whole class. Ask if there were any particularly strange questions or answers.
(I first came across a variation of this idea in a blog post by Alex Case ‘Playing with our Word Bag’
10 Associations: question and answer fortune telling
Prepare for yourself a list of items that you want to recycle. Number this list. (You will not need to show the list to anyone.)
Organise the class into pairs. Ask each pair to prepare four or five questions about the future. These questions could be personal or about the wider world around them. Give a few examples to make sure everyone understands: How many children will I have? What kind of job will I have five years from now? Who will win the next World Cup?
Tell the class that you have the answers to their questions. Hold up the list of words that you have prepared (without showing what is written on it). Elicit a question from one pair. Tell them that they must choose a number from 1 to X (depending on how many words you have on your list). Say the word aloud or write it on the board.
Tell the class that this is the answer to the question, but the answer must be ‘interpreted’. Ask the students to discuss in pairs the interpretation of the answer. You may need to demonstrate this the first time. If the question was How many children will I have? and the answer selected was precious, you might suggest that Your child will be very precious to you, but you will only have one. This activity requires a free imagination, and some classes will need some time to get used to the idea.
Continue with more questions and more answers selected blindly from the list, with students working in pairs to interpret these answers. Each time, conduct feedback with the whole class to find out who has the best interpretation.
11 Associations: narratives
In the procedure described below, no preparation is required. However, instead of asking the students to select the items they wish to practise, you may wish to select the items yourself. Make sure that students have access to dictionaries (print or online) during the lesson.
This activity often works best if it is used as a follow-up to ‘Picture Associations’. The story that the students prepare and tell should be connected to the picture that they focused on.
Ask students to flip through their flashcard set and make a list of the words that they are finding hardest to remember. They should do this with a partner and, together, should come up with a list of twelve or more words.
Still in pairs, they should prepare a short story which contains at least seven of the items in their list. After preparing their story, they should rehearse it before exchanging stories with another student / pair of students.
To extend this activity, the various stories can be ‘passed around’ the class in the manner of the game ‘Chinese Whispers’ (‘Broken Telephone’).
12 Associations: the sentence game
Prepare a list of approximately 25 items that you want the class to practise. Write these, in any order, on one side of the whiteboard.
Explain to the class that they are going to play a game. The object of the game is to score points by making grammatically correct sentences using the words on the board. If the students use just one of these words in a sentence, they will get one point. If they use two of the words, they’ll get two points. With three words, they’ll get three points. The more ambitious they are, the more points they can score. But if their sentence is incorrect, they will get no points and they will miss their turn. Tell the class that the sentences (1) must be grammatically correct, (2) must make logical sense, (3) must be single sentences. If there is a problem with a sentence, you, the teacher, will say that it is wrong, but you will not make a correction.
Put the class into groups of four students each. Give the groups some time to begin preparing sentences which contain one or more of the words from the list.
Ask a member from one group to come to the board and write one of the sentences they have prepared. If it is an appropriate sentence, award points. Cross out the word(s) that has been used from the list on the board: this word can no longer be used. If the sentence was incorrect, explain that there is a problem and turn to a member of the next group. This person can either (1) write a new sentence that their group has prepared, or (2) try, with the help of other members of their group to correct a sentence that is on the board. If their correction is correct, they score all the points for that sentence. If their correction is incorrect, they score no points and it is the end of their turn.
The game continues in this way with each group taking it in turns to make or correct sentences on the board.

(There are a number of comedy sketches about word associations. My favourite is this one. I’ve used it from time to time in presentations on this topic, but it has absolutely no pedagogical value (… unlike the next autoplay suggestion that was made for me, which has no comedy value).

Revising vocabulary #1

A few years ago, I wrote a couple of posts about the sorts of things that teachers can do in classrooms to encourage the use of vocabulary apps and to deepen the learning of the learning items. You can find these here and here. In this and a future post, I want to take this a little further. These activities will be useful and appropriate for any teachers wanting to recycle target vocabulary in the classroom.

The initial deliberate learning of vocabulary usually focuses on the study of word meanings (e.g. target items along with translations), but for these items to be absorbed into the learner’s active vocabulary store, learners will need opportunities to use them in meaningful ways. Classrooms can provide rich opportunities for this. However, before setting up activities that offer learners the chance to do this, teachers will need in some way to draw attention to the items that will be practised. The simplest way of doing this is simply to ask students to review, for a few minutes, the relevant word set in their vocabulary apps or the relevant section of the word list. Here are some more interesting alternatives.

The post after this will suggest a range of activities that promote communicative, meaningful use of the target items (after they have been ‘activated’ using one or more of the activities below).

1             Memory check

Ask the students to spend a few minutes reviewing the relevant word set in their vocabulary apps or the relevant section of the word list (up to about 20 items). Alternatively, project / write the target items on the board. After a minute or two, tell the students to stop looking at the target items. Clean the board, if necessary.

Tell students to work individually and write down all the items they can remember. Allow a minute or two. Then, put the students into pairs: tell them to (1) combine their lists, (2) check their spelling, (3) check that they can translate (or define) the items they have, and (4) add to the lists. After a few minutes, tell the pairs to compare their lists with the work of another pair. Finally, allow students to see the list of target items so they can see which words they forgot.

2             Simple dictation

Tell the class that they are going to do a simple dictation, and ask them to write the numbers 1 to X (depending on how many words you wish to recycle: about 15 is recommended) on a piece of paper or in their notebooks. Dictate the words. Tell the students to work with a partner and check (1) their spelling, and (2) that they can remember the meanings of these words. Allow the students to check their answers in the vocabulary app / a dictionary / their word list / their coursebook.

3             Missing vowels dictation

As above (‘Simple dictation’), but tell the students that they must only write the consonants of the dictated words. When comparing their answers with a partner, they must reinsert the missing vowels.

4             Collocation dictation

As above (‘Simple dictation’), but instead of single words, dictate simple collocations (e.g. verb – complement combinations, adjective – noun pairings, adverb – adjective pairings). Students write down the collocations. When comparing their answers with a partner, they have an additional task: dictate the collocations again and identify one word that the students must underline. In pairs, students must think of one or two different words that can collocate with the underlined word.

5             Simple translation dictation

As above (‘Simple dictation’), but tell the students that must only write down the translation into their own language of the word (or phrase) that you have given them. Afterwards, when they are working with a partner, they must write down the English word. (This activity works well with multilingual groups – students do not need to speak the same language as their partner.)

6             Word count dictation

As above (‘Simple translation dictation’): when the students are doing the dictation, tell them that they must first silently count the number of letters in the English word and write down this number. They must also write down the translation into their own language. Afterwards, when they are working with a partner, they must write down the English word. As an addition / alternative, you can ask them to write down the first letter of the English word. (This activity works well with multilingual groups – students do not need to speak the same language as their partner.)

I first came across this activity in Morgan, J. & M. Rinvolucri (2004) Vocabulary 2nd edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

7             Dictations with tables

Before dictating the target items, draw a simple table on the board of three or more columns. At the top of each column, write the different stress patterns of the words you will dictate. Explain to the students that they must write the words you dictate into the appropriate column.

As an alternative to stress patterns, you could use different categories for the columns. Examples include: numbers of syllables, vowel sounds that feature in the target items, parts of speech, semantic fields, items that students are confident about / less confident about, etc.

8             Bilingual sentence dictation

Prepare a set of short sentences (eight maximum), each of which contains one of the words that you want to recycle. These sentences could be from a vocabulary exercise that the students have previously studied in their coursebooks or example sentences from vocab apps.

Tell the class that they are going to do a dictation. Tell them that you will read some sentences in English, but they must only write down translations into their own language of these sentences. Dictate the sentences, allowing ample time for students to write their translations. Put the students into pairs or small groups. Ask them to translate these sentences back into English. (This activity works well with multilingual groups – students do not need to speak the same language as their partner.) Conduct feedback with the whole class, or allow the students to check their answers with their apps / the coursebook.

From definitions (or translations) to words

An alternative to providing learners with the learning items and asking them to check the meanings is to get them to work towards the items from the meanings. There are a very wide variety of ways of doing this and a selection of these follows below.

9             Eliciting race

Prepare a list of words that you want to recycle. These lists will need to be printed on a handout. You will need at least two copies of this handout, but for some variations of the game you will need more copies.

Divide the class into two teams. Get one student from each team to come to the front of the class and hand them the list of words. Explain that their task is to elicit from their team each of the words on the list. They must not say the word that they are trying to elicit. The first team to produce the target word wins a point, and everyone moves on to the next word.

The race can also be played with students working in pairs. One student has the list and elicits from their partner.

10          Eliciting race against the clock

As above (‘Eliciting race’), but the race is played ‘against the clock’. The teams have different lists of words (or the same lists but in a different order). Set a time limit. How many words can be elicited in, say, three minutes?

11          Mime eliciting race

As above (‘Eliciting race’), but you can ask the students who are doing the eliciting to do this silently, using mime and gesture only. A further alternative is to get students to do the eliciting by drawing pictures (as in the game of Pictionary).

12          The fly-swatting game

Write the items to be reviewed all over the board. Divide the class into two teams. Taking turns, one member of each group comes to the board. Each of the students at the board is given a fly-swatter (if this is not possible, they can use the palms of their hands). Choose one of the items and define it in some way. The students must find the word and swat it. The first person to do so wins a point for their team. You will probably want to introduce a rule where students are only allowed one swat: this means that if they swat the wrong word, the other player can take as much time as they like (and consult with their tem members) before swatting a word.

13          Word grab

Prepare the target items on one or more sets of pieces of paper / card (one item per piece of paper). With a smallish class of about 8 students, one set is enough. With larger classes, prepare one set per group (of between 4 – 8 students). Students sit in a circle with the pieces of paper spread out on a table or on the floor in the middle. The teacher calls out the definitions and the students try to be the first person to grab the appropriate piece of paper.

As an alternative to this teacher-controlled version of the game, students can work in groups of three or four (more sets of pieces of paper will be needed). One student explains a word and the others compete to grab the right word. The student with the most words at the end is the ‘winner’. In order to cover a large number of items for recycling, each table can have a different set of words. Once a group of students has exhausted the words on their table, they can exchange tables with another group.

14          Word hold-up

The procedures above can be very loud and chaotic! For a calmer class, ensure that everyone (or every group) has a supply of blank pieces of paper. Do the eliciting yourself. The first student or team to hold up the correct answer on a piece of paper wins the point.

15          Original contexts

Find the words in the contexts in which they were originally presented (e.g. in the coursebook); write the sentences with gaps on the board (or prepare this for projection). First, students work with a partner to complete the gaps. Before checking that their answers are correct, insert the first letter of each missing word so students can check their own answers. If you wish, you may also add a second letter. Once the missing words have been checked, ask the students to try to find as many different alternatives (i.e. other words that will fit syntactically and semantically) as they can for the missing words they have just inserted.

Quick follow-up activities

16          Word grouping

Once the learning items for revision have been ‘activated’ using one of the activities above, you may wish to do a quick follow-up activity before moving on to more communicative practice. A simple task type is to ask students (in pairs, so that there is some discussion and sharing of ideas) to group the learning items in one or more ways. Here are a few suggestions for ways that students can be asked to group the words: (1) words they remembered easily / words they had forgotten; (2) words they like / dislike; (3) words they think will be useful to them / will not be useful to them; (4) words that remind them of a particular time or experience (or person) in their life; (5) words they would pack in their holiday bags / words they would put in the deep-freeze and forget about for the time being (thanks to Jeremy Harmer for this last idea).