VISUWORDS

What is the Link?
(http://www.visuwords.com/)

As demonstrated on the website, Visuwords is a multi-purpose online dictionary that students can use to improve and enhance their vocabulary skills.  This website is very similar to using a thesaurus, however it does more than present word synonyms and antonyms. When a word is entered in the search box, the site inputs the learner's own visualization of the searched term.  Furthermore, the site illustrates how the words relate with each other as well as provide definitions. 

How to integrate Visuwords into the classroom?

This website is a good source for vocabulary words, definitions, synonyms/antonyms, etc.  Students can use it when working on their writing, reading, or vocabulary assignments.  To make the activity more interactive, students can repeat or sound out their new-learned words.  Furthermore, teachers can have learners categorize or label the words based on the eight parts of speech.  Lastly, this website can be use as a writing assignment tool (i.e. writing sentences, vocabulary list, etc.).

Advantages:

Visuwords is quite beneficial when it comes to developing the students' vocabulary skills.  Normally, when people conceptualizes words in their mind, they produce a type of image in their heads that is very similar to the image Visuwords presents; thus making the site relateable and user friendly.  It's straightforward and very useful when it comes to developing and/or expanding vocabulary. 

Disadvantages:

Although Visuwords is a good site for vocabulary development, it provides limited language learning skills to learners.  In addition, the graphics used illustrates a non-linear approach to word visualization that can be perceived as chaotic or confusing to some learners. 

LISTEN & WRITE

What is the Link?

http://www.listen-and-write.com/

Listen and Write is an online language learning resource, which focuses on the learner’s listening, writing, and reading skills. The main objective is for learners to carefully listen to the audio clips and type dictated words. Learners can then evaluate and track their progress by creating an account. Furthermore, this site caters to various levels and the audio clips used are about current events, thus also providing interest to the learner. 

How to integrate Listen and Write into the classroom?

Since Listen and Write focuses on students writing, reading and writing skills, this site can provide teachers a creative range of language learning activities. For examples:

•  After a student has finished listening to the audio clips, he or she can write their own interpretation of the dictated article.
  
• Students can repeat or read out loud their typed text so that there’s also a focus on pronunciation.
  
• Teachers can ask the student to dissect their sentences by asking them to identify the parts of speech

Advantages:

One of the great advantages of this website is that it is for free. While similar sites require members to pay, Listen and Write is easily accessible and freely available to language learners. Also, since one of the main objectives of this site is listening, it provides a sense of language immersion to the learner. It allows students to pay close attention to how certain words are pronounced and if they don’t understand it, the word or sentences can be repeated over and over again until they fully understand the article. Most importantly, Listen and Write is autonomous, thus once a student is registered, he or she can easily track their progress and further develop their skills.

Disadvantages:

Due to the fact that Listen and Write works somewhat similar to the Audio-lingual Method, I believe that students can easily get bored with it. In addition, depending on the level, the audio clips are difficult to understand and replaying the clips can eventually become annoying as well as mind-numbing. There’s also the factor of whether or not learners truly understand what they are hearing or are they just simply typing down words; there’s not focus on improving the learner’s communication skills. Lastly, any type of dictation can only hold someone’s interest for a limited amount of time.