Learning English with Fun by Playing Scrabble

Thursday, September 6, 2007

One most important rule of mastering something quickly is to have a genuine pleasure in it. This same rule is equally valid for English. There is no difference whether to master mathematics or a language.
Learning must be fun! But how to have fun in learning English? Is it possible? Don't worry, you don't have to put on a long face when learning English. Just relax.
You can enrich your vocabulary quickly by playing word games such as scrabble. This is a get-clever-quick method.
As you know, scrabble is a word game in wich the player has to think from time to time of the next word that he can construct by using the letters he has on hand.
By playing this game frequently more and more new words will be stored in your mind and can be recalled whenever you need them.
It is true that you can't understand the English grammar merely by playing scrabble. But, if you have a sufficient store of English words in your memory, learning grammar will be a lot easier.
Yes, scrabble can't help you gain knowledge of English grammar. But it is of great help to you in keeping familiar with the proper form of verb tenses, adjective degrees of comparison, noun numbers and other grammatical rules.
In the past, playing scrabble requires two or more players, therefore it was a problem for learning purpose. However, with the technological advancement, now that problem does not exist any more. You can play scrabble by yourself in your own PC.
Playing in your own PC gives you another advantage: you can find out immediately whether the word you submit is right or wrong. Your PC will tell you.
Here are some tips you can use for improving your English vocabulary by playing scrabble:
Remember that a new word can be formed in two ways:
1) By combining the word with another word.
Examples:
-Man+Kind=>Mankind
-Honey+Moon=>Honeymoon
2) By adding a particle to the word.
2.a) A particle is added to the end of a word (suffix)
Examples:
-Direct+ly=>Directly
-Dark+en=>Darken
2.b) A particle is added to the beginning of a word (prefix)
Examples:
-un+Fortunate=>Unfortunate
-dis+Like=>Dislike
The beauty of this word-formation technique is that you can build numerous new meaningful words without suffering from a bad headache for memorizing them. You don't have to remember all the words. What you should remember are just some of the words in their simplest form and the suffixes and prefixes. Try to add a suitable suffix or prefix to each word on the board. If there is a word that you don't understand, don't forget to open your dictionary to find the meaning.
Good Luck!

Woodworking tools and their uses
Copyright 2005 Jason Bibb
A sculptor's wood carving tools can be explained and appreciated according to their types and functions. Labeled by the processes used in carving wood, tools are used to measure, cut, shape, and finish a raw material into a fine piece of artwork. This article is a brief introduction to these tools and what they're used for:
Measuring (Marking) Wood Carving Tools: Measuring wood carving tools assist with scaling sculptures to an appropriate size and are used at the beginning stage of development. Rulers, tape measures, and protractors are used to mark the increments of a shape's dimensions while perpendicular dimensions are achieved with straightedges, combination squares, or T-squares. If you need an absolute flat area, a plane gauge will help you achieve the perfectly leveled surface. After the proper measurements are put in place, you can use an awl or marking gauge to indent (mark with a slight poke) those measurements for the next stage of development.
Cutting Wood Carving Tools: With cutting wood carving tools, artisans move into the second stage of development and start to remove large sections of wood that will not be part of the final piece. For unusual angles (45 - 90 degree angles, back angles, front angles, etc.), you can use a crosscut saw or you can use a circular saw to cut through a large plane of wood. Table saws, on the other hand, enable you to move your wood into a cut shape, rather than move a saw in the direction of a shape.
Shaping Wood Carving Tools: Having cut away the wood that you don't need (and moved into stage three of development), shaping wood carving tools allow you to bring your abstract piece into one that begins to resemble the final idea. You can use various types of hand planes to shave off thin layers of wood or use a router and bits to engrave fancy designs onto the wood's surface. A lathe will make a rounded surface for you and a chisel will chip away small bits of wood. If necessary, you can use a gouge to clean out holes.
Finishing Wood Carving Tools: At the last stage of development, you'll find these finishing wood carving tools to be essential in bringing your project to a complete fine work of art. Because woodwork at this stage needs only minor adjustments, you can use sandpaper and sandpaper products (belt sander, palm sander, disc sander, and orbital sander) to bring a crude surface to a smooth finish. Files come in handy when you need to remove rough patches while steel or bronze wool will bring your piece to a stained and polished finish

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David Westberg creates fine pieces of artwork from ordinary logs. To view these beautiful chainsaw carvings please visit http://www.chainsaw-bears.net

Developing Learning Activities and Simulations in e-Learning Content
What turns your best dress into a showstopper? Accessories. And what turns your online course content into dazzlingly useful learning content? Learning Activities. What is a Learning Activity? In e-learning content development, we use all forms of questions for test and quizzes:
1. Multiple correct, which presents a number of choices as answers to a particular question. There may be more than one answer to this question. The students chooses all answers that are correct.
2. Single correct, which presents multiple choices as answers to a particular questions. One answer of the possible choices is correct.
3. Item matching, in which there is one column of possible answers that relate to another column of questions. Item matching is commonly used for matching the correct term to the definition.
4. Fill-in-the-blank, in which the students enters the correct word or words that complete a sentence.
5. True/false, in which the student answers whether a statement is true or false.
6. Short answer, in which the student enters a one to two sentence answer to a question.
7. Essay, in which the student responds to a question with a page (or more) long response.
All of these question types are useful for testing knowledge gained from taking a course, as well as testing the level of knowledge prior to a course. In addition, such questions are useful in the course itself as learning checks. The learning check enables the student to determine whether he understands the material. Most companies consider these questions to be adequate learning activities. However, learning activities can be much more. Learning activities that are simulations can involve the student and give him a safe environment in which to practice skills gained through the course. .
Learning Activities are interactive activities that help to explain concepts and involve the student with hands-on learning. This may include all forms of drag and drop questions (one to one correlation, many to one correlation) as well as interactive ordering of graphics or text, and finally, simulations.
An IDC article and survey, Technology-Based Simulations: Cloning the Work Environment for More Effective Learning, June 2004 by Michael Brennan, states, "By 2008 the use of simulations will quadruple.... Simulations provide a parallel universe in which employees hone their skills... Innovative companies have realized this, and others will follow."
Simulations are currently the most expensive learning activity. Simulations must be individually designed and programmed. For example, suppose you have a sales course in which you are testing the sales student's retention of the message that the company wishes to deliver to its customers. You could do a question workshop: several questions that give situations requiring an action in multiple correct or single correct formats. Another, more entertaining, method would be to have the sales person run through a scenario in which he indicates what he would do to sell his product. The learning activity indicates whether the customer would buy this product based on those actions. This feedback could be indicated by a graph indicating customer readiness to buy. It could also be complimented by video, in which the customer appears aggravated when the sales person gives his message incorrectly and pleased when the sales person gives his message correctly.
Online courses are taken privately and at the student's convenience. If the student requires several attempts with a particular scenario, praise the student for continued effort and eventual competency.
Adding humor to simulations and learning activities is essential yet can be controversial. As the simulation developer or content developer, you do not want to add any humor that could be perceived as offensive, sexist or worse, unfunny. To extend our sales example, when the sales person is unsuccessful at selling his product in the learning activity, you would not want your customer video or simple animation of the customer to offend the sales person. Yet you want him to laugh and try again. Perhaps the customer morosely shaking his head and leaving the room, with text indicating how the sales call went dreadfully south would be acceptable and could be done in a humorous fashion. You would not want this animation to be disturbing – the customer should not shake his fist and yell for a restraining order against the sales person, for example.
In the past, I participated in designing a simulation of patient anesthesia. The computer program consisted of a patient on the operating room table and two dials that the student could turn. One dial administered oxygen, the other dial administered anesthetic. The patient's parameters could change (height, weight, age). As the student administered the anesthesia, a graph showed the patient's stats. If you administered too much anesthesia the patient would die! It was a great simulation, but scary. The death knell of the patient was accompanied by funeral music. . Ouch!
On the other hand, sometimes we encounter simulations and learning activities that add nothing to the content or the course. They are superfluous, added to maintain interest. You must be very careful in these instances. If you want to add something to maintain interest, it should still be useful and explore some aspect of the topic. A Flash movie of interesting fractals may be colorful and fun - useless in a course that is not about fractals, art or Flash. For example, suppose you are teaching contractual document details. You can still relate the content of the course to a learning activity in which the student must put the correct elements from a list into three different types of contracts. As dry as you may think detailing the elements of a contract might be, if you add audio that indicates whether the addition was right or wrong, you can keep your student's interest. "Wrong!" can be contrasted with "Oh, not that element, it does not belong" said in a beautiful feminine voice. The second response can add a smile and cause the student to remember how the contractual elements are added to a contract. A booming male voice that states, "You sir, are correct!" can bring that same acknowledgement.
In conclusion, questions and quizzes while useful are not the end of interactivity. We need to provide the means for simulations inside online courses to provide the hands on learning that students need. Through clever activities that allow seeing the consequences of your actions on the simulation model, we can provide activities that enable retention of material and practice. If these activities lead the student to greater understanding, we have provided not only an entertaining activity but also great value for our online courses.
About the Author:
Dana Fine is a Senior Instructional Designer at SyberWorks, Inc. SyberWorks is a custom e-learning solutions company that specializes in learning management systems, e-learning solutions, and custom online course development. Dana is also a frequent contributor to the Online Training Content Journal.
The Online Training Content Journal
The Online Training Content Journal blog looks at best practices, techniques, and trends in online training development and e-learning instructional design.