TASK 4: My favourite resource for learning English

Learning English is a great pleasure for me. I’ve learned it since primary school and it’s never been easy for me. Anyway, I enjoy learning the language and I try to improve it every day. Now, as my level is good enough and I’m able to speak almost fluently, my main goal is to expand my vocabulary. I don’t like the idea of writing down some words and further memorization. There is an application that helps me achieve my goal. It is Quizlet. https://quizlet.com

I’ll tell you how it works. You can create your own sets of flashcards in there. Once you get the hang of it, it takes only five or ten minutes to upload even large sets of materials to Quizlet. Then you can look through your cards as many times as you need.

 After that you can start drilling the words. There are different learning modes in Quizlet, such as LEARN, SPELL, WRITE and TEST. 

Quizlet provides adaptive training that helps me focus on the most difficult items. In the LEARN mode, Quizlet tests students one item at a time. The items a student performs more poorly on are brought back for further review to help students focus their efforts on items which they have not yet learned or which are more difficult to remember. This adaptive training method increases the efficiency and effectiveness of my studying.

In the SPELL studying mode, students hear the target word spoken out loud and see a written definition on the screen. Their task is to type the target word using its correct spelling. If they make mistakes, Quizlet visually corrects the error, re-reads the word, and reads the spelling one letter at a time. For me, who particularly struggle with spelling  this specific, multi-modal feedback is a wonderful resource.

Quizlet reads the word and definition to the student out loud. Granted, the pronunciation is not always perfect or unambiguous. For example, some English words like “increase” have both noun and verb forms which are pronounced with different syllable stress patterns, and Quizlet would have no way of knowing which part of speech to pronounce unless the word is used in a sentence. But as a general studying helper, this feature is useful.

And there are two more essential advantages of this website.

 Quizlet can be used at home or on the go. I seldom study at home as far as there is Quizlet’s excellent full-featured mobile app to study on the go. I never waste my time, when I travel by bus or car, I study new words!

Once you become familiar with Quizlet.com, you can discover millions of other user-created flashcards. It’s easy to find flash card sets about any subject material imaginable. Of course, it can be difficult to monitor quality and accuracy, but you can copy the set to your profile and edit it: add or delete something and correct mistakes.

To sum up, it's an amazing website! I hope you'll find it helpful.