Vocabulary Trainer Widget (Example)

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The Vocabulary Trainer widget is implementing a slightly modified Leitner system. It helps to collect and train foreign words (terms) most important forthe user concerning her learning goals. Vocabulary terms are stored in five different buckets. If a term is added, it will be put in the first bucket. If the user is training a list and knows the right translation for a term, the termwill be moved to the next bucket, or else it will be moved to the previous bucket.

The information is stored on a central server and accessed over the internet. Each user has a unique username and password. For translation it uses publicly available web services (like Google Translate), and Flickr is used to suggest pictures for terms. Vocabulary termsare stored in a list which can be managed by the user.

The widget has four functionalities represented by four tabs: “Add”, “List”, “Train” and “Stats”.

  1. The “Add” tab allows users to manually insert a new term/sentence, the context of that term, and its source. It will use the translator Web services to give translation suggestions and use Flickr to suggest pictures for the term. This widget exchanges data with two already existing widgets. When reading web pages with the Language Resource Browser widget, the sent term item automatically appears in the Vocabulary Trainer widget together with its term, context and source.
  2.  The second tab, “List”, provides an overview of the stored lists and vocabulary items. The user can create/delete lists and inspect the content of the different buckets. Also the links to the different sources of the vocabulary items are provided (i.e. the web pages where the items originate from).
  3.  The third tab, “Train”, gives the learner the possibility to practice her stored vocabulary. After choosing a bucket that she wants to train a term from, this bucket and its context will be displayed. The user can get help by viewing the source of that item, or by viewing the image to that item (if there is one).
  4.  The fourth tab, “Stats”, shows statistics of the training. It displays a global score and a score for each list.
Links
Implementation Reference: 
http://www.role-demo.de/languageGadgets/vocabularyTrainer/vocabularyTrainer.xml
Images
Screenshot Mock-ups: 
More Details
Use Case: 

Tim is an employee at a German publisher which develops and sells different kinds of books. He works in the sales department. For representing his company in the international market he has to attend the Book Fair in London. As business communication here is in English, Tim needs to improve his English skills, especially in business English. He has been learning already for other purposes with his Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and now wants to use it to learn English. 

Tim opens a web browser window displaying his Personal Learning Environment. He adds new learning applications (widgets) which he wants to use for learning Business English. Among others, he adds the Vocabulary Trainer Widget where he can build up the vocabulary that he wants to learn regularly and logs in. 

Tim starts reading a new text about the book fair in London. But he doesn’t know the word “negotiation”, so he wants to add it to a personal vocabulary list. He switches to the Vocabulary Widget and creates a new vocabulary list, named “bookfair”. Now he can add the selected term to his list.Tim continues to read the next article about ‘Comic books which are used for education’. During reading he adds several terms to his list, also the term ‘exploitation gap’. But he doesn’t find the suggested translation of the term succeeded. So Tim types in a custom translation of the term in his list.

After some reading and entering of words, Tim has a good list of vocabulary items out of his area of expertise.Now Tim wants to train the newly learned words in his vocabulary list using the Vocabulary Trainer widget. The widget gives him an English word and prompts for his translation to German. Analysing his answer, it indicates whether it is correct or wrong.

One day, he is learning with his vocabulary trainer and recognizes that he has problems to remember the term ‘lack of access’ because he does not know the context anymore. Fortunately, the vocabulary trainer has stored the link to the original text. Tim clicks on the source-function and the original text appears in a new tab. Reading the sentence and thinking of the context facilitates him to memorize the term. Another benefit is that Tim now knows in which situations he can use the term.

After a few weeks in which Tim has continuously worked with the Language Learning Widgets, he takes a look at the learning statistics in the vocabulary trainer. He sees the success rate of 100%, which makes him feel well prepared for his new job.