SmartMemo

This game will be used most of the times to practise vocabulary and sentences, so let's describe this case.

You will have words or sentences with their meaning, which can be a translation or a definition. You will see the word and two big buttons,    meaning -correct- and    meaning -wrong-. Look at the word (or sentence) and see if you understand it and know the meaning of it.

Then move your mouse over the square button with a magnifying glass to see the solution. If you see that you were right then click on the button and if you see that you were wrong then click on the button . Every time you go through all the items, they will be shuffled and start coming out again, so you can practise them again and again until you get familiar with them. The game will keep track of all your right and wrong answers and when you decide to end the activity you will get a graph with the percentage of right and wrong answers you got. A good result would be 80% of right answers. If you get less than that it means that you should do the exercise again, but maybe some other day.

Some activities of SmartMemo may also include phonetic transcription of the words. In that case, when you think of the item you must think of all three things about it: spelling, meaning and pronunciation, and when you check your answer with the button you must get all three things right if you are to click on . This will also help you get familiar with phonetic transcriptions. If you don't know the phonetic alphabet you can learn it here.

When you move your mouse over the solutions button sometimes you may see a comments bubble . If that bubble appears, click on it to open the comments and read them carefully, they'll usually have some important information to learn. And then, when you come accross this item again, try to remember the information you read here, and if you can't remember, then click on the bubble again and read it once more, until you learn the information and can remember it in the future.

LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES (only for activities where this feature makes sense):

When you finish the activity you'll see the number of hits you got right and wrong. If you made mistakes, good, now you can learn from your mistakes. The next time you do this activity you will see a red button to play only mistakes . If you click on that button you will repeat the activity but this time only with the items you failed before, so you can concentrate on those difficult bits you need to master. Your mistake revision will be available to you for one year since the last time you played that activity, so you have plenty of time for revision. If you are not a registered user your mistakes will only be remembered for one day and then they'll be forgotten, so still one more reason to register.

On the opening page of the activity there is an icon to see, download or print all the exercises if you want.

Remember that in this activity repetition is the key. Don't simply do the activity once unless you can see that you know everything. If you are learning new vocabulary or expressions with this game, you must repeat it again and again, and if possible, play with it again in the future. Repetition will help us assimilate. If you do it only once or twice, you may learn some things, but in a few days you will probably forget it.

This game is much more fun and effective if you do it in pairs, with a classmate or a friend, so you can discuss the answers with your partner and make learning much more intense.

There is a software version of this game for Spanish speakers to use in Windows based computers, with all the dynamics of this online version but more functionalities. You can download it for free here: Tragapalabras.

On the opening page of the activity there is an icon to see, download or print all the exercises if you want. If the activity is a listening exercise, you must certainly preview and read the questions carefully before you do the listening.