Learning Chocolate

This is a friendly little vocabulary site that obligingly offers you the same items in many other languages as well as English.  It seems to get updated - new items have appeared on the site recently.  For each vocabulary field there are opportunities to click a picture and hear each item, match sound and spelling (3 different ways) practise spelling and then do a dictation.  Each activity has a timer and a feedback button.  This is the key to its usefulness: it enables students to come across the same item in many different ways, links pronunciation, meaning and spelling, and provides the consolidation students really need to acquire a new lexical item.  The site has three  full pages of different vocabulary fields: what I also like is that they include collocations.  It has a dual language option for Spanish, Japanese and Chinese speakers (it has its eye on the big markets).  You can show the most IT timid students how to navigate this site and hope they will find this experience so easy they will go away and use it at home.  Your tech savy students will have found it already. 

Unfortunately for my students, the accent and variety is U.S. English, which UK-based beginners in particular find a bit confusing (period? - fullstop!).  I'm just waiting for the Brit English version.  Also, as you might expect with a site which is picture-based, it only offers a basic level vocabulary list.  A further thought - once your students start matching up randomly and then going straight for the checking button, it's time to think of more creative ways of using this site - there's not much learning going on.   



http://www.learningchocolate.co