Quizlet: Making Your Class Livelier Through Digital Flashcards

We all want apps that are simple, innovative and engaging. Quizlet is one of them. It’s a web and mobile app that provides endless possibilities to create and share flashcards and quizzes. This simple tool can help teaching vocabulary livelier since it specially designed for words development. It has support features such as games, sharing options, visual and auditory. This tool is not only limited for teachers use, but students can also use this tool to learn vocabulary.

How do we start?

 

All you have to do is go to quizlet.com then you can log in using your Google or Facebook account so you can easily share your records with friends, but if you prefer not to do this, you still can use your email address to create a new account. Next, there are basically two things you can do when you already logged in. First, you can create your own sets of vocabulary. Second, you can use the search bar, enter any keywords and from there you will find many sets of words created by other users. It's pretty simple right? To make things clearer, check out this video below on how to begin using Quizlet.

 

What does it do?

 

From the video above, we pretty much know what this simple tool can do:

Creates your own sets of vocabulary

By clicking the create button, you can make sets of flashcards with its definition, pictures and pronunciation of the words.

Searches for available flashcards

The search button will give you access to enormous kinds of flashcards. Surely, it will save your time!

Provides interactive activities to learn vocabulary

 

• Flashcards: Click this button to start studying your cards. Try to use audio and shuffle supports.
• Learn: A quiz for your students to check their vocabulary.
• Spell: A good activity for listening and writing practice.
• Test: Know how much your students have work on their vocabulary. Use 'print test' button to have the printed version of the test.
• Match: A matching game that Quizlet offers. It can be used by students to practice their memory on vocabulary items. This games includes a timer so you can easily record which students finished the task faster.
• Gravity: This survival game will help your students to study their vocabulary as well as their spelling. This game can be set accordingly, based own individuals level (easy, medium, or hard). 
• Live: A group game where students work together to match a set of vocabulary and its definitions.

What are the benefits for your teaching?

• Enhances students’ pronunciation: Since Quizlet provides a text-to-speech capability, students might be exposed to different range of language accents. There is also another option where teachers can also record their own voices to support students practice of the language.
• Enhances students’ autonomy: Quizlet has both mobile app and web version so it is accessible for students to use for learning vocabulary or to quiz themselves at their own pace and time. Students can also create their own sets of flashcards.  
• Incorporates visual: Having images attached to flashcards bring the ideas to life therefore it also helps students to easily connect  to a particular concept. 
• Accommodates different learning styles: Using its audio and images, both auditory and visual learners can gain much from this tool.

  

 What are the limitations? 

• Although Quizlet has a brilliant text-to-speech capability, it is not perfect. Teachers must pay attention on different pronunciation of English words, for example the word ‘wind’ in both noun and verb forms have different pronunciation in which Quizlet may not know which part of speech to pronounce.
• Some flashcards you find through search tool can contain inaccurate information. Make sure to double check.
• In the free version, some of the options are limited use and not all teachers have the budget to afford the upgraded version.

 

Tips

• Go to pixelbay.com to search for free pictures for your flashcards 
• Make your flashcards more interesting using GIF (Graphic Interchange Format). Go to giphy.com to search for available GIFs. 
• Print out the ‘tests’. Try to print out quizzes and let’s see how students perform in non computer generated quiz.