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Oct. 29th, 2007 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackVocabulary quiz: Free Rice
This vocabulary test is really great? Freerice, unlike a traditional vocab test, has a large dictionary and measures hardness of words by how many people get them right this means it's amazingly good at finding words right on the boundary of what you know, ones you've heard used somewhere, but can't quite place, rather than either being words anyone knows, or common long words, or words so obscure only people in specialist fields know them, or words simply famous for being obscure.
This gives an unfair advantage in the quiz to people who know words from having heard them used in books and conversations with articulate people, rather than people who read dictionaries for fun :) So it suits me.
The questions are tailored to your responses, after a few minutes finding their own level at a category of words you know 3/4 of. I could play all day.
Also, it (apparently) raises advertising revue, from which it donates to charity.
This morning, I got up to level 45/50 before starting getting them wrong. What do you get?
Geography quiz: Statetris
There've been many geography quizes going round that ask if you can place countries in europe, but this is so cool because it's Tetris!
Each country falls from the north, and you have to manoeuvre it into position. There's some clues, for instance, it has to be one of the ones on the bottom.
In the easy level the country is labelled. In intermediate, it isn't. In hard, it needs to be rotated to the correct orientation.
It's really satisfying because when you've completed all-but-one, the last country is Russia, which is really big, and really obvious, so it's such a release to be able to plonk it down with a thunderous crash to finish the level.
This vocabulary test is really great? Freerice, unlike a traditional vocab test, has a large dictionary and measures hardness of words by how many people get them right this means it's amazingly good at finding words right on the boundary of what you know, ones you've heard used somewhere, but can't quite place, rather than either being words anyone knows, or common long words, or words so obscure only people in specialist fields know them, or words simply famous for being obscure.
This gives an unfair advantage in the quiz to people who know words from having heard them used in books and conversations with articulate people, rather than people who read dictionaries for fun :) So it suits me.
The questions are tailored to your responses, after a few minutes finding their own level at a category of words you know 3/4 of. I could play all day.
Also, it (apparently) raises advertising revue, from which it donates to charity.
This morning, I got up to level 45/50 before starting getting them wrong. What do you get?
Geography quiz: Statetris
There've been many geography quizes going round that ask if you can place countries in europe, but this is so cool because it's Tetris!
Each country falls from the north, and you have to manoeuvre it into position. There's some clues, for instance, it has to be one of the ones on the bottom.
In the easy level the country is labelled. In intermediate, it isn't. In hard, it needs to be rotated to the correct orientation.
It's really satisfying because when you've completed all-but-one, the last country is Russia, which is really big, and really obvious, so it's such a release to be able to plonk it down with a thunderous crash to finish the level.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:07 pm (UTC)This is mostly due to my knowledge of Latin and Greek rather than having actually seen the words before, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 01:20 pm (UTC)This is mostly due to my knowledge of Latin and Greek rather than having actually seen the words before, though.
But I think that's right, it's true in real life too. I only survived because I could often guess correctly based on what sort of compound I thought the word might be, and possible cognates of parts of it, and some background knowledge just makes that a lot more effective.
Of course, it depends *exactly* what it's testing. You'd know enough to be able to read the word in context and know what it meant, but not necessarily enough to use it with precision and get all the connotations right. That would be a different test, with more precise definitions, but the other is obviously what's meant here.