Some revelations concerning quizlet ...

... or practice what you preach.

I discovered Quizlet about a year ago and, like many people, instantly realised what a great service it is. I started recommending it to all my students. Some took up on it very quickly, others were a bit hesitant. So understanding how important proper introduction is I introduced Quizlet to one of my teenage groups in the language school last September.
As I'd expected nobody jumped from their sit, shouted "Eureka!" and started typing away. So I put a word list from our unit there myself and sent a link to everyone. As our vocabulary test was coming up (we write one after each unit) the students started moving and most of them used it for their preparation. It worked (the test results were visibly better too) and the window of opportunity was opened. Next I asked my students to take turns in transferring words to Quizlet. They had to take smaller parts of the units so the work was doable. For the past 8 months my students have been working with the service. And although there were couple of hiccups along the way (somebody forgot to type in the words), overall I felt it was a successful experiment.

my little zoo

Now the funny part. I recently decided to use quizlet for my own purposes. As a NNEST I strive to perfect my English in any possible way and I decided to make my vocabulary learning more systematic. I created a folder for a current month and started putting new words there whenever I came across one. The list grew longer, but the surprise came when I started working in a "learn" mode. I sucked so much!!! There was a lesson number one for me

1) Actually study the words you add. Duuuh, I was totally under the impression that for me it is enough to put it out there and the words will magically appear in my head and stay there forever. Little did I know that rare minds work this way ;) So adding new words have to be followed by studying the words.

2) Sometimes you need to translate to your native language. This one is funny ironic I usually tell my students, especially at a higher level, to try not to translate the new words but rather understand the definition. Turns out that it doesn't always work. Yes, there are English words and phrases that don't have exact translation to Russian or the concept itself is not existent in our language. That said, there are plenty of words (usually synonyms to already familiar words) that I can only remember and understand the exact shade of the meaning only if I translate them to Russian. Some examples include "vehement", "adamant" and "livid'. I realised that your native language is your asset in learning a second language and if you need it to remember a word, don't fight it.

3) I remember the words that I heard from the video better than the word from the reading. The source of new words for me usually is Internet articles or Youtube videos. I noticed that it is easier for me to remember the word that I got from the video. The process goes like this : I see the word - I remember the video - I remember who said it - I remember the context - bam! i remember the word! Here is the example for the word "conducive" which I heard in Jemima Kirke's psa.

Not sure how I can use this discovery to help myself or my students, but I'll keep thinking ;)

4) And, yes, collocations help. I heard the idea from Leo Selivan's webinar for IATEFL and I finally got to test it. What I did is I added gapped phrases/sentences to the definitions. I found out that I manage to remember the word in almost 100% of cases. In addition, it provides me with a context the word could be used in.

definition and example for "to detract"

Probably, these ideas could be self-evident for somebody, but they weren't for me and maybe somebody will benefit from my observations. But I guess the bottom line here is for teachers to really test the apps and services you recommend to your students. Don't just glance over them and send the link, put yourself in your students' shoes and really try it. If you have some more ideas on how to get the most of Quizlet, I'll be happy to hear them.