TIME Recognizes Vocabulary.com as a "Leader" in Word Learning

Last year, Vocabulary.com made TIME's list of the top 50 websites. Now, TIME senior editor Jeffrey Kluger has reviewed the site in depth, finding that, of online resources to help you learn new words, Vocabulary.com is "a leader in the sector." He judges the site on how well it addresses the questions, "Does this really help you learn? Do the words stick, or do they run out of your head the second you pour them in?"

Kluger writes:

One of the big problems for any teacher trying to pound language into disinterested kids' heads is how to pitch a lesson to a classroom full of students who learn at different levels. Aim too high and you lose the kids in the middle and the bottom. Aim too low and everyone but the slowest learners wind up bored to tears. The typical answer, aim for the middle, achieves just what you'd expect: adequate but unexceptional teaching.

Vocabulary.com attempts to address that first by gamifying its lessons. Students answer questions about words and after each lesson see where they stand in relation to their classmates, watching as their ranking rises and falls. The software collects real-time data on each player's proficiency and asks them one or more questions about each word, trying to nudge them along toward a full understanding of it.

"The system acts like a personal trainer," says Ben Zimmer, language columnist for the Boston Globe and the site's executive producer. "We work with the student to reinforce memory and mastery of the word." That, of course, skews any real competition among the students; refs hardly stop the game to perform calisthenics with players who need it. But a completely even playing field is not the point — learning is. Still, to keep the energy of the game going, the system posts regularly updated leader boards and also allows participating schools to compete with one another.

Teachers can keep an eye on all of this, with back door access to the work all of the students are doing so they can see how they're progressing. They can tailor their lessons for a particular group of students and then enroll them in an online class, choosing which kids belong in which group and teaching them in ways appropriate to them. "It's an efficient use of teachers' time since they don't have to work on things kids know already," says Zimmer. "They can drill down and see how every student is doing."

Significantly, Vocabulary.com does not concentrate exclusively on the meanings of words, but also their usages and applications — when they can be used as both a noun and as a verb; their various shades of context and meaning. It's the difference between understanding, say, the color blue, and understanding all of its intensities and saturations, from navy through cerulean through an airy pastel. Those aren't words, they're word pictures, and they're awfully nice things for kids to be able to paint.

Read the rest of the article, "Hey, Word Geeks! Now There's a Website for You," here.