Cultiwords
Memorize, review, and acquire 40 SAT-caliber words
Subjects & Topics
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Cultiwords
Pros: High interest anecdotes make learning words easy and meaningful.
Cons: No user accounts for multiple students; no auditory word pronounciations.
Bottom Line: Excellent method for learning vocab teaches good study technique, too.
Cultiwords is great for individual daily vocabulary practice. In a 1:1 or bring-your-own-device (BYOD) environment, teachers could have kids memorize a new word daily and work through their review words as a warm-up, daily activity, or homework. Teacher could also introduce a word-a-day using Cultiwords on screen with the whole class working through the memorization and review together.
Cultiwords uses repetition and memory techniques to help students learn and remember 40 SAT-caliber vocabulary words. Extension packs of word collections can be added for $.99 each. Students start by attempting to identify the word, then reviewing the definition, which includes phonetic pronunciation, etymology, definition, and anecdotes about the word. At that point, they can choose to forget the word (and learn it at another time), add it to their dictionary, or share it on Facebook. Once the word is added to the dictionary, kids review the word, along with others in the dictionary, until they have identified it correctly three times. Then the word is "acquired" and moved to the acquired list in the dictionary. The dictionary shows the list of words "in process of acquisition" and words "acquired." Students can only review the words once per day, and are reminded with push notification.
With just a few minutes a day, students can dramatically improve their vocabularies using the process of memorization and review. The definitions go beyond the meaning of the wordby giving a colorful narrative of the word's origin and meaning, making it more likely to be remembered. Phonetic information is included in the definitions, but there's no option to hear the words pronounced, which would be a nice feature. The words included in the base set are: austerity, avuncular, back judge, cajole, caustic, colloquial, deplorable, eloquent, eros, gorgon, grouse, hiatus, irate, julienne, kismet, largess, meticulous, officious, paragon, phoneme, phytochemical, plaudit, precocious, quisling, quixotic, repugnant, salubrious, spurious, sultry, ubiquitous, and unctuous.
Learning Rating
An easy-to-use vocabulary builder with solid review tools, but users will need to buy more packs of words.
My take is that there are better apps for building vocabulary that are free or won't cost as much money. This app is a little sneaky in the fact that it seems like you'd get more for buying it then you do, as there are multiple in-app purchases that will need to be made once your student gets through the first 40 words offered by the initial cost of $0.99. I really think it should be stated on the app store that users will need to purchase additional words if they are going to seriously use this app for building vocabulary. I do wish there were some features for students to practice using the vocabulary words in their own writing, but this would have to be a teacher-driven exercise, as the app does not allow for that.
On a plus side, I enjoyed the fact that once users learned a word they could then review all of the words they learned previously in a quiz format or they could review them in their own personal dictionary. Also, the app has a setting where it reminds students with a daily notification to review their words. This would be helpful if this is the go-to vocabulary instruction in one's classroom, so that students could get a reminder on their phone or iPad to review.
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