Rocket Italian has 3 games that help you to perfect some of the skills you need to speak Italian. The games are called MegaVocab, MegaAudio and MegaVerb. This post covers MegaVocab and asks can it really help you learn Italian ?
As the name suggests, Megavocab is a game that helps you learn vocabulary.
Words Don't Come Easy To Me...
Once you have the basics of the grammar down one of the biggest things holding you back is a decent vocabulary. However, picking up vocabulary is a hard thing to do in any language. It generally just comes with time and practice as you speak more Italian, hear more words spoken to you or ask what the word for something is.
But speaking Italian all the time is not always possible if you don’t live in Italy or another country that speaks Italian. So how do you learn vocabulary ?
Most educators agree that using audio-visual cues to communicate and reinforce the meaning of a word is the best way to teach vocabulary. By repeatedly seeing an image or image and sound together, a link or connection in the brain forms.
This is the principle behind flash cards that are a popular way to learn vocabulary. Flash cards are basically picture cards with the Italian word underneath or on the other side, to describe the picture.
You can play games with flash cards against your friends or other students. For instance they may show you the picture and you have to give them the Italian word. The game element makes the learning of new words more enjoyable and gives the student a bit more emotional involvement in the learning process. And the visual element makes the link in your brain a little stronger.
Rocket Italian MegaVocab is basically a digital set of flash cards turned into a game.
The breakdown of the game is as follows :
- 20 separate topics to choose from.
- Each topic concentrates on the type of words that might be associated with the topic, some examples being shopping, colors, food, times and tourism.
- When you select a topic, you are taken to a screen that has a photograph, 4 Italian words down the side of the picture and a box where you can display the English word for the picture.
- Your task is to click the Italian word that corresponds to the picture.
- Each topic asks you 25 questions and keeps a score of your correct answers.
- At the end of the questions, you are given a percentage of correctly answered questions.
Depending on your score, you can go onto another topic and set of vocabulary or repeat the same topic.
The box where you can toggle the English word on/off is useful at times because some of the pictures do not make it clear what word is being asked for. For instance, a picture of black cat may be looking for the answer black rather than cat. This is sometimes confusing but in most cases you get the context of the picture and what is being asked.
The MegaVocab also has a feature where you can add your own pictures/questions to the system. This is a handy feature as you can pretty much create a huge digital inventory of flash cards. This can keep the game fresh and test you or your friends on a whole variety of topics and words.
In my opinion, Megavocab is a useful vocabulary learning tool. It is easy to use and gives you feedback on how you are doing. It can make a potentially boring task of learning new words interesting or can be played as a break from the proper course lessons.
Find out more about MegaVocab and the whole course by visiting the Rocket Italian site.