Drops
Yet another app to help you with your French. This time it’s dedicated to vocabulary. As is increasingly the case these days, it’s subscription based with limited free content to entice you in. However, with five minutes of free content a day it provides you with a useful regular vocabulary refresher. There are prompts inviting you to upgrade to a subscription and occasional advertisements.
You can set your level in your profile, beginner or intermediate. I started as a beginner, not realising there was the option to select a higher level. At the beginner level the vocabulary is very basic while intermediate offers less common words.
The app is available for both iOS and Android. Having got past the preliminaries, which will encourage you to sign in with Facebook, Google or email, you are presented with a selection of word categories. The number of categories is greater if you chose the intermediate level.
Having chosen a category words 'drop' individually to the centre of the screen. To add a word to your learning list you drag it down onto the face icon, the head opening like a lid to receive it. If you don’t want to include it, because it’s already familiar to you, you drag it up to the ‘hide’ icon. When you add a word to your list it is confirmed with an associated image and is spoken by a native French speaker. This underscores the philosophy behind the app, namely to associate words with images.
In use, when a word appears on the screen you are asked to drag it to one of four images, only one of these being a correct match of course. Alternatively, the word may be displayed with an image that is sometimes correct, and at other times wrong, and in this case you are required to choose a tick or cross, as appropriate. And there is pair matching, where three images and three words must be matched.
In addition there are two forms of written practice. The first presents an image along with fragmented parts of the written word and you are required to assemble the word correctly by dragging the fragmented parts. The second is a bubble grid, which you must complete by following the correct path around the grid. There are example screen shots shown below. Repetition is used to assist learning.
Like most of these pseudo game type applications, it is quite addictive and you might find that you decide to take out a subscription to increase your involvement.
You can set your level in your profile, beginner or intermediate. I started as a beginner, not realising there was the option to select a higher level. At the beginner level the vocabulary is very basic while intermediate offers less common words.
The app is available for both iOS and Android. Having got past the preliminaries, which will encourage you to sign in with Facebook, Google or email, you are presented with a selection of word categories. The number of categories is greater if you chose the intermediate level.
Having chosen a category words 'drop' individually to the centre of the screen. To add a word to your learning list you drag it down onto the face icon, the head opening like a lid to receive it. If you don’t want to include it, because it’s already familiar to you, you drag it up to the ‘hide’ icon. When you add a word to your list it is confirmed with an associated image and is spoken by a native French speaker. This underscores the philosophy behind the app, namely to associate words with images.
In use, when a word appears on the screen you are asked to drag it to one of four images, only one of these being a correct match of course. Alternatively, the word may be displayed with an image that is sometimes correct, and at other times wrong, and in this case you are required to choose a tick or cross, as appropriate. And there is pair matching, where three images and three words must be matched.
In addition there are two forms of written practice. The first presents an image along with fragmented parts of the written word and you are required to assemble the word correctly by dragging the fragmented parts. The second is a bubble grid, which you must complete by following the correct path around the grid. There are example screen shots shown below. Repetition is used to assist learning.
Like most of these pseudo game type applications, it is quite addictive and you might find that you decide to take out a subscription to increase your involvement.
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Add new word
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4 choices
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True or false ?
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Pair up
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Word fragments
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Word bubbles
Click any image for light box slide show (6 images)