Scoring and Time Tracking Explained

There are now help buttons next to your score and clock that thoroughly explains how they are calculated. And, if you are using DictionarSquared as part of a school program, how the time tracker affects your grade.

More and more

There are now 375 words that have a video clip. Hooray!

Leaderboard

For each participating high school, we now calculate the top-ten scorers (updated three times daily).

More Video!

Over 250 words now have 20 second video clips. Hooray!

Video!

Over 100 words now have 20 second video clips. The video clips come from popular Hollywood movies and contain the word in dialogue. Who says learning can't be fun?

Teacher Reports

Nicely formatted reports are delivered weekly to teachers indicating each students' grade for the week, along with their usage, and scores.

More Images

We now have photographic contexts for 20% of the words on the SAT list.

Facelift

DictionarySquared is changing it's look. Let us know how you like it.

Image Contexts

During training, some contexts now appear as images with the usual fill-in-the-blank for their captions. Images offer an additional way to learn words, via visual association.

There's not many images loaded up into the site, but the number will soon grow. Good luck and enjoy!

Training Timer

During training, there is now a timer in the upper right-hand corner to let you know how long you've been using the site. The timer will turn red and blink when you should take a break.

Custom Flashcards

Clicking "flashcards" now will display a box where you can choose which specific words will display in the flashcards.

Pronunciations

There are now pronunciations for about half of the SAT words, and about 10% of the GRE words.

Snippets are now more readable

Many of you have requested that the snippets be more readable. They now begin at the beginning of a sentence and end at the end of a sentence.

Review Schedule

DictionarySquared now reviews you according to the "spacing effect" modelled after the popular software SuperMemo (you can read the Wired article here).

Here's how it works: you learn a new word by reading a few snippets, and then four days later it will give you a review, then seven days later, etc. In fact, the site will review you six times spanning a period of five months.

Many researchers have expressed the hope that one day, a vocabulary training program will resemble how vocabulary is naturally learned, i.e. via chance encounters with the word over time. DictionarySquared advances this hope to a reality.

Varying the length of Contexts \ Hiding Definitions

On the homepage, you can now vary the length of the snippets you wish to read as well as the number that appear on each page. In addition, there is also an option to hide the dictionary definitions. These new options now appear in the "advanced" window which can be opened by clicking "advanced . . ." next to the search box.

Scoring

As you use the training program, you will accumulate points by reading words in context, writing definitions, picking your favorite snippets, and answering quiz questions. Beware, you are penalized for answering quiz questions incorrectly.

Newly designed training format

Instead of using drop-downs to inquire about the missing word in the training program snippets, there are now four clickable choices directly underneath the text. This format is more convenient and a delight to use.

Apropos of discussing this improvement, I can take this opportunity to address what many of you have been asking: "why does DictionarySquared ask you for the missing word?" Well, if I do not ask for a missing word, I have no way to guarantee that you've "a" read the snippet and "b" at a minimal level, comprehended the snippet. In order to learn the target word from context, comprehension is an absolute requirement. This is the most painless way I could conceive of to achieve those ends. If any of you have any ideas on how to change this, please let me know. Keep in mind that this is not a "test." I ask for a very simple word only to guarantee you've read it.