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What is wordGroupz?

wordgroupz gives you a platform to save any word you think important, classify in some common group name ( like concise can be a good group name for words like terse, summary, etc.). By default, when you add a new word, its details from the Wordnet dictionary is retrieved and saved. The words stored in wordgroupz are showed in a tree view with the words as children of some group. You can click on a word to see its details. When your list grows, you can search for the word(s) just by typing its initials.

You can also look up your word in wiktionary or webster. When you look up a word in wiktionary, if wiktionary has an audio file for the word’s pronunciation, it is saved automatically. Then when the play button is pressed, the wiktionary speech file for the word is played, otherwise it is generated by espeak. Once you have looked up a word either in wiktionary or webster, it is saved for offline viewing.

Why wordGroupz?

You can easily get large list of good words from the internet, your Test Preparation course, etc. So what is the need of wordgroupz? wordgroupz is not just a list of words. There is more to it. It is said that you remember words better when you work with them, like making your own flash cards (rather than purchasing ready made flash cards), looking it up in the dictionary, playing word games, associating pictures, colors, etc. with words.

You may even do that, either in your personal paper notebook or even in text document in a computer. In the case of paper notebooks, it is very difficult to write the words in an organized manner because you don’t know beforehand which word will get its entry in your notebook. And, when your list grows in size, it is very difficult to manage. It goes for e-text document too. This is where wordgroupz comes in.

Games in wordGroupz

As of now, wordgroupz features two interactive word games : Flash Cards and M.C.Q. (Multiple Choice Questions).

Flash Cards is a self evaluation game. If you cheat, you cheat yourself :P . You see a word in a box here. You can check its meaning. If you knew the answer, you click on ‘I knew it’, else ‘Dammit’. You can play it in the opposite way as well. If you choose the Game Mode to ‘Definition’, then you will be showed the word definition first and then you try to guess the word. By default, the words are shown in an alphabetical manner. To make the order random, select ‘Random’ under ‘Game Modes’.

In M.C.Q., you are asked to find a word’s meaning from 4 options. You choose an option and click ‘Proceed’ to go to the next word. The status bar keeps you updated about the number of correct, incorrect responses. Once you are done with answering all the questions, you can see a review of your M.C.Q. test. Based on your responses, the accuracy (%) for the words is updated. Thus, you can identify the words you don’t remember well and stress on them. You can also choose the number of questions to attempt for a particular M.C.Q. test. M.C.Q. gives higher preferences to new words or words you are weak at, and throws them at you before other words.

How to use wordGroupz?

When you first open wordGroupz (Applications->Education->wordgroupz), you see a welcome screen, with the stored wordlist on the left hand side, and
below it, the interface to add a word to the database.

To add a word, you can enter a word in the “Word” textBox, then select or add a new group from the “Group” drop down menu or leave it blank. Then you may add some notes for your word or keep it blank. When you click the “Add” button, the word and its details get saved in the database.

You can search for a word in the word list by typing the word in the search bar above the word list display.

Now, when you click on a word from the words treeview on the left hand side, you see , in place of the welcome screen, the details for the word. You will be able to see a “Play” button, “Delete” button and a “Dictionary” drop down list. You can play the pronunciation of a word by clicking on the “Play” button, delete the selected word by clicking on the “Delete” button. The “Details” tab shows you a well organized definitions of the word from the respective dictionaries. This is READ_ONLY.

The “Wiktionary” tab lets you fetch the details of the word from wiktionary, http://en.wiktionary.org/ . If pronunciation audio file i available for the word, it is also downloaded and saved.

The “Notes” tab lets you add or edit existing notes for the selected word.

wordGroupz has two games: Flash Cards and M.C.Q. (Multiple Choice Question) to help you learn the words in an interactive way. To play the games, click on
“Games” in the menubar of wordGroupz and select either ‘Flash Cards’ or ‘MCQ’.

In the Flash Card interface, you see a word, check its meaning by clicking on ‘Check’. If you know the word, click ‘I knew it’, else ‘Dammit’. Then you are taken to the next word. By default, the words are displayed first and in an alphabetical order. Select ‘Definition’ from ‘Game Modes’ to show definitions first, and try to guess the word. Check ‘Random’ in the ‘Game Modes’ menu to show the words/definitions in a random way.

In the MCQ interface, you can select the number of questions you would like to attempt. Here, a word is shown and 4 options are provided. One of the 4
options is a correct answer. Click ‘Proceed’ to move to the next question. When you complete the entire test, click the ‘Review’ button to view your test review.

On the basis of performance on the tests/games, wordgroupz shows the accuracy % for a word beside it in the words tree view. Based on this report, you will
be able to focus on the words where your accuracy is less.

Download

Install via yum
#yum install wordgroupz
to install wordGroupz in your Fedora 13 or Fedora 14 box.
SRPM
http://rtnpro.fedorapeople.org/Packages/SRPMS/wordgroupz-0.3.1-3.fc14.src.rpm

The way ahead

wordgroupz is in its infancy. There is a long way to go. New features could be :

  • Support for multiple languages.

  • Let users add related images for words.

  • Add more games

  • Fix existing bugs and improve existing features.

  • work on users’ requests and suggestions

If you have any feature request or suggestion, please mail me at rtnpro@gmail.com

Contributors

Ratnadeep Debnath , IRC Nick: rtnpro, email: rtnpro@gmail.com,
blog: http://ratnadeepdebnath.wordpress.com/
Bamacharan Kundu, IRC Nick: bamachrn, email: bamachrn@gmail.com,
blog: http://bamacharankundu.wordpress.com/