My students are always telling me that they struggle with vocabulary, so sometimes I turn
up like this. I'm just kidding!
But they're not alone! The words that look familiar, we don't bother
learning. The words that don't look familiar, just don't stick in our little brains!
Learning vocabulary is something that is often considered a long and painful process. Writing
reams and reams of vocabulary, writing and rewriting in the hope that one day everything
will just stick into place. Flashcard after flashcard - always starting
with the top of the pile - so you never get to the poor lonely words at the bottom of
the pile. It just doesn't work. They don't stick.
But FlashSticks do! Literally! See what I did there?!...
So, what are FlashSticks? Well, it's in the name. Flash as in Flashcards and Stick as
in Sticky! Genius! The days of writing words on a Post-It Note
and giving it to my student and telling them to pop it in a place where they're going to
look every day are over! Instead, the days of saying, "Hey, so here's
a FlashStick with that word on it. Just scan it into your phone when I'm not around, you'll
even hear how to pronounce it are here! Yay!" You can stick them anywhere you like. You
know, providing that it's your stuff you stick them on and you're not gonna get arrested...
What I'm trying to say is - no climbing lampposts to try and stick this one onto a massive luminous
sphere of plasma held together by it's own gravity. Thanks Wikipedia!
The idea behind FlashSticks may sound simple, but the results are brilliant!
I've been trialling it with my students for a while now and I've challenged them to stick
their FlashSticks in the weirdest place. Over to you students!
Fiona needs tea right now! She might call the police but she has an old tortoise too!
Lily and James went all the way to the moon with their FlashSticks. Lily has lots of hair
bobbles and James got his mum involved. Jamie has a lot to do today, including taking
out the recycling, and opening the fridge, and getting some potatoes!
Josie lost the FlashSticks I gave her but got very creative making her own.
And Ewan? Well, he ate an oeuf! Haha! You remember when I learnt that for
my video What Is Langauge? Well, it looks like I'll be able to learn
a lot more sign language soon because FlashSticks have recently teamed up with Signature to
produce Sign Language FlashSticks. But not only that, they're also expanding
their current ranges in French, Spanish, German and Italian to higher levels and introducing
English packs as well. Hot off the press! You totally heard it here
first! So this is like the most exciting time to
get on board with FlashSticks. You know when you discover a band and you're like really
cool and hipster and then you hear it played on Radio 1 and it's like gaaarrrr gurr!
Well, that's FlashSticks right now. I'm just warning you now so that you can practise your
smug face...and find cooler places to stick your FlashSticks before all your friends do.
So you know, you can thank me later. Have you used FlashSticks? I'd love to know
where you put yours and if they worked for you learning a language.
Let me know in the comments below or even better, follow me and FlashSticks on Twitter
and let us know where you put your photos. Ciao!
A massive luminous sphere of plasma held together by it's own gravity...?!
Subtitles by the Amara.org community