WORDREADY is designed to help you to learn a specially-prepared list of academic vocabulary1.

It presents, practises, revises and extends your knowledge of the vocabulary over a period of time. WORDREADY decides which words to learn based on the texts that you use with it. These texts can be anything you like, but ideally you should choose the kind of texts that you need to read on your course of study. You simply copy and paste the texts into WORDREADY, then answer the questions and do the exercises. The more you use WORDREADY, the more it learns about you and the more it can help you. Remember, WORDREADY is individualised to YOU, so don't share your password with anyone or you will miss out on some exercises and words, and revision will be confusing.

WORDREADY can be used from any internet-enabled computer by going to http://www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish/.

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

SET UP A NEW ACCOUNT (the first time you use the WORDREADY)

In USERNAME, put in your OFFICIAL email address (the one you use with your university, school or college) - you CANNOT set up an account with any other email address. Type in a PASSWORD of your choice (6 to 20 characters long) Click Continue - this will take you to the next page.

Type in the PASSWORD again to confirm it. Type in your FIRST and LAST NAMES. From the drop-down menu choose your FIRST LANGUAGE (if it is not listed please tell your tutor to tell us about it, choose English for now). From the drop-down menu choose which TIMEZONE you are in. Check the box to show you have agreed to the Terms of Use. Click Continue

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

CONFIRMATION EMAIL We will then send you an email asking you to click a link to confirm that you want to start using WORDREADY. CHECK your OFFICIAL email account (our email may go into your spam or junk folder). Click on the link in this email to start using your WORDREADY account.

SIGN IN (each time you use WORDREADY) Sign in with your OFFICIAL email address and your PASSWORD. If you forget your password, CLICK Get new password and one will be sent to your OFFICIAL email address. Once you have signed in to WORDREADY you will arrive at the START SCREEN where you will be able to access 4 different sections: Analyse Texts is where you go to study texts that interest you. Cut and paste texts into WORDREADY and do the exercises that are created for you. Learn Words is the section where you do a wide variety of exercises on the words you are learning. These get more challenging as your knowledge of word families2 increases. My Profile shows your progress so far in WORDREADY. This is also where you can browse any of the words in the vocabulary list. The Support section allows you to contact us with suggestions for improvement, to report a problem or to ask questions about WORDREADY. Please get in touch if there is anything we can do for you! You now know enough to start using WORDREADY!

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

The first time you arrive at the START SCREEN, WORDREADY will suggest you start with Analyse Texts.

ANALYSE TEXTS Click on Analyse Texts and COPY and PASTE a text into the empty Analyse Text box.

Find a text (or part of a text) that you are interested in or need to study (between 10 and 1,000 words 200 to 600 word texts are recommended). You may find this on the internet or it may be a text that your tutor has suggested. SELECT the text, COPY it and then PASTE it into WORDREADY.

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

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Just below the middle of the text you will see how many words there are in your text. CLICK Analyse Text to continue.

At this point the text will have been given a title and be highlighted in a number of ways.

The title chosen is simply the first few words of the text. CLICK the Title and you will be able to change it to a Title of your choice. This will make this text easier to recognise later. Key to text highlighting: Bold pink words are those that have been chosen from the vocabulary list for you to learn (there will usually be around 10 of them). Blue words (also in the vocabulary list) will be learnt later as they are less frequently used. Regular words are from the first 1,000 most frequent words of English. Italicised words are from the second 1,000 most frequent words of English Grey words are less frequent, technical and semi-technical words. Once you have analysed a text, it will appear in a list of texts in the Analyse Texts section of WORDREADY. These can be: Used again click once. Have their title changed - click twice and type the new title. Deleted - click once and then click the Delete button.

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

You can also see a list of the word families2 highlighted to the right of the text.

Note: Once you have been using WORDREADY for some time, you will begin to see Orange words (ones that you are already learning) and Green words (ones that you know well) in the texts. When you CLICK on a Pink word, all of the words from the word family2 are highlighted (in the example below the word simulated was clicked on). Because simulated is the past participle of the verb simulate, all other forms of the verb (infinitive, 3rd person singular and present participle) are highlighted in a slightly lighter pink (see simulate, the infinitive, below). Other words in the family2 that are other parts of speech (adjective, adverb, noun or other) will be shown with a border round them (see simulator, which is a noun, below).

You will also see that a question appears asking about the word you clicked. This is the first of several questions about the highlighted word.

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

WORDREADY uses the answers to the questions about words from your chosen texts to decide the order in which you will learn the words from the vocabulary list. It is important to answer all these questions, so that WORDREADY can learn which words are the most important to you. The first question asks you which is the Part of Speech (adjective, adverb, noun, etc.) of the word you clicked. When you have selected the correct answer, the Next button will become available. After each question CLICK the Next button to move on. The next question asks you to choose the best definition from a list of 5. Words can have up to 5 definitions, so all 5 of them could be correct for the word but we want to know which is the best definition, in the context in your text. If there is only 1 correct answer then it will turn green when you choose it and all the other incorrect answers will become grey. If there is more than 1 correct answer, then when you choose one all incorrect answers will turn grey. The answers that remain yellow are possible correct answers. Choose the best one. If a word has more than 1 possible correct answer, we will ask you to look at a list of example sentences using the word and decide which one uses the word with a meaning that is closest to the one in your text. Choose the one you think best and click the Save button. If the example sentence you have chosen and the definition match each other, then we will store your answer, and display your choices. The word will change from bold to regular text. If they dont match we will ask you a further question. Each word entry will show you: How to spell the word. How to say the word with phonetic transcription and audio clip (CLICK Play). The part of speech. The definition(s) and example sentence(s).

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

Below the summary of the word, you will also see a list of all the members of the word family2 that the word belongs to. The size of each word shows the relative frequency of use in English. The bigger the word the more often it is used. Clicking on the other members of the word family2 will show you the entry for that word. Once you have completed the questions on all pink words in the text, further exercises become available. CLICK the button Do exercises to start these. Once these exercises have been completed, the words are stored and you will see these words later in exercises in the Learn Words section. After you have been using it for a few days, WORDREADY will suggest going to Learn Words when you sign in. This means that there are words that you have covered in texts that are ready for you to revise and extend your knowledge of them. However, you can go to Learn Words at any time. If there are no words ready for you to revise then WORDREADY will choose which words you should learn next and give you a set of exercises to introduce them to you.

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

Teacher Tools If you are using WORDREADY as part of a course, your tutor will follow your progress in WORDREADY and will see: How many texts you have analysed. How many words from those texts you have done exercises with. How well your vocabulary learning is going overall. When you last used WORDREADY.

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WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2

Notes 1. Based on Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List (AWL). This list contains the most important words (after the first 2,000 most frequent) that you need to know if you are studying or reading academic texts in English. The list is based on word families (see note 2. below). 2. A 'word family' is a set of related words including all the different parts of speech and forms that 'word' can have. WORDREADY groups words into families.

www.L2.co.uk/AcademicEnglish

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WORDREADY v1.0.1.3 2011 L2