A review of www.freerice.com

www.freerice.com is one of the websites supported by United Nations World Food Program which aimed to spread knowledge through some gaming activities. In October 2007, John Breen founded this site and donated to UN World Food Program where learners can use this site free and enrich their vocabulary, grammar and other knowledge. In this website, there are 8 different subjects that are covering some general fields of basic learning. The subjects are humanities, English, math, chemistry, language learning, geography, science and test preparation.  This site is not only based on English language but also three other languages e. g. French, Italian and Spanish. Now I would like to discuss about some aspects of using www.freerice.com and how this site can help Bangladeshi student's English vocabulary and grammar learning.

According to Howard Gardner, an American psychologist  (1983), intelligence is not a constant thing or it has no unitary character and he refers multiple intelligence as 'frames of mind'  where intrapersonal  is a special kind of feature that help learners to discriminate complex inner feelings and deficiencies and to improve own knowledge. And Vygotsky's (1896-1934) zone of proximal development is also describes the differences between current and potential knowledge and encourages individual learning. In addition, learner autonomy is another factor in foreign language learning that supports learners own learning activities. Here, the mentioned theories indicates some individual learning activities where www.freerice.com can be one of the best examples of individual vocabulary and grammar learning website. 

 

In this website, both grammar and vocabulary are included in learning English where for each correct answer learners can donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. So, there are three major advantages of this site e. g. first of all they can enhance their vocabulary and grammar, they can donate for the hunger needy peoples which is a noble work and it helps them to formulate their ideas in a better way and manipulates those ideas authentically. The games are very much practical and learners are enthusiastic about the gaming activities and practical works which can help their day-to-day life. And also this language practices improve students job interview and exam scores as well. So, if students get the appropriate directions, they could be motivated to play in this site and update themselves with the global challenging world.

In the context of our country most of the students are not getting the proper instructions of learning vocabulary. Our teachers are still following grammar translation method instead of CLT based textbooks in primary, secondary and in some extent of tertiary level. Moreover, communicative language teaching (CLT) approach is not that much successful and our teachers are not trained that they do not know how to apply CLT and how to teach vocabulary effectively. And the educational setting of urban and rural areas are different where internet is not available in the rural areas as well as the urban local kindergarten schools also. That is why learning websites like www.freerice.com is not applicable for rural students. It is applicable for higher secondary urban students and English medium students of our country. 

Above all the discussions we may close with some hope and possibilities that are given below. In order to apply the site for the students of our country, teachers need to be very proficient about the usage of those sites and internet based teaching instructions. And teacher's training colleges need to include information technology based training in their session. And also the educational institutes need to allow that types of teaching and learning instructions for their students. And informally teachers can introduce students with that kind of individual learning sites and make them aware about the importance of the learning games sites so that they will be more productive and practical which will enhance themselves as well as our country.