'Classic Word Games' gets teens ready for school
— -- If your teen has college admissions tests looming and the studying of vocabulary flash cards just isn't happening, reach for the tech — specifically, Ubisoft's new Classic Word Games. This Nintendo DS game actually makes the learning of new words fun.
With 14 games housed in one little DS cartridge, Classic Word Games packs a lot of etymological punch.
The game's philosophy is that your vocabulary grows when you learn words and then use them regularly so that they become part of your "active" vocabulary. The game maintains that most of us only use 10% of the words we know, or roughly about 2,000 words. The game introduces 2,000 new words to you and then keeps track of whether you know them well enough to move them into your "active" vocabulary.
All of the learning of words is done by playing games — lots of games. Classic Word Games divides its word games into categories of improvement, vintage and social.
There are nine vocabulary improvement games, but some are not available at first and must be unlocked. In these games, your answers are tracked and saved so that the game can analyze what words you know and how well you know them. For example, in the "Mismatch" game, the top DS screen fills with three synonyms and the bottom touch screen displays several words; but only one belongs in the set of synonyms shown in the top screen. By tracking how long it takes you to find the right word (including if you select the wrong one first), the game can tell whether you are comfortable with that word. A nice feature about this tracking is that the game continuously presents you with the words that you don't know so that you can learn them.
In other improvement games, you complete famous quotes, link words that are antonyms or synonyms, finish sentences by choosing the appropriate idiom or metaphor, spell words and decipher famous quotes. As you play, you earn stars that can be used to unlock new games.
Vintage games include crossword puzzles, hangman and hidden word puzzles. Under social games, you can play spelling games with another person, either using two DS units or by sharing one.
