About
The SMARTool Exercises is a free web resource for English-speaking learners of Russian. It is created as an addition to the
SMARTool project (Strategic Mastery of Russian Tool), which presents the highest frequency (usually about three) forms for over three thousand Russian words. Each word form appears in a full sentence that illustrates its typical use, and both English translations and audio are available.
The SMARTool Exercises project is a gamification tool designed to make the SMARTool fun and effective to use in the classroom and online. We propose two designs, Treasure Hunt and Story Time.
Treasure Hunt challenges the user to answer questions about vocabulary scaled according to proficiency level and ranging from simple observations (like differences in use of prepositions) to deeper questions about how categories differ across languages.
Story Time prompts users to write their own stories based on the word forms, collocations, and grammatical constructions associated with those words in the SMARTool’s example sentences.
We want to challenge users to take advantage of the potential of the SMARTool. Our goal is to focus learning on high-frequency word forms that are most strategic and effective for L2 acquisition, and to do this in ways that stimulate engagement and build lifelong learning skills.