A Semantic Cluster

Click on Wedding on the menu screen.

In this example a wedding ceremony is the main theme and ‘Expressing emotions’, ‘People’, ‘Sayings’ and ’In the church’ are subcategories of this theme. The student clicks on a gap to activate a word or phrase. He or she can try to guess it without the clues or they may choose to activate the clues. For example, in ‘People’, the first clue for the first word is “ newlywed, honeymooner“; the second clue is “a woman participant in her own marriage ceremony“; the third clue automatically spells (b-r-i-d-e), the word, out loud letter-by-letter.

The learner is rewarded with points. The maximum number of points per gap is 7. Using clues subtracts from the number of points gained according to the number shown in the label of each clue button. Filling a gap after using all the clues once brings one point only. In many tasks the first button on the left gives a clue “free of charge”.

When all the gaps have been filled a native speaker repeats all the words. This is an example of the tasks we call Lingonets.

Thematic tasks were the first applications of Lingonet Puzzle Editor, but it was soon noticed that the editor was a very useful tool for developing a wide range of interactive multimedia tasks as you will see by examining the sample tasks below. The name Lingonets has been reserved for the thematic tasks of the type of Wedding example.