It is pleasure to inform that wordgroupz has now stepped into version 0.3

It has been quite some time since I have been working on wordgroupz v 0.3b. In this period wordgroupz went through a lot of changes. To sum up, the features in wordgroupz v 0.3 are :

  • You can add words into different groups. In other words, you can classify different obscure words under a common group name which is easy for you to remember.

  • Search for words in wordgroupz

  • Dictionaries : wordnet (default), webster(online), wiktionary(online)

  • Games : Flash Cards, Multiple Choice Questions

  • Statistics : Review of M.C.Q., Accuracy (%) for each word

  • Pronunciation : generated by espeak (default), if word pronunciation available in wiktionary, the downloaded speech file for the word is played

  • You can also make your personal notes for words.

Download

SOURCE: http://rtnpro.fedorapeople.org/wordgroupz/wordgroupz-0.3.tar.gz

RPM: http://rtnpro.fedorapeople.org/repo/wordgroupz-0.3-1.fc13.noarch.rpm

GIT: http://gitorious.org/wordgroupz

YUM: you can download http://rtnpro.fedorapeople.org/rtnpro.repo into /etc/yum.repos.d/ and do as root

yum install wordgroupz

Why wordGroupz?

You can easily get large list of good words from the internet, your Test Preparation course, etc. So what is the need of wordgroupz? wordgroupz is not just a list of words. There is more to it. It is said that you remember words better when you work with them, like making your own flash cards (rather than purchasing ready made flash cards), looking it up in the dictionary, playing word games, associating pictures, colors, etc. with words.

You may even do that, either in your personal paper notebook or even in text document in a computer. In the case of paper notebooks, it is very difficult to write the words in an organized manner because you don’t know beforehand which word will get its entry in your notebook. And, when your list grows in size, it is very difficult to manage. It goes for e-text document too. This is where wordgroupz comes in.

What is wordgroupz?

wordgroupz gives you a platform to save any word you think important, classify in some common group name ( like concise can be a good group name for words like terse, summary, etc.). By default, when you add a new word, its details from the Wordnet dictionary is retrieved and saved. The words stored in wordgroupz are showed in a tree view with the words as children of some group. You can click on a word to see its details. When your list grows, you can search for the word(s) just by typing its initials.

You can also look up your word in wiktionary or webster. When you look up a word in wiktionary, if wiktionary has an audio file for the word’s pronunciation, it is saved automatically. Then when the play button is pressed, the wiktionary speech file for the word is played, otherwise it is generated by espeak. Once you have looked up  a word either in wiktionary or webster, it is saved for offline viewing.

Games in wordgroupz:

As of now, wordgroupz features two interactive word games : Flash Cards and M.C.Q. (Multiple Choice Questions).

Flash Cards is a self evaluation game. If you cheat, you cheat yourself :P . You see a word in a box here. You can check its meaning. If you knew the answer, you click on ‘I knew it’, else ‘Dammit’. You can play it in the opposite way as well. If you choose the Game Mode to ‘Definition’, then you will be showed the word definition first and then you try to guess the word. By default, the words are shown in an alphabetical manner. To make the order random, select ‘Random’ under ‘Game Modes’.

In M.C.Q., you are asked to find a word’s meaning from 4 options. You choose an option and click ‘Proceed’ to go to the next word. The status bar keeps you updated about the number of correct, incorrect responses. Once you are done with answering all the questions, you can see a review of your M.C.Q. test. Based on your responses, the accuracy (%) for the words is updated. Thus, you can identify the words you don’t remember well and stress on them. You can also choose the number of questions to attempt for a particular M.C.Q. test. M.C.Q. gives higher preferences to new words or words you are weak at, and throws them at you before other words.

The Future:

wordgroupz is in its infancy. There is a long way to go. New features could be :

  • Let users add related images for words.

  • Add more games

  • Fix existing bugs and improve existing features.

  • work on users’ requests and suggestions

Please feel free to drop in your suggestions, comments, feature request, etc.