This week, Dr. Heidi and Victor talk about the exciting new features that will be coming up in Version 3 of Vocab Victor.
Watch this week’s video on YouTube below.
Read the text of this week’s video to check your understanding and practice your new words!
Hi, Victor! Hi, Dr. Heidi. So, Victor, what are the new things that are happening in Version 3? Well, we’re trying to make the game a little bit more fun. Well I think the game is already pretty fun! Well, it is pretty fun, but if it’s more fun, then people will play more. And if they play more, they will learn more words! That makes sense. So, What did you change for version 3? Well, the tower is easier. Because, before you had to earn points and stars to get to the next level of the tower and now you just have to win all the games on the level once to get to the next level. Oh well that’s a lot more simple! I think a lot of people were confused about that. Yeah, people complained. So it’ll be easier if they can go up the tower faster, but what do people do if the games are too hard? They can buy hints with charms. Charm? What does charm mean? It’s kind of a little spell. OK, so a charm will let you buy hints. What kinds of hints? Well, for Word Strike you can skip a word you don’t know. For Word Find you can you can find where one of the words is hidden in the puzzles. OK, so similar as before. Yeah but before you got new charms every game. Now if you use up all your charms you can’t get any more hints. Oh, how many charms do they have? Well, everybody starts with three charms, and then you can win new charms when you win a game… Oh, so I play a game and then I win some charms? Yeah, but you have to spend some charms if the game is hard, so sometimes, you might get more charms, but sometimes you will have less charms at the end of the game. Oh, okay, well I’ve seen that in a lot of different games, like Candy Crush Saga and Wordscapes let you kind of use hints that you earn from playing. Yes, exactly it’s like that. And what if they don’t have enough charms but they really want some more? They can buy charms. Oh really, so you can make like an in-app purchase? Yes. So what else can they spend their charms on? Well sometimes they have to pay charms to go to the next level. But they can either earn the charms or they can buy the charms. Oh, so what are some of the other ways to earn charms? Well if you finish a level you’re going to try to earn some charms. That’s great! What else? Well I have a new game called the Daily Challenge, and every day you can play this game. Can you show me an example? Sure so here’s the Daily Challenge. You need to pick the right word to finish the sentence. So, it teaches like verb phrases? Yeah, and other word phrases, because it’s really important not just to know what a word means but also to know how to use them. I agree! That’s a really good idea, Victor. How many questions are there? There’s just one question every day. If they get it right, they win some charms, then they can come back and get a new Daily Challenge the next day! Well that seems like a fun idea! So what else is new with the game? We have a new rank system, so when you start the game you’re very young and you’re a peasant, but if you learn more words you get older and you can become like a baron or a knight or even a king. Those ranks were all from medieval times. Well, yeah because I live in a castle! Got it. So, here’s the ranks now. I’m a knight right now. That’s right because you’ve been playing and you learned a lot of words. It’s kind of cool because your character gets more advanced and also gets a little older. The other thing is that when you get a new rank you get some charms! Oh great I love it! Well, we’ll talk to Victor some more next week and learn about some more new features in Version 3! So, before we go to the definitions, I want to talk about some of today’s words related to using money. In the game, charms are used like money. You can earn them, by completing tasks like winning a game, or you can buy them with real money. You can also spend them, that is, use them to buy things. And there’s another related word, purchase, which can be a verb that means the same thing as “buy,” but can also be used to talk about the thing that you bought, like, at the store, they put my purchases in a bag. Coming up, this week’s words!
Here are some web sites related to this week’s lesson:
Here are the 20 words for week 19. You may know some of these words already. However, it’s very important with vocabulary that you practice the words that you already know in addition to learning new words. This is all good practice and will help your language skills. All these definitions are from the Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary, which is highly recommended for English language learners.
| Word | Definition |
|---|---|
| purchase | to buy (property, goods, etc.); to get (something) by paying money for it |
| different | not the same |
| buy | to get (something) by paying money for it; purchase |
| earn | to get (money, a salary, etc.) for work that you have done |
| full | containing or holding as much or as many as possible |
| point | a particular detail of an idea or argument |
| win | to get (something, such as a prize) by achieving victory in a fight, contest, game, etc. |
| originally | in the beginning; when something first happened or began |
| confuse | to make (something) difficult to understand |
| play | to do activities for fun or enjoyment |
| daily | happening, done, made, used, or existing every day |
| complain | to say or write that you are unhappy, sick, uncomfortable, etc., or that you do not like something |
| start | to do the first part of something; to begin doing something |
| already | before this time; before now |
| charm | something that is believed to have magic powers and especially to prevent bad luck |
| tower | a tall, narrow building or structure that may stand apart from or be attached to another building or structure |
| easy | not hard to do; not difficult |
| release | to make (something) available to the public |
| happen | to take place especially without being planned; occur |
| spend | to use (money) to pay for something |
This week, practice your vocabulary by talking about Vocab Victor! In the comments section, tell us your favorite Vocab Victor feature! What do you hope to see in Version 3?
Finally, download our app Vocab Victor which is available for Apple and Android phones. This vocabulary learning software will help you build and strengthen your vocabulary. What does that mean? Build and strengthen. Build vocabulary means it will teach you new words. Strengthen means it will improve the knowledge of the words you already know. Play Vocab Victor for a few minutes every day to help improve your English! Read more about Vocab Victor at our page for students, Vocab Victor - Students.