The foreign language courses are located in the files. I will call these files Books. The course can be split into one or more books (files). The book consists of lessons. Each lesson is presented in a single window and has 4 parts:
窶「 contents (interactive items that form the body of the lesson),
窶「 exercises (set of exercises to allow students checking their knowledge),
窶「 grammar notes (text explaining issues related to the lesson),
窶「 your notes (you can put your own remarks there).
Here is the book's icon:
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Polish Example
Using a Book - Step by Step.
There is an example book (Polish Example) enclosed. This very short book is NOT intended as a course of Polish but it is just a short example of the program features.
窶「 Drag the font Geneva CE into your System Folder and double click the Polish Example file.
The Main Book Window will be presented:
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If you close this window then all other windows belonging to this book will be closed. When the Main Book Window is in the front then you can edit the Helper Files window (from the Utilities menu). Helper files are just the databases for the Verbs & Nouns application (see Verbs & Nouns manual). You can add as many databases as you wish to the helper files list. Since probably you have nothing to add at the moment leave it as is.
窶「 Now you can open a lesson. Click on the "Lesson 1 - Introduction".
The lesson window will be opened.
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Click everywhere to see what is happening. You should hear the sound from the speaker and see all the necessary explanation about the clicked item in the floater window.
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Above is the example of what you can see if you click on the sentence "Nazywam sie Jan Kowalski". You can notice that:
窶「 upper-left box contains the translation of the whole sentence,
窶「 lower-left box contains some additional information about the chosen sentence,
窶「 right box contains the list of words used in the sentence in their basic forms (infinitives, nominatives),
窶「 if you click the word from the right box then all Helper Files (dictionaries) will be searched to find the information about the chosen word and if the information if found then it is displayed in a separate window.
窶「 If you want to record your voice to compare it with the speaker then use the Rec. button in the small floater window. This small floater window is responsible for the sound support. Three lower buttons are for your own recording. The two upper buttons are for the control of the speaker voice (so you can pause it or stop it). Select an arbitrary Text Item (or Text + Pict Item) and press the Speak button to hear all sentences of this item.
Exercises.
Currently there are 4 types of exercises:
窶「 Sentence -> Sentence
窶「 Voice -> Sentence
窶「 Voice -> Voice
窶「 Choice
You have to type your answer in the answer text box for the exercises of type Sentence -> Sentence and Voice -> Sentence. In the exercises of type Voice -> Voice you have to record your answer and compare it with the pattern answer yourself. In the exercises of type Choice you have to select the correct answer from the list.
URL Support.
The program can use the Internet Config. to open the URLs with the helper programs. To use this feature please make sure that you have the Internet Config. installed and the check box URL Service (in the Preferences window) is checked. If you are not connected to the Internet make sure that the check box URL Service is unchecked.
Index.
You can create an index of each book. To make the index you should choose the Index... item from the Utilities menu and click the button Index. The index will be created. If you check the Add Translations? check-box the translations will be added to the index entries (if you have associated the dictionaries in the Helper Files... window). You can copy the index entries to the clipboard. To select more than one word use:
窶「 shift-key to select adjacent words,
窶「 竚 to select non-adjacent words.
The index is hypertext linked with the lessons. Double-click a word in the Index-window to open the associated lesson(s). You can option-click the word to get the information about it (via the helper dictionaries).
Sound Loop.
You can play the sound in an infinite loop mode. Check the loop? check-box to enable this feature.
If you have more questions please ask: <jiwanski@alpha.luc.ac.be>