HOW TO USE THE SUPER DUPER PHRASE TUTORER ============================================= The idea of the super-duper phrase tutorer is to help you to improve your comprehension of a foreign language by playing the sounds of phrases and allowing you to view a translation of them into your language as well as the untranslated text of the phrase. To use the program you type a command (such as the letter 'w' plus the [enter] key]) in the top 'text box' (which has 'Enter a command' written above it) and the program responds by doing something (playing a phrase, or translating a phrase etc). In the 'message box' which is the large text box on the web page, the program normally tells you what command it has just executed. A QUICK EXAMPLE OF USING THE PROGRAM ------------------------------------ When the web page loads you will see a message in the larger text box saying how many phrases are available. Step 1. In the smaller text box (which has 'Enter a Command' written above it) type the letter 'w' and then press the [enter] key. Dont type any spaces or tabs and use lower case, please. You should hear the sound of a randomly selected (or sequential) phrase being spoken. If not please see the 'Questions' section below. Step 2. In the smaller text box (I'll call it the 'command-box' from now on) type 'a' and press the [enter] key. You should hear the same phrase being spoken again. Step 3. In the command-box type 'v' and press the [enter] key. In the larger text box (I'll call it the 'message-box' from now on) you should see the text of the phrase that was just played. The text is in the original language. It is not translated. Step 4. In the command-box type 'x' and press the [enter] key. In the message box you will see (hopefully) the translation of the phrase. This translation is normally generated by some automatic engine (usually google language tools or babelfish). Step 5. In the command-box type 'w' and press the [enter] key. A new randomly selected (or sequential) phrase is spoken. Step 6. You can continue entering commands (letters plus the [enter] key) into the command box in any order that you like. SOME QUESTIONS: --------------- WHAT IS A COMMAND (IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS PROGRAM)? A command is just a letter or word which you type into the 'command box' (the small text box) plus the [enter] key and which makes the program do something. I TYPED A COMMAND AND NOTHING HAPPENED? WHATS GOING ON? Make sure that the cursor was in the 'command box' which is the smaller text box which has something like 'enter a command' written above it Make sure that you pressed the [enter] key after typeing the letter in the command box. Make sure that you didn't type any spaces or tabs before or after the command (ED: This should be fixed). Make sure that you didn't use capital letters for the command. The command should be lower case. I TYPED A COMMAND AND NOTHING HAPPENED EXCEPT THAT I SAW A MESSAGE SAYING 'SORRY THE PROGRAM DOESNT UNDERSTAND THAT COMMAND' Make sure that you didn't type any spaces or tabs before or after the command (ED: This should be fixed). Make sure that you didn't use capital letters for the command. The command should be lower case. Make sure that the command that you typed in the command box was a 'valid' command for the program. You can see what are the valid commands by typing ? and [enter] into the command box. The message-box will then display a list of the valid commands I TYPED THE COMMAND 'w' AND I SAW THE MESSAGE '2 [Command: w] MAY BE SHORT DELAY' BUT I DIDNT HEAR ANY SOUND? WHATS GOING ON? OK, this is a big question and could have a number of answers. Basically inorder to hear the sound you need all of the following things: Firstly to hear the sound you need a 'sound-card', To check if you have a sound-card look at the back of your computer and see if there are 3 small round holes in a row, often with coloured rings. If not buy a sound-card and have it installed into your computer. If you dont want to do that you could investigate programs that play sound files through the dodgy built-in speaker and please tell me the results of your experiments. But you wont be able to use this web-based program, I doubt. Secondly you need speakers connected to that sound-card (or a set of headphones). Obtain speakers or headphones and plug them into the small round hole which says 'line out' or which has a little picture of headphones next to it or something like that. Thirdly you need the volume on the speakers to be turned up sufficiently. There should be a knob on your speakers. Twist it. You also may need to change the volume using a piece of software. On microsoft Windows PCs this software can be found using the menus start-->programs-->entertainment-->volume-control Fourthly you need the correct plugin or activeX object to be installed in your browser. For the netscape browser version 4.61 you need the 'LiveAudio' plugin that allows the browser to play 'wav' format audio files. If you need the LiveAudio plugin search on the internet for 'npaudio.dll' and then copy it into the netscape 'plugin' directory. (Please see the Netscape help to find out what this is) For the Internet Explorer browser you need (I think) an activeX object, but Internet Explorer should automatically install this if it is not already. In other words for Internet Explorer this shouldn't be a problem. There are also other reasons that the sound file will not play, but I cannot enumerate them. Essentially the program has only been tested so far on Microsoft Windows PCs running IE 4,5,6 and Netscape 4.61. WHAT IS A 'LESSON' IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS PROGRAM? A lesson is just a set of phrases (usually about 50). The program only plays the phrases that are in the current lesson. This is because it is probably easier to try and learn a small number of phrases at once in order to give your-self a sense of progress and achievement. WHAT ARE THE 'LESSON' LINKS AT THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE WEB-PAGE FOR? These links are to allow you to load a new set of (usually 50) phrases into the program. The program will only play the phrases in the current 'lesson'. This allows you to just practice a manageable number of phrases at once. HOW TO I LOAD A NEW LESSON (GO TO A NEW LESSON)? Click on one of the links on the right-hand side of the vocab-tutor web page which says something like 'lesson n' where n is some number. WHEN I FIRST LOAD THE VOCAB TUTOR WHAT LESSON AM I IN? You are in the 'all lessons' or 'all phrases' lesson which means that all available phrases are loaded and will be played by the program. WHATS THE WIDE BUT THIN TEXT BOX NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE THAT SEEMS TO CONTAIN A LIST OF URLS? WHATS IT FOR? Really you dont need to worry about this box. It just contains the urls that the program uses to play ('speak') the phrases. If you feeling adventurous you can cut and paste your own urls of sound files in the and then type 'load' in the command box. The program will then use your sound urls instead of its normal ones. But you normally wouldn't need to do this. I NOTICE THAT AFTER I TYPE 'w' PLUS [ENTER] THERE IS A DELAY BEFORE THE PHRASE IS 'SPOKEN'. WHY IS THIS? This is because the sound file of the phrase has to be downloaded from the internet before it can be played. That is why the first time that you play a phrase there will be a delay but the next time that that same phrase plays it should play instantaneously. YOU SEEM TO BE USING SOUND FILES THAT WERE CREATED BY OTHER PEOPLE AND ARE STORED ON OTHER PEOPLES SERVERS. ISNT THIS A LITTLE BIT RUDE NOT TO SAY WRONG? Yes in a sense it is wrong, but since this is a non-commercial and education project I feel reasonably justified. WHAT TYPES OF SYSTEMS HAS THIS WEB PAGE BEEN TESTED ON? Microsoft Windows PCs (Win 2000) with the browsers Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.7, 5, 6 Nescape Navigator 4.61 Apple Macintosh (OSX) Browser ? The sound files are not playing, and the javascript is not working as it should. For example when messages are displayed after a command the iWordCounter variable is undefined and printed out as NaN. Also the sCurrentWord variable is undefined Linux Completely untested Other Unixes Completely untested WHY DID YOU USE JAVASCRIPT TO DEVELOPE THIS INSTEAD OF A "PROPER" LANGUAGE? I wanted to create a program that could be used from an Internet Cafe, where in many cases (especially in Europe) the user is unable to download and run an application. The other alternative was to use a Java applet. However, if this program was written in Java it would only be able to access sound files that were on the same server as the applet (without server-side logic which I dont have access to). Javascript allows me to access the sound files in their original internet location. SUGGESTED WAYS TO USE THE PHRASE TUTOR ========================================= Use the w command to play the next random (or sequential) word. Listen carefully to the word and repeat the sound to yourself as faithfully as you can. Try to imagine how the word is spelt even if you dont know what it means. Use the a command to play the word as many times as you wish. With some languages it is easier to know how the word is spelt than others. For example, Spanish is generally considered easier to understand phonetically than French. Once you have had a guess at how the word is spelt, use the v command to view the text of the word and see how accurate you were. By looking at the spelling of the word you may be able to work out what the word means. Finally use the x command to translate the word into your own language (at the moment, only english) DEFINITIONS =============== Sequential Mode The super duper phrase tutor can be put into a playing mode (which I call 'sequential mode') in which each available phrase sound is played one after the other, so that no phrase will be repeated. This is useful if you want to test that you understand every phrase in a given "lesson". Random Mode This playing mode is where the phrase sound played is chosen randomly from the currently available selection of phrases, in other words all those phrase sounds in the current "lesson". In this mode a phrase sound may be repeated. This mode is useful when you are first learning the phrases; by playing the phrases in a random order you are unable to memorise the order of phrases and therefor "think" that you know what a phrase means but really just remember the translation "by heart". OTHER NOTES AND COMMENTS ======================== At the url http://www.geocities.com/matth3wbishop/spanish/vocab-sp.txt http://www.geocities.com/matth3wbishop/spanish/vocab-fr.txt there is also a vocab tutor which is written as a script designed to be run in a unix shell. The user interface is approximately the same the web version. However at the moment the script uses some programs which are not standard in the unix shell, such as a file called wav.exe which is the program which actually plays the sound file. This is actually a windows program. (This is because I developed the program in a 'cygwin' shell on a windows pc). It should not be difficult to adapt the program to run in a 'standard' unix shell, but I havent done this yet. IDEAS FOR FUTURE DEVELOPEMENT OF THIS PROGRAM (WEB PAGE) Testing on various platforms. May have to use flash to get it to work on Apple. Better translations of phrases.