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Simulated machine assembly line. CD-ROM for Mac or Windows.
This is a program to retrieve words containing specified letters, sounds, or belonging to specified grammar categories. Runs under Windows 95. Requires additional download from Oxford Text Archive. Free for download from http://www.stir.ac.uk/epd/celt/staff/higgins.htm.
Now called Creatorial; see description there.
Designed for grades 4-6, this CD-ROM-based reference uses audio and graphics to enhance learner understanding of the text. Students can search by title, medium, or category. It also includes a reference game where students get questions to look up in the encyclopedia. Runs on the Mac (System 7.0.7 or higher, 4MB RAM, 4MB hard drive space) and under Windows 3.0. Lab pack of 5 is $240; lab of 15, $690; site (30), $1320; site (50), $2100.
Multimedia English course for true beginners ages 10-17. The focus is on listening, vocabulary, and grammar, with speech recording and playback available. Course material includes school vocabulary and situations, as well as work on letters and numbers. Lessons are sequenced and incorporate review. The management module lets teachers assign placement and track student progress. Pricing options include per-student-use cost. Contact the publisher for details.
Computer game designed to help teach English article usage; supports The Article Book, but does not require the book. It offers six game levels, ten levels of difficulty, complete print options, tracking of wrong answers, and a comprehensive practice session. Includes a test generator option for teachers.
Originally designed as a way of teaching the phonetic alphabet. The student hears a word pronounced, then has to click on the robot on the screen who has that word written on his chest. Set up as a series of minimal pairs. Really challenges the students to distinguish between the various sounds they are having difficulty with. There is a diagnostic exercise included that goes through a wide range of pairs and scores the results as excellent, neutral, or needing practice. Unfortunately, the program does not seem to update these results properly as the students practice each set of sounds. It is also not obvious how to get to the diagnostic test when the stack first opens. Some sounds are clearer than others--even the better Sound Manager voices can only approximate real speech. Shareware. Memory or space requirements: 450k disk space, 2MB RAM (or as much as 5 MB RAM if high quality Voices used.) Headphones help the students focus on the sounds much better (and stop the teacher from going nuts!) (SA) The program can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/mirror/sumex-aim.stanford.edu/edu/fit-or-fat-12b-hc.hqx
Based on Judy Garton-Sprenger and Simon Greenall's course, Flying Colours, this Windows CD-ROM offers sound, video, multiple choice, matching, voice recording, and a variety of text reconstruction exercises. British English in the sound and the authentic texts chosen for inclusion.
A CD-ROM produced in 1996 as a companion work to Focus on Grammar: An Intermediate Course for Reference and Practice by Marjorie Fuchs and Miriam Westheimer with Margaret Bonner, Longman, 1994. Basic, intermediate, high intermediate, and advanced levels are now available. Each level is $100 for a single user, a lab pack (5) for $299, (10) $499; and network license for $750. Fully capable of standing alone, this CD-ROM has quite a range of activities for explaining, practicing, and testing all the grammar points covered in the textbook. While the explanations, charts, appendices are the same as in the textbook, I believe all the many, many interactive exercises are different. As a bonus, there are also some reading comprehension passages with questions and some writing prompts, both featuring the grammar structure(s) under study. I'd recommend this CD for all levels of proficiency except very beginning. It starts with simple present and present continuous and winds its way 'upwards.' It doesn't cover such advanced topics as conditionals or odd-ball tenses like future perfect, but it does a very nice job of presenting and practicing grammar topics generally regarded as being of lower to intermediate difficulty. There's some good material on gerunds, infinitives and verbs with prepositions which have affinities for one or the other. One feature allows students to keep a record of their success on the various exercises, and the built-in wordprocessor makes it easy for students to respond to the writing prompts and to print out their compositions for teachers or peers to read. There's a built-in User's Manual too. As of this writing (January 1997) I haven't used the CD with students yet and I haven't worked with it extensively on a trial basis, so there may be pitfalls and glitches of which I'm not aware. However, I am very much looking forward to turning my lower intermediate grammar students loose on it. (A. Sellers)
For interactive multimedia presentations with graphics, animations, and sound. Can link to a database and display information with hypertext and graphs. Object-oriented language. Presentations can be played from floppy disk, CD-ROM, directly through the internet, or embedded in a Web page or other document. Free program.
A free, downloadable English tutorial application (English Pro Web Edition) that takes a phonetic approach to learning English is available from this Internet site. Also on the site are a chat and message board and a series of interactive games to improve vocabulary, listening, grammar, and spelling.
This CD-ROM has three modes: Learn, where children click on words or letters to hear them spoken; Watch, where children match words and objects then watch a movie incorporating target sounds; and Play, where students have five activities that focus on reading, spelling, painting, matching, and pattern recognition.
Fun with Texts is a flexible text-manipulation package that was originally developed by Graham Davies as an extension of its predecessors, Storyboard and CopyWrite. Version 4 now includes the ability to add graphics, sound, and video. A downloadable demo is available via http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/fwt.htm#demofwt. The Fun with Texts handbook, which contains instructions for teachers and students, can also be downloaded. The web page also includes teacher tips contributed by users.
These four CD-ROMs use QuickTime Video and speech recognition technologies to create an engaging learning environment. The course is designed for intermediate level students preparing to use English in a business context. The primary focus is on practical language functions common in the business world such as requesting, refusing, suggesting, confirming, etc. Vocabulary is developed in the context of meetings, phone calls, a business lunch, negotiations, and a disagreement. Provides about 80-100 hours of intensive self-study and practice. Networkable.
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