Language Vocabularies

Crash

Rosetta McLeod

CRASH COURSE By Rosetta McLeod LINGUA FRANCA Recently I attended a national conference on 'The Micro and the Language Specialist' which attracted delegates not only from Britain but also from other European countries. The conference certainly brought home to me the significant role that the microcomputer is now playing in the teaching of languages, from helping young children to read, to encouraging older pupils and adults to master a foreign language. This month, then, Crash Course looks at two publishing houses who have produced programs concerned with language development. The English Language Tutors from Options international aim to teach the basics of the language to primary school children with language difficulties. The author, Edward Ingram, has a degree in Psychology and has had a great deal of teaching experience with children suffering from profound language disorders, such as aphasia and autism. The programs have been thoroughly field-tested in schools. The Options range also includes three foreign language tutors - French, Spanish and German - which have bee designed to help beginners learn the languages and also to provide a revision aid for exam students. The programs cost £8.95 each and come with a detailed information booklet. AVP Computing, too, whose programs featured in Jule Crash Course, have also issued some interesting modern languages programs. I particularly enjoyed the French Crosswords program, and the Dictation package, combining the computer program with audio input, is a worthy study aid. These two programs cost £10.00 each, while the Time programs for French, German, or Spanish cost only £6.00 each. For further information about any of these programs, contact: Options International, [redacted] AVP Computing, [redacted] LANGUAGE VOCABULARIES ENGLISH-FRENCH ENGLISH-GERMAN ENGLISH-SPANISH Each of these three programs in the Language Vocabularies range contains more than 900 words with their English equivalents. The menu offers a choice of several sections based on parts of speech - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions - and you have the option of having words displayed in English or in the foreign language. If a ZX printer is attached, the correct forms of any incorrectly translated words can be printed out. At the top of the screen, the computer displays the number of correct answers given in the appropriate section, together with the number of attempts and the total number of words in the section. For an answer to be accepted as correct, it has to be exact: for example, if the German verb schauen is translated as look it is marked wrong as the whole infinitive to look is required. Similarly, the translation of das Wohnzimmer must be living room, and livingroom or even the living room is not acceptable. Accented letters are represented by graphics characters, and a list of these is obtained by typing 'q'. Although these programs do offer quite a large database of vocabulary words, no attempt is made to make learning enjoyable, or to use the words in any sort of context. As a result then, it seems that the packages would only be of use to a very serious student, and the target audience of 'children from 10 years through to CSE and O Level student' would not find the programs interesting or entertaining enough to provide any motivation for learning. COMMENTS Control keys: English or foreign language words typed in as normal, with the Graphics mode for accented letters Keyboard play: good Graphics: none Use of colour: black, white and grey only