More information about the software.

When someone was learning a foreign language and achieved an appropriate level of knowledge he starts practicing it. One of the cases of such practicing is reading of the complicated texts like fiction books written on the studied language. It is actually very recommended by teachers as one of the next steps for improving the knowledge of the language.

But such practicing has particular problems. The reading process creates possibilities of mistaken pronunciation and misapprehension of the text. Alternatively it is possible to listen for an audio version of the book when a native reader pronounces it. But here is another problem - obviously the speed and style of the narration is more oriented for native listeners, it will hard for a learner to avoid many miscomprehension mistakes. If the learner combines listening and text reading into the one process it will most likely reduce the number of such mistakes. For many people the way to represent simultaneously the same information visually and acoustically improves information recognition. If in addition the reader will check the proper translation of the text to his own language and use also dictionaries all this will improve the learning process.

But isn’t it quite cumbersome to have a few books and an audio playing device in one place? The reading procedure like that even while seating in front of a big desk table with all this material is quite awkward to say nothing of reading in such way anywhere else, when traveling for example. And also how tedious is the reading process if it is often necessary to page through the dictionaries or translation and stop and rewind audio narration when listener wants to recheck how it was pronounced.

Creating software as a specialized e-book reader combined with audio player is a response to this problem. Portable and mobile computers, like TabletPC and Ultra Mobile PC that recently appeared on the market make such software wider usable.

Currently the following features are implemented:

Ø Playing of audio narration with the synchronous highlighting of the read text: listen to audio narration by clicking the appropriate text with the right mouse button. The corresponding part of the text will be highlighted in a different colour. When click the right mouse button again stop listening the narration.

Ø Parallel translation of each sentence: when you read the sentence, click with the left mouse button the text and view the translation of the chosen sentence, if more than one translation is available click again into the same sentence and view other language translation in a loop;

Ø Choosing languages for translations: if more than one translation is available you can enable or disable viewing translations by checking it from the menu;

Ø Going to the position you stopped reading: Program automatically saves the position from the previous run of the program and brings you to this position when you run it again;

Ø Navigation through the chapters: You can jump to a chapter chosen from the menu;

Ø For viewing a single word translation you can use Babylon: Babylon-Pro is an innovative, pop-up application that enables you to instantly access translations by just clicking on any word. 24 million users use Babylon to get instant translations. Click here to download Babylon for free!

Ø Also for viewing word translation: Click with the middle mouse button or double click left button. It shows on-line translation as if you were using the Babylon box.

Ø Grammatical exercises: This is a new feature. You are able to train yourself grammar while reading by choosing words or phrases matching to the original text. Currently are available exercises for the English articles and demonstrative pronouns.

New features under development:

On the base of the existing literacy works many additional features and exercises will be developed. It will be not only for training reading, comprehension and grammar skills but also for training conversational, pronunciation and writing skills. Also this software will be developed for other operating systems and platforms such as Mac, PocketPC, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry.

Contact.

If you have questions about installation of the program, how to create this type of books by yourself, interested in link exchange or want to be notified when the new features are implemented or other books are created please write to info@interactiveselfstudy.com.

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