Learning and Teaching Languages with your Macintosh
I've developed a set of Macintosh programs to help in learning and teaching foreign languages. The programs can be used by students to access multimedia courses, dictionaries, and to practice the foreign language. Teachers can use the software to prepare learning materials. The modular structure of the 'Language Toolkit' programs allows easy customization for individual needs. The diagram presents the components of the 'Language Toolkit'.

Language Toolkit programs:
Foreign language materials:
 All Dictionaries

 What's new?

Diagram


Inflection Dictionaries Simple Dictionaries Spelling Dictionaries Sample Lessons
 
Verbs & Nouns / Verbs & Nouns Lookup.
Verbs & Nouns is a sophisticated application program for practicing inflection, translation and pronunciation at the level of single words. Along with the program, you need a dictionary module for the target language concerned. Features include inflection exercises, and translation exercises in both directions; the opportunity to record and play sound for single words; and exercises based on sound or pictures. You can also play various word-games. The program keeps a record of exercises and identifies the words that the student has difficulty with. You can create grammatical, thematic, or other groups for practicing on. There is generous provision for users to add notes and comments. A Find feature allows each module to be used as a dictionary. The existing modules allow users to delete or change existing entries to suit their own needs, and to add extra words (a built-in 'inflection-generator' simplifies the addition of inflected words). The program can also be used as an authoring tool to write your own modules of inflected words for any language. Verbs & Nouns Lookup is an easy-to-use program that puts dictionary-power at your fingertips. It makes use of the dictionary modules for the application program 'Verbs & Nouns'. You can use 'Verbs & Nouns Lookup' while you are working with other text-based applications because it searches for any word that you copy to the clipboard.

Depending on which modules you have, 'Verbs & Nouns Lookup' can locate similar words in several languages at the same time. It can check the spelling and translate passages of text word for word. An American English spelling dictionary is included.


To learn more about the chosen features of 'Verbs & Nouns' and 'Verbs & Nouns Lookup' click here.

Download Verbs & Nouns Inflection Dictionaries Simple Dictionaries Download Verbs & Nouns Lookup
 
Language Toolkit Reader and Writer.
Language Toolkit Reader is an interactive multimedia program for language learning. It features the integrated use of text, illustrations, sound, QuickTime movies, vocabulary, exercises based on text and sound, and notes on grammar. You use the program to access lessons which are prepared separately. A teacher can prepare multimedia lessons for any target language by using the companion program 'Language Toolkit Writer'. Associated programs 'Verbs & Nouns' and 'V&N Lookup' give access to additional support in the way of dictionaries, and offer the opportunity for further practice of inflection and translation at the level of single words. Language Toolkit Writer is an authoring tool for preparing interactive multimedia lessons for any language. You build a lesson by dragging-and-dropping ready-made components, pasting illustrations, adding QuickTime movies, sound, vocabulary, exercises based on text and on sound, and notes on grammar. To save you time the program includes four ready-made exercise layouts. Students use the companion program 'Language Toolkit Reader' to make use of the lessons. An associated program 'Verbs & Nouns' allows an author to prepare additional modules to support a series of lessons, i.e. for use as dictionaries and for practicing inflection and translation at the level of single words.
Download LT Reader Sample Lessons Software on CD-ROM Download LT Writer
 
Utilities and Tools.
Word List Maker is a powerful and easy-to-use program, for generating sorted word-lists of several kinds from one or more text files. It can generate word-frequency lists, present the words in the reverse order of letters, indicate the number of letters contained in each word, or sort letters. The spell-checker function is available. The built-in grammar filter allows you to extract verbs, nouns, adjectives, and other parts of speech from any text file. You can also filter words which contain the chosen strings of characters or fulfill other criteria. You can use it to make anagrams, word-frequency lists, indexes, spelling lists, to analyze words by their endings, and for many other tasks. Restore Diacritic is a specialized find-replace engine for text-files. The primary use is to restore diacritics in 7-bit pure ASCII texts. Many older electronic texts use pure 7-bit ASCII without accented letters. This program will attempt to restore the correct diacritics by using the conversion dictionaries. The process of restoring diacritics is sometimes ambiguous. 'Restore Diacritic' will not address this problem. Another use of this program is performing a large number of the find-replace operations on entire words (typically 1 000 - 100 000 rules). For instance you can use it to translate certain words in the text-file from one language to another. Ready made conversion modules are available.

Problems with Downloading Register On-line Software on CD-ROM E-mail Contact

If you have difficulty downloading the programs using the links provided above, try visiting any Info-Mac mirror site and changing the directory to /info-mac/edu/lang. To register the above software on-line using the Kagi store click here. If you have any additional questions then please contact me via the e-mail.

Jacek Iwanski
jaceki@kagi.com

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