Help in English for WriteTester Screen

General

This screen is designed to finish off learning foreign vocbulary. It both helps cement learning the vocabulary by typing the translation of a foreign word / phrase or by learning the spelling of the foreign word / phrase as well as recalling it from memory. The ideal way to proceed is as follows:

Preview

Although you should by now be familiar with most of the words and phrases you may wish to review them before proceeding. If so, the first action is to preview the selection. Click the Preview button and you are presented with the foreign word/phrase and the translation in your own language. Use the Next button to step through the selection concentrating on the spelling until you are confident that you remember most of the words. Then End Preview.

Testing Mode

Each item in your selection is presented at random. If you have followed the recommendation, the first time through you will be presented with a word/phrase from your secondary language. You also see on the top line a description of the item: Its unique ID, Level, Type and Category. Translate the word/phrase and type it into the Input box provided. Click Submit and you will be told if you were correct or not. Each time you are correct, one is added to the score for that item. When you are wrong, one is subtracted. Your score for each word is shown at the bottom of the screen. The next random item will be displayed automatically.

Foreign keyboard

If you are typing the translation from the foreign word into your own language you may continue to use your normal keyboard. However, this might not be convenient if you are typing in the foreign language. If this is the case you might want to use the on-screen keyboard provided for all or some of the characters. To activate the keyboard, click on the "Show Keyboard" link in the lower half of the screen. The keyboard defaults to US English indicated by the red square around US in the bottom left of the keyboard. To select a different keyboard click in this red square and a drop-down selection list is provided. Select the appropriate keyboard language and the keyboard will change. If you wish you can now resize the keyboard for just alpha characters and reposition it as required. Use your mouse-click to type appropriate characters and when complete click Submit. The keyboard will minimise into your task bar and the system will indicate right or wrong. Click Next and the next word is displayed. To re-show the keyboard retrieve it by clicking on the appropriate icon in the task bar. When the exercise is complete, hide the keyboard by clicking on the cross (top right corner).

Mastering Items

When the score for an item reaches 4 it is declared "Mastered" and will not be displayed again in this session. Your overall score is shown at the bottom of the screen e.g. 5 items mastered out of 20 selected. If a word/phrase is well known to you, you may manually set it to "Mastered" so that it does not show again. Click the "Set to Mastered" button when the item is displayed.

Saving current selection

Should you need to suspend your session for any reason e.g. a meal break, you may save the current selection and the current scores by clicking the button labelled "Save selection and exit". Be aware that if the session "times-out" due to inactivity for 20 minutes the current selection will be lost as you will need to log-in again. Saved selections may be reactivated from the welcome screen after you log in. Click the link called "Continue Saved Selection". The testing process will continue from where you saved it.

Statistics

At any stage during the testing process you may view both current statistics (progress of current selection) or overall statistics (how you are progressing with Mastered items compared to all items in the database). Simply click Statistics on the menu bar.

All Items Mastered

When all items in your selection are mastered you will be presented with the Finish screen where you will be able to update the database with your Mastered items and continue to the next stage in the learning cycle. Please see the help associated with this screen for more information.