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