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BABYLONIA 3.5 - ENGLISH
Copyright (c) 2000 Hofsoft

Babylonia is a program for studying foreign language vocabulary. You enter the 
words in your course book, select a couple of them for a test and you can start. 
There are two kinds of tests: exercises and exams. In an exercise a word is 
asked until you reach a certain goal score. In an exam a certain number of words 
is asked and in the end you get a mark. You can also enter lesson numbers, 
contexts and pronunciations. If you add pronunciations, Babylonia can also take 
a listen test or a dictation. The program contains support for different scripts 
and find and replace, sort and print functions.

Features:
* specify direction and exercise level for each word separately
* view scores for individual words
* scores preserved until reset
* set an exercise time
* test by exercises or exams
* add lesson numbers and contexts
* record pronunciations
* automatically detect speech in a recording
* pronunciations enable listen tests and dictations
* specify font and character set for a language
* view and print keyboard layouts
* print a wordlist or a selection of words
* find and replace and sort functions


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EXTENSIVE DESCRIPTION

Perhaps you also think that cramming words is not the most pleasant thing of 
learning a foreign language. With a computer you can do that more quickly and 
more efficiently, but also in a more pleasant way. That's why Babylonia was 
written. It's easy: you enter the words in your course book, you set a couple of 
them for a test and you can start.

You can compare the execution of an exercise with using cards on which you write 
the word that you want to learn on one side and its translation on the other 
side. By shuffling the cards you can test them in random order. Each time you 
take a card and you think of the translation of the word. Then you look on the 
back to check whether you were right. If you knew the right answer, you put the 
card aside and you continue with the other cards until no card is left.

In Babylonia that method is used as a basis, but it also has some extra things. 
An important disadvantage of the cards method is that a card is put aside if you 
have answered it correctly once. In many cases you will not really know the word 
yet. Therefore Babylonia uses a more complicated method to decide when a "card 
is put aside". The program remembers the score and progress for each word. The 
score is in fact the number of times that you have translated the word correctly 
during the last five times it has been asked. The progress is the total number 
of times you have translated the word correctly. You can set yourself what score 
and what progress you find sufficient. As for the progress, you can even set it 
for each word separately. That is done by so-called exercise levels. There are 
three exercise levels: quick, normal and intensive. So at intensive practising 
you have to get a higher progress than at quick practising.

As said, the score is calculated over the last five answers and not over all 
answers. The reason for this is that your knowledge is constantly improving, so 
answer that you've given a long time ago, are not representative for your 
knowledge anymore. In the beginning you will not know a word well yet and you 
will often give a wrong answer, while that happens less and less often later. 
Therefore the wrong answers that you gave in the beginning, do not influence the 
score anymore. The same goes for right answers of course.

What's more you can set whether you want to test a word from the foreign 
language to your own language, from your own language to the foreign language, 
or both. For both directions the score is remembered separately.

An example. You can a couple of words in a French wordlist so that they will be 
tested at a normal level from French to English, and that you have to get a 
score of at least 3 (out of 5). A word won't be asked anymore if in the last 5 
answers you were right at least 3 times and in addition you must have given 
enough right answers for a normal (not quick or intensive) progress.

Learning a foreign language is more effective if you regularly study a while 
than if you study a lot at once now and then. Therefore you can set an exercise 
time in Babylonia. By default a time of 30 minutes is set. When you start an 
exercise, a clock will start ticking and when the time has passed, you are asked 
if you want to abort the exercise. That way you could practise half an hour 
every day for example.

Except for practising words with the method described above, you can also have 
Babylonia take an exam. In that case you first set how many questions must be 
asked and then you can start the exam. At the end you will get a mark between 1 
(bad) and 10 (good). A mark below 6 is not sufficient.

The exercise scores are stored together with the wordlist, so you can abort an 
exercise at any moment and continue later where you left off. That's not 
possible in an exam.

In a wordlist you can also store other information than words and scores. You 
can enter for each word in what lesson it occurs, you can add a context in the 
foreign language and at last you can record the pronunciation of a word in the 
foreign language. You can also use the context and pronunciation in tests. If 
you have recorded the pronunciation of a word, there are two special ways of 
testing: the listen test and the dictation. In a listen test Babylonia 
pronounces the word in the foreign language and you have to give the 
translation. In a dictation you have to think of the word that was pronounced 
(and how you spell it).

An important disadvantage of a computer is that it's not easy to enter words in 
another script, like Greek. In Babylonia you can use different scripts, but the 
scripts must be supported by your system. In the help file you can find extra 
information on how to install such support, especially for East-European 
languages. To make typing foreign characters easier, you can also view keyboard 
layouts on your screen or print them on paper.

At last Babylonia also has find and replace, sort and print functions, and you 
can exchange wordlists with other programs.


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INSTALL, LAUNCH AND UNINSTALL

Babylonia is supplied with the easy to use installation program 'Setup'. To 
install Babylonia take the following steps:

* Close all programs you have opened.

* Open Setup. If you have received Babylonia on disk, follow the instructions on 
the first disk to open 'Setup'.

* Follow the instructions that are given in the setup program.


If you have installed the program according to the default settings, you can 
launch it at any moment by clicking Start and then choosing Programs | Babylonia 
| Babylonia.


If you want to remove Babylonia from your computer, you can do it in the same 
way as for other Windows programs, through the control panel. Take the following 
steps to uninstall Babylonia:

* Close all programs you have opened.

* Click Start and choose Settings | Control Panel.

* Double-click Add/Remove Programs.

* Select the tab Install/Uninstall. Here you find a list with software that's 
installed on your computer.

* Select Babylonia.

* Click Add/Remove. The uninstall program of Babylonia is opened.

* Follow the instructions that are given in the uninstall program.

At last you are asked if you want to restart your computer. As soon as you have 
done that, Babylonia is removed completely.


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REGISTRATION

Babylonia is shareware. As long as you haven't registered the program, you're 
using an evaluation version. The evaluation version has three limitations: it 
can only be used during the evaluation period of 20 days, you can use at most 30 
words in a wordlist and in prints you will read that they were made with the 
evaluation version.

The registered version of Babylonia has no limitations. If you order Babylonia, 
you will receive a registration code for 19 euro or 19 US$. You can enter the 
code in the program to take away the limitations. It's also possible to receive 
the program on 3.5 inch disk for 35 euro or 35 US$. As a registered user you can 
get minor updates for free, while major updates can be ordered for a reduced 
price.

More information about ordering and registering is given in the help file.


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DISTRIBUTION

The latest version of Babylonia can be downloaded from the Hofsoft website:
http://www.geocities.com/hofsoft/uk/

The program as it can be downloaded from the Hofsoft website, may be distributed 
freely. Make sure that you distribute the complete setup software. Do not 
distribute (parts of) the software that is installed on your computer after 
setup. At any rate, it is not allowed to distribute registration codes.


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CONTACT

For any questions or comments, you can contact Hofsoft at one of the following 
addresses.

E-mail:
dhofs@dds.nl

Postal mail:
Dennis Hofs
Hofkamp 37
7582 GL Losser
The Netherlands

Website:
http://www.geocities.com/hofsoft/uk/

