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Contents
Vocabulary Quiz
Dictionary
Grammar Quiz
Grammar Machine
System Requirements
Installation
Features
Bugs
Limitations
Future Features
Sources Consulted
Author
Vocabulary Files
adjectiv.txt
adverbs.txt
animals.txt
conjunct.txt
countries.txt
days.txt
food.txt
grammar.txt
greeting.txt
health.txt
hours.txt
money.txt
nounjima.txt
nounkivi.txt
nounmmi.txt
nounmwa.txt
nounnn.txt
nounun.txt
numbers.txt
phrases.txt
places.txt
preposit.txt
qadject.txt
shopping.txt
time.txt
travel.txt
verbs.txt
Vocabulary Source
Quiz.java
quizswah.txt
Quiz.class
QuizCategory.class
QuizOptions.class
QuizQuestion.class
QuizScores.class
Grammar Source
Swahili.java
ActionPanel.class
Adjective.class
DicPanel.class
LanguagePanel.class
MenuPanel.class
Noun.class
NounPhrase.class
Pronoun.class
QuestionPanel.class
ScorePanel.class
Sentence.class
Swahili.class
Verb.class
Word.class
WordFile.class Download All Files
swahili.zip |
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- To take the quiz, click on Vocabulary.
- Tip: To read these instructions while using one of the two
programs, open the instructions and program in separate windows.
Right-click the link and select Open in New Window. Use the Windows
taskbar buttons to switch between windows.
- To see a question, click the Display Next Question button (or press
the space bar if you have just answered a question).
- To answer a multiple choice question, click the button with the number of the
answer (1, 2, 3, or 4) that best matches the question (or tab to the
correct button and press the space bar).
- To answer a completion question, type your answer in the text box
and click the Enter button (or press the Enter key).
- Your answer will be marked as correct
or incorrect. The
correct multiple choice button will be marked as YES.
If you chose an incorrect answer, it will be marked as NO.
- You can answer as many questions as you like.
- You can see your percentages and scores in the Scores box. To reset
scores, click the Reset button.
- Options are listed in the Options box. To reset options, click the
Reset button.
- Use the Category menu to select questions from a specific category.
By default, you will see questions from a randomly chosen category of
terms.
- Use the Choice Field menu if you want your answer to always be a
Term or a Definition. By default, the program will select between terms
and definitions randomly.
- Use the Choices menu to change the number of choices.
Multiple-choice questions display four choices by default. To see completion questions, choose completion from the Choices
menu.
- To look up a word in the Dictionary, click
the Dictionary button.
- Open the Vocabulary Quiz and click the Dictionary button.
- To translate between English and Swahili, type a word in the Term or
Definition field
and press Enter or click Search Terms or Search Defs.
- For a random term and its definition, click Random.
- To look up only words in one category, select the category from the
Category menu.
- To see all categories again, select All from the Category menu.
- To return to the Vocabulary Quiz,
click the Quiz button.
- To take the quiz, click on Grammar.
- To see and answer a multiple-choice or completion question, see the
instructions for the Vocabulary Quiz above.
- The fraction and percentage of questions you answered correctly is
shown at the bottom.
- To reset the scores to zero, click the Reset Score button.
- Choose a phrase structure from the Phrase Structure menu.
- random will randomly choose a predefined phrase
structure.
- fully random will create a random phrase structure.
- custom will allow you to create your own phrase
structure using the Grammar Machine.
- Choose a question format (multiple choice or completion) from
the Question Format menu.
- Choose a transformation (translation or compose) from the
Transformation menu.
- Choose the language of your responses from the Target Language menu.
- To see details of the phrase structure in the Grammar
Machine, select Machine from the Activity menu.
- Open the Grammar Quiz and choose
Machine from the Activity menu.
- Select a phrase structure from the Phrase Structure menu (as
described above).
- To see the currently selected phrase in both languages, click the "Swa
& Eng" button.
- To see the selected phrase in only one language, click the "Swahili"
or "English" button.
- To hide the selected phrase, click the "Clear" button.
- To create your own phrase structure, uncheck the two boxes labelled
"select all".
- Check boxes in the "include" column to select which parts of speech
you want to include in your phrase.
- To include a noun phrase you must check the box next to "noun
class".
- To include a verb phrase you must check the box next to "verb".
- Check boxes in the "random" column to randomly select the included
parts of speech before displaying a random phrase.
- Use the other pull-down menus and check boxes to select parts of
speech which are included but not random.
- To display a random phrase for this structure, click the Rand.
Phrase button.
- To display a random phrase for a random phrase structure, click the
Rand. Struct. button.
- To not automatically show the phrase when clicking one of the Rand.
buttons, uncheck autoCompose and/or autoTranslate.
- If you want to use your phrase structure to generate questions for
the Grammar Quiz, make sure the Phrase Structure menu is set to
"custom". Otherwise the phrase structure selected on the menu will
override your custom phrase structure.
- To return to the Grammar Quiz, choose
Quiz from the Activity menu.
- The grammar and vocabulary programs are object-oriented Java applets
that run in a Web browser over the Internet or on a standalone PC.
- To run the following two programs, your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer
5 or Netscape Navigator 6) needs to be able to run Java applets. It needs
a Java 2 Virtual Machine which must be enabled.
- Having problems? For Internet Explorer,
click the Tools menu and click Internet Options. Click the Advanced tab,
scroll down to the Microsoft VM section,
and check the box for "JIT compiler for virtual machine
enabled". (If this doesn't appear, e.g. you have Internet Explorer 6, you
will need to download the virtual machine from the Web. Don't ask why;
just obey Microsoft.)
You can install these programs on a local PC (instead of running it over
the Internet):
- Download swahili.zip (100 KB) by saving it
in a convenient place on your computer's hard disk (e.g. c:\program
files\swahili or c:\my documents).
- Use My Computer or Windows Explorer to find the file.
- Double-click the file. It will expand if you have a newer version of
Windows.
- (If it does not expand, you probably need to install WinZip
shareware which is available on the Internet.)
- A folder named swahili should be created automatically. Double-click
the folder to open it.
- Double-click index.htm. You should then see this page.
- Bookmark the page in your browser (e.g. click the Favorites menu and
click Add to Favorites).
- You can also create a shortcut to index.htm on the desktop or in
your start menu.
- This software is freeware and may be freely distributed.
- The source code can be edited and recompiled if changes are
documented and the original header remains.
- 2000-word vocabulary in 27 grammatical and semantic categories
- 10 parts of speech (nouns; subject, object and relative pronouns;
possessive, regular, quantity and demonstratives adjectives; verbs and
adverbs)
- 13 predefined phrase structures, and a virtually infinite number of
randomly generated or hand-chosen phrases and phrase structures
- 6 noun classes; nouns, pronouns and adjectives agree based on person, number, noun
class, and adjective stem
- 12 verb tenses (infinitive, imperative, polite imperative, present,
future, past, past perfect, future conditional, past conditional,
subjunctive, conditional, habitual) and 5 Swahili verb endings (causative, passive, stative, prepositional, reciprocal) that depend on whether the verb is
Arabic, monosyllabic, or ends in a double vowel
- negative and interrogative sentences
- built-in exceptions for certain words and classes or groups of words
- 2 translation modes: English-Swahili or Swahili-English (or random)
- 2 transformations: translation or compose (or random)
- 2 question types: multiple choice, completion (or random)
- marking of answers and scoring
- Dictionary
- English comes before Swahili in the phrase vocabulary files, instead
of after Swahili as it does in the grammar vocabulary files. This causes the
Dictionary to have a mix of English and Swahili in the Terms list and
complicates searching.
- Grammar Quiz
- Occasionally two or more different options are correct but only one
is accepted.
- On very rare occasions two or more multiple choice options are
identical.
- Questions can be skipped without being answered and without
incurring a penalty.
- Accidentally pressing the spacebar twice might inadvertently answer
the next question.
- Grammar Machine
- Machine should show vocabulary in English if the target language is
Swahili. (But dynamically changing the menus could be slow.)
- Menus that only apply to the quiz should be made to apply or be hidden.
- Improve algorithms for choosing random sentences, phrases and parts of
speech.
- Autocompose and autotranslate should work whenever any checkbox or
menu is changed.
- English language
- #"if" should appear before the noun for conditional tenses,
e.g. "If I go".
- #Verb should appear before noun for questions with "to
be", e.g., "Am I not?" or "Aren't I?"
- "the" should not be used with certain quantity adjectives.
- Short forms (I'd, couldn't, etc.) should be used only
if/where appropriate, e.g. questions.
- The -ed and -ing forms of some verbs do not correctly double the
final consonant.
- Swahili language
- #Monosyllabic verbs include -ku- with li, na, me, ta, nge, ngali and
relative pronouns but exclude -ku- for ku, ki, ka, hu, a, subjunctive,
present negative, object infixes, and general relative pronoun at end of
stem.
- #Negative present tense Bantu verbs should end with -i, e.g. sijui.
- Some possessives need contractions with people nouns, e.g. mwenzangu,
babako.
- Both languages
- Intransitive verbs should not take objects.
- Verbs that already have objects should not take another.
- "peke yangu"/"by myself" etc. is incorrectly
shown.
- Some complex combinations of things do not work together well or
correctly, e.g. relatives with tenses or objects; possessives with
demonstratives.
- Some verbs, adjectives, etc. should be used only for people; others
only for things.
- The program conception, design, development and testing process was
very unsystematic, so the program needs to be restructured,
particularly the object model, if the code is to be maintained and
reused.
- The program was created by a single author as a spare-time hobby and
not a paid programming team.
- The program author is not fluent in Swahili and the program has
not been tested by a native speaker.
- The program was created mainly to teach Swahili, so its coverage of
English is not as thorough.
- The program cannot understand the meanings of words, so many of the phrases it
generates may be syntactically correct but semantically nonsensical (though often amusing!).
- All languages, even Swahili, come with many exceptions and idioms
that cannot easily be directly translated,
and encoding them all would take a very long time.
- The sentence structures are relatively limited to one position per
part of speech. Actual language has a far greater variation in word
order and phrase structures.
- The program is too strict in judging correct answers to completion
questions, e.g. it should ignore case and extra whitespace; accept
synonyms, alternative meanings, contractions and different word order, etc.
- The array sizes for number of words in each grammar vocabulary file
are hard-coded, so the program will need to be changed and recompiled if the files
grow too large.
- more vocabulary
- more vocabulary categories (time, weights and measures,
household items, etc.)
- more question types (true/false, matching, display)
- more phrase structures and word orders
- #more tenses (present simple, narrative, expedient, past continuous,
pluperfect, incomplete past, general relative)
- #more verb endings (conversive, static, contactive, inceptive, and combinations of existing ones)
- #*more phrase transformations for monolingual learning instead of
translation (decompose, change, add, remove)
- #*mahali class, demonstratives of location (ku/pa/mu, ko/po/mo)
- #ku class (verb->noun, e.g. kusafiri)
- professions (verb->noun, e.g. mlinzi)
- more relative structures
- Swahili personal pronouns for any verb
- nouns as objects and "of + noun" adjectives
- more fine-grained choice of words, e.g. sort verbs into
monosyllabic, Arabic and regular
- more parts of speech: conjunctions, prepositions
- non-personal possessives, e.g. the tree's leaves
- an option to display dashes between Swahili parts of speech for
clarity, e.g. ki-na-cho-baki
- relatives with a noun should be able to switch subject and object
- sort buttons to sort dictionary menus alphabetically
- an option to use British instead of American spelling
- adaptive testing (select questions based on the user's past
performance)
- English Grammar in Use, 2nd ed. Murphy, Raymond. Cambridge,
1984.
- *Simplified Swahili. Wilson, Peter M. Longman, 1985.
- Swahili Book for Intermediates. Swahili and Culture (KIU)
Ltd., Dar es Salaam, 2001.
- Teach Yourself Swahili. Russell, Joan. Hodder & Stoughton,
1996.
- The Friendly Swahili/English Dictionary. Malaika, Baba. Kase
Stores Ltd., 1994.
- *Tourist's
Guide to Swahili, Jambo Kenya.
- Tuki English-Swahili Dictionary,
2nd ed. Institute of Kiswahili Research. University of Dar es Salaam, 2000.
Please send comments, corrections, suggestions, etc. to Greg Vogl
<gregvogl@yahoo.com>.
2002-03-03 |