Vocabulary is arguably the most important aspect of a foreign language to master if you want to be seriously fluent. It's nice to have a good accent, but even if yours is really rank, people generally don't mind so long as they can understand you. And grammar, though important, is finite, and there comes a point when you can get by quite ably without learning any more. But vocabulary.....
Unfortunately, foreign vocabulary (and English vocabulary come to that) is arbitrary. You just have to learn it. And though in these trendy TEFL days it's an unfashionable thing to say, there is no better way to learn than by repetition, drilling, rote learning. Of course, it would be nice to be in the foreign country, because then you could learn words by hearing them and using them yourself. But for most of us, we have to inflict it on ourselves, as a chore.
So this is the job of VocabTutor. You input the words you want to learn (which incidentally is a help to learning them as well). The program then picks one at random and puts it on the screen. Either you get it right, in which case it goes on to another one, or you get it wrong, in which case it tells you again what it should be, and then picks another. It goes on till you have got them all right.
Run VocabTutor.opo by tapping on its icon twice. You will see the toolbar options; choose "Test", and then select the file you previously set up. You are also given a choice as to whether or not you want to be be tested from your source language or into your source language, although please note that this latter option is only available once you have registered.
The program gives you the option of the test being case sensitive. Some languages require capital letters in certain words, so for these languages it is recommended that you keep the case sensitivity on. Also, if your target language includes accented characters that the Series 5 cannot cope with, you might choose to represent these with capital letters, and leave the case sensitivity on.
The program will pick a word at random. If you can translate it, good. If you make a mistake, however, you are presented with a choice: it could be that your mistake was a typing error, or that you gave "jolly" instead of "merry" or something, and consider that you do actually know the word in question, and want to allow your answer despite the program. If this is the case, press a or tap the allow button. Otherwise, if you agree that you haven't learned the word yet, have a look at the displayed correct answer, say the word to yourself (this makes a big difference to the success of the learning process), and when you are ready, tap continue or press enter. The computer will pick another word, but you will be asked the word you got wrong again. The program goes on till you have got them all right. It will probably take a good few tries before you are getting them all right. You are given a score at the end - this is a simple ratio of wrong answers per size of file.
You can send the fee to the address below. If you are paying in a foreign currency, get in touch and we can arrange something. On receipt of payment I will send you a registration code, which you can enter by choosing register from the program's menu.