Frequently Asked Questions

General

  1. What does it do?
  2. What mobile platforms are supported?

Languages

  1. What is a vocabulary?
  2. What is a user-centric vocabulary?
  3. How does it know what the alphabet of my language is?
  4. What languages are supported?
  5. What about languages with different alphabets, like Greek, Russian, Chinese etc.?

Working In Concert With Other Companies

  1. My company works with and uses languages regularly - how can we take advantage of eVocab?

General

What does it do?

eVocab Lite and eVocab is used to create user-centric (that is, user-defined) vocabularies based on their own needs.

eVocab Lite's current features incude:

  • create, edit and delete vocabulary words and phrases;
  • integrated help - screens with help buttons on raise the appropriate documentation relating to that screen’s fuctionality;
  • use default categories on startup or create, update and delete custom categories used to group words and phrases together;
  • browse words and phrases either alphabetically or by category;
  • reinforcement of words and their spellings through user-entry;
  • take tests on all words or specific categories to reinforce word retention;
  • associate word type against entries, such as noun, verb, adjective etc.;
  • add pronunciation and notes against words and phrases; and
  • internationalisation, supporting user interface and user manual translations into several languages

eVocab's current features incude eVocab Lite's features, plus:

  • statistics are built up when taking tests against specific words - the more often a user fails a word, the more likely the word is to by tested again (thus reinforcing repetetition and remembrance of the word). Such words are marked as problem words;
  • highlighting of problem words, when viewed by category or alphabetically, that the user has failed before (a weather icon shows the status of the word, varying from sun and clouds to rain and thunder showing the severity of failures). Failed words (that the user did not recall) are coloured red, and words that the user recalls but spelled wrong are coloured orange;
  • add Google Translate verification checking of new words, as well as lookup for words that you do not know;
  • Block-commit words in one language using Google Translate to speed up the process of entering vocabulary words; and
  • view test reports, including statistical information, for tests taken. The reports contain weather icons associated with test scores, ranging from thunder (many test failures) to sunny (high marks!). Take tests regularly to increase your test score - with problem words being the focus of tests, users quickly report learning progress - watch test reports go from rainy to sunny!
What mobile platforms are supported?

Currently only Android is supprted. Blackberry and iPhone versions are in development.

Languages

What is a vocabulary?

Traditionally, it was common for learners of new languages to maintain paper-based note books with an 'A to Z' of words and phrases. As new words and phrases were learned, they were added to the vocabulary in the appropriate section. Learners could then carry their small vocabulary around with them in order to flick through it and re-cap on words.

The main problem with this method is that entries are ordered by the date they were entered against the specific alphabet entry. Thus, although the A to Z is easy to find letters for, each entry has an undordered list of entries, duplicate entries often finding their way in. Eventually one of the letters runs out of space, and a new vocabulary created, copying old entries into the new one

eVocab seeks to deal with these issues by presenting a user-friendly experience and creating and maintaining personalised vocabularies for any language required.

What is a user-centric vocabulary?

A user-centric vocabulary is a vocabulary maintained by the end-user. It only contains words that the user has entered. The user enters new words as they learn more and more, and reinforce retention of the word via word entry (an important task in learning to spell the word correctly) and via tests.

How does it know what the alphabet of my language is?

It doesn't. The alphabet is built up as the user adds new words. For a new vocabulary, there will be no alphabet at all. When adding the first word, the alphabet will consist of one letter each in each language. So if a user enters the words foo for the first language and bar for the second language, the first language will contain one alphabetic letter - f, and the second lanugage will contain only b.

What languages are supported?

At the moment any language that uses the ISO Latin 1 character set is supported. This means the majority of Western languages are supported. Note that Welsh/Cymraeg digraphs - 'ch', 'dd', 'ff', 'll', 'rh', 'th' and 'ph' are supported and recognised as different letters to 'l', 'f' etc. Also, the Spanish letter 'ñ' is recognised as a different letter to 'n'.

What about languages with different alphabets, like Greek, Russian, Chinese etc.?

An update is planned for December 2011 for catering for languages that use non-ISO Latin 1 character sets.

Working In Concert With Other Companies

My company works with and uses languages regularly - how can we take advantage of eVocab?

Although eVocab is free, and a small (as yet unfinished) application, there are many plans for it's future development. This includes the creation of company (that is, your company) specific vocabularies - whether they be for languages, medicine or industry-specific vocabularies. Want to know more? Email info at the domain for this website (statefive.org) and we will get back to you as soon as possible.