Italia 2000 CD-1
CD Booklet in English, with Acknowledgements
Gavin Burnage, University of Cambridge
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Italia 2000 CD-1 CD Booklet in English, with Acknowledgements
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Technical Information
Basic System Requirements
Multimedia PC running Windows 3.x or 95
Installation
To install the software on your PC, run the program SETUP.EXE. It installs the program itself, updates your win.ini file, and creates a file called ital2000.ini. It will also install Asymetrix runtime executables (for ToolBook II v6.1), and Video for Windows software if necessary. The SETUP program will also create shortcuts/program icons for the software if you wish.
Once the program is installed, you should run the program called ital2000.exe using the Toolbook II runtime program tb60rtm.exe. This is best done by means of the Start Menu shortcut or program icon.
The video must run from the CD-ROM, in the CD-ROM drive from which it was installed, while the program must run from the local hard disk directory it was installed onto.
Screen Display
The program works best with screen resolution set to thousands of colours, using Small Fonts. If you use only 256 colours, there may be "palate flash" which causes a momentary ugly flash when a video clip plays for the first time, or even faulty playing of the entire clip. If you use large fonts on a small screen, the screen display may be too big to be seen in full. Set your screen display to work for thousands of colours rather than 256 colours, and to use Small Fonts instead of Large Fonts.
Sound Recording
For the sound recording to work, you must have write access to a local hard disk (or floppy disk) called "C: ". Any other configuration will not work. Thereafter, the success or otherwise of recording depends on the configuration of your own sound card: get local help if you need to check this.
Font
The program uses Microsoft's Comic Sans MS, for informality and legibility. If you are a Windows 95 user, you might like to install Microsoft's Font Smoother in order to improve its appearance; details and downloads are available on the Microsoft Typography web site at the following address:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/grayscal/smoother.htm
Using the Program
The chief feature of the software is the way it uses the video clips: you can look at short segments appropriate to each question as many times as you need to, with or without subtitles. Flexibility of this kind is something which only computer software allows (imagine trying to find each segment with a VCR!) By completing the exercises and viewing the clip segments, you can gain an understanding of the clip, and finally, by means of the simple Dialogo exercise at the end of each Unit, start using some of the language you've learned in speech.
The feel of the software is open and relaxed: it's assumed that you are motivated enough to want to learn and explore. No point scoring and deducting system is used, and answers and feedback are understated rather than trumpeted. If you want to reveal the answers without studying the clip you can do so easily, but best results - in terms of language learning - come when you choose to explore each exercise fully with the video extracts built in to the software.
Many exercises ask you to type answers in boxes, and the size of each box is a clue to the size of each word. When you get an answer right, the box disappears, and you are automatically moved on to the next box. If the box doesn't change, use the video play buttons to consider whether you've got the right word, and turn the subtitles on to check your spelling. Buttons showing accented characters are provided at the foot of the screen: when you click one, the character appears in the box you are currently typing in.
Navigation
Navigation tools are designed to help you get around the software package as easily as possible. You can move forward or back along the trail of exercises for each clip using the Avanti and Indietro buttons in the bottom right corner. You can return to the menu of exercises at any time by clicking on the Menù button, and then, if you want to go back to the very beginning, click it again to get the Menù Principale.
Your current location—that is, unit number and name, and exercise number and name—is always shown centrally at the foot of the screen.
On-line Help
A Help facility is always available (click the button marked Aiuto), explaining what you do for each exercise, and what function the various buttons have. Clicking on highlighted phrases (hotwords) alerts you to things shown in the main screen.
Colour
The colour scheme is limited to one major background colour, blue, and two main foreground colours, yellow and white, with grey used to de-emphasize. Generally, yellow words or buttons mean that something happens when you click them. Yellow is also used when textual answers are revealed, purely as a means of highlighting them and contrasting them from the rest of the display.
Exercise Types
There are eight types of exercise in the software. Vocabulary exercises (Vocabolario and I contrari) ask you to identify words with the same or the opposite meaning from lists of words featured in the clips. There are a few grammar exercises, but grammar topics are dealt with much more fully in the other Italia 2000 materials, and are not discussed below. Comprehension exercises make considerable use of the video footage available, and you are asked to transcribe words (Comprensione), identify key details in the clips (Dettagli), evaluate the veracity of statements (Vero/Falso and La risposta giusta), and re-order jumbled segments of the clip (Ricomponi). Finally, a dialogue exercise (Dialogo) ties together much of the material being taught by asking you to answer questions for yourself using the specially-recorded interview clips.
Menù Principale
The opening screen of the program on CD-1 offers the 12 units which make up the Italia 2000 package, each with 4 or 5 exercises. It is the navigational hub of the program. Click on the name of the unit you want to work with.
Vocabulary
These exercises pick out key words used in the clips, and teach or reinforce their meaning.
Vocabolario presents a column of words or phrases on the left of the screen, opposite a set of gaps on the right. In the gap, you type a word from the clip which corresponds to the word shown. Whenever you need help, you can play a short extract from the clip which contains the answer.
A variation, I contrari, is that the left-hand column contains items with opposite meanings rather than corresponding ones, so you have to identify antonyms from the clip rather than synonyms.
Comprehension
The basic comprehension exercise, Comprensione, provides the transcription of an extract from the clip with key words or phrases blanked out: you have to type in the missing words. Alongside each blank space is a video play button, which you can press as often as you like to watch the appropriate part of the clip.
A variation on this theme is Dettagli — you are asked to pick out key details from the clip , such as names, dates, or other more general information. Again, precise extracts from the clip are available to help you at any time: click the play button alongside each question.
Comprehension of a more general kind is tested by means of true/false statements, Vero/Falso, or multiple-choice endings to sentences, La risposta giusta. In the case of True/False exercises, you can play an extract, and then choose whether the statement provided about it is true or false. In the case of multiple-choice endings, you have to decide which of three possible endings to a statement about the extract is the correct one.
Ricomponi is the most challenging of the comprehension exercises; it requires good comprehension skills, including an appreciation of non-verbal communication, and considerable linguistic ingenuity. If it was a text-based exercise, you would be asked to put a series of jumbled-up phrases back together as a paragraph of normal text. Here, however, you are working with segments of video rather than text: an extract from the clip is divided up into separate segments, with each segment allocated its own numbered play button on screen. These segments are jumbled, so that when they are played one after another, they are in the wrong order. You can watch each segment as often as you like, and, as your comprehension increases, you re-compose the segments to make up the original, coherent extract in full, by dragging the icon of the numbered segment into the frame provided. You can check your progress as you're going along: your choices are evaluated from the first position in the grid up to the 'breaking point'. The 'breaking point' is the first place where you have put a segment in the wrong position, or entered no segment at all, and anything which comes after the breaking point is not evaluated. When you've reassembled the whole extract correctly, you can play it in full.
Dialogue
When you've finished the exercises available for each clip, one final exercise, Dialogo, asks you to use the work you've done by getting you to speak in Italian: You take on the role of someone being interviewed, in clips recorded specially for the CD (in contrast to the main clips, which are authentic material from RAI and Teletna).
First, play the whole interview in full. Next, there are play buttons for each of the questions which make up the interview. Whenever you press a button, the individual question is re-played, after which you can go on to record an answer for yourself. A prompt is shown to help you formulate an answer, and the answer as provided in the clip itself is also available: you can compare your answer to the one in the clip, and re-record your answer as much as you want. You can repeat what the speakers say in the clip, or work on different answers of your own. You might want to ask your teachers for help in deciding whether your own answers sound good.
Support
Please make full use of your local technical helpers, or contact your vendor.
Background Information
Details behind the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Italia 2000
CD-ROM are due for publication. However much information is now available on the pages you are now looking at
(/ital2000/CD/).
Acknowledgements
CD-ROM Design, Software and Production
Exercises
Assorted Exercises and Corrections
Videotape Editing and Production
So many people have helped me get this software ready, and many thanks are due to them all.
In Cambridge, within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Angela Couch, Carol Nourse and Iris Hunter provided unfailing administrative support (and a ready supply of biscuits).
From the University Language Centre, David Hurworth, John Anderson, and Rob Ward provided all kinds of technical support and expertise, and Agnès Fauverge, Christoph Zähner, and Jan Wong patiently gave me access to their CD-ROM pressing facilities.
Work on the software began in Oxford University Language Centre, and Peter Dyson, the former Director, provided many of the ideas behind the exercises, and gave me the opportunity to implement them.
Many of the teachers involved in the project offered advice and corrections throughout the development phase. In particular, Marina di Stefano, Anna Bristow, and Loredana Polezzi spent a lot of time correcting the final versions of the software (though the software errors that remain are mine).
Loredana Polezzi also translated the help texts from English into Italian.
Christine Southwell and Marina di Stefano provided extensive administrative help, and the successful completion of the Italia 2000 CD is also due to their patience and perseverance, especially during my mid-project move to Cambridge.
In the early days, Nik Timbrell was on-hand to help with occasional ToolBook authoring problems, and I'm grateful for the advice and encouragement she gave.
I hope this software provides an enjoyable and inspiring way to learn Italian. My work in it is dedicated with love to Louisa and Joe Singleton, to say thank you for being here: perhaps, when you're ready to learn more new languages, you'll be able to look at it, and laugh at how we used to do things in the old days.
Gavin Burnage
This CD-ROM is solely for individual educational use, and it and its contents are not to be networked, redistributed or re-used in any other way. The software, exercises and video clips are © (copyright) the Italia 2000 project. Network licences and versions of the software are available separately: contact Giunti Multimedia at mbox.gmm@interbusiness.it
CD-ROM drive
Sound card with speakers or headphones
Minimum 5MB hard disk space for ToolBook executable files; more if Video For Windows needs to be installed; indeterminate temporary disk space for sound recording also required
486 processor; preferably pentium
Screen display in thousands of colours, using Small Fonts
Gavin Burnage, University of Cambridge
Anna Bartrum, University College of St Martin, Lancaster
Gabriella Brigo, University of Kent at Canterbury
Anna Bristow, Anglia Polytechnic University
María José Calvo Montoro, Universidad de Castilla—La Mancha
Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, Trinity College Dublin
Gillian Mansfield, Università degli studi di Parma
Giovanna Pelizzi, Università degli studi di Parma
Loredana Polezzi, University of Warwick
Luisa Quartermaine, University of Exeter
Marina di Stefano, University of Wales at Cardiff
Anna Bristow, Anglia Polytechnic University
Gavin Burnage, University of Cambridge
Loredana Polezzi, University of Warwick
Marina di Stefano, University of Wales at Cardiff
Peter Dyson, University of Oxford
Alan Carroll, University of Oxford
University of Cambridge
January 1999