Running a Grammar Lesson

To study grammar with Cerebware, select a topic, read the associated text or html file, and then hit the 'Test' button or select 'Test Grammar' under the Grammar menu. If necessary, the program will prompt you to import the relevant test items into your vocabulary; these will be stored in a list file with the suffix '.lst'.

For most users, that is all you need to know.

Adding Your Own Grammar Topics

Although grammar content will eventually be provided by Cerebware for multiple languages, the grammar content in the beta version is fairly minimal, even for German and Japanese, and it is non-existent for most other languages. The grammar content of the Cerebware Vocab Trainer can be customised by teachers or keen students, however, as explained below. There are two main methods.

Automatic Method

Click on 'Add Topic' under the Grammar menu heading. Choose the name of your lesson. The two files will be created for you: a '.txt' file in which you will type your grammar lesson, complete with explanations, and a '.lst' file that will contain the list of corresponding test items. The topic will automatically appear as a new item under the Grammar menu heading.

Manual Method

To create a grammar lesson, type your grammar explanations into a plain text file (within the Vocab Trainer or with a simple text editor such as Notepad). The file should be named after the topic of your lesson and should end with the '.txt' suffix - for instance, it could be called 'Adjectives.txt'. If you prefer to write your lessons in html, use an html suffix. Save the file in the 'XGrammar' subfolder, where "X" is the name of the language (e.g. GermanGrammar, or JapaneseGrammar). Don't forget to save the file with the right encoding - ''Unicode'' for complex Asian scripts, or ''Plain Text'' for European languages.


To test the grammar principles explained in the lesson, you will need a corresponding .lst file. Create or import file that matches the lesson name, such as 'Adjectives.lst'. This file should consist of a list of items, one item per line, with the target language on the left, a delimiter such as ':' and then the English on the right. The first item in the list should have a tag that indicates what lesson it belongs to - this tag starts ands ends with curly braces, and it has two vertical lines before the grammar tag. (Although the lesson name is already clear from the name of the lst file, the list will eventually be imported into other files, such as your personal vocab file, so it is useful to tag the first item in the lesson.) The last item should indicate that it is the end of the lesson with an 'END' tag.


Here is what a lst file looks like when it has the appropriate tags:

eins : one { | | Numbers one to ten}
zwei : two
drei : three
vier : four
fünf : five
sechs : six
sieben : seven
acht : eight
neun : nine
zehn : ten { | | END}


To add the lesson to the Grammar menu, open the file 'Grammar Topics.txt'. (If this file does not exist, create it, and save it in the appropriate 'XGrammar' subfolder). A quick way to access this file is to select "Edit Topics' under the Grammar menu heading. Edit the file so that it lists the grammar topics you want to make available, with one topic per line. In this example, you would add 'Numbers one to ten' (the suffix '.txt' is not needed) on a single line. As soon as you save the list of topics, the Grammar menu will include the new item.


Linking Grammar Lessons to Existing Vocab Items

If there is a grammar explanation or explanatory comment that should be read before attempting a set of existing vocab items, the Vocab Trainer can be instructed to load the lesson automatically when that item first appears. To set this up, locate the first item of the set within the Edit window. Enter the name of the lesson in the 'Grammar/Intro' field of that item (For instance, type 'Adjectives' to indicate that 'Adjectives'.html' or 'Adjectives'.txt' should be displayed with the item). In this way, grammar lessons can be postponed until students have the necessary vocabulary to deal with them. Note that the file linked to the item does not *have* to contain grammar lessons; it could be a description of the word list, or just a comment on the text that the word is derived from.


As explained above, under 'Manual Method', the name of a grammar lesson associated with a particular vocab item can also be indicated within the list ('.lst') file, before the list is imported into a vocabulary. (See 'File formats' under the Help menu for details). Note that these tags are added automatically if you create a grammar topic with the 'Automatic Method' described above.


The first time a user reaches the tagged vocab item, the associated txt file will appear. Subsequent views of the same item will not automatically show the grammar lesson but the grammar button will become active, indicating the content is available for students who want to review it. Also, if the topic is entered into the 'Grammar Topics.txt' file, it can be reviewed at any time (even outside test sessions).


Testing Grammar Concepts via a Flashcard Format


Although the Vocab Trainer is primarily designed to test single words and short phrases, it can be adapted for much longer sentences, which is often the best context in which to demonstate grammar principles. A whole sentence can often be translated in more than one way, however, making it hard for the program to anticipate every possible correct answer. It is also time-consuming to type a whole sentence for each item, so it may be more appropriate that such items should only be tested via multi-choice. This can be done within the Edit window, by ticking the MCQ checkbox, or within the list ('.lst') file, by appending the character '&' to the item (See 'File formats' under the Help menu for details).


Currently, there is no capacity for speciying in advance which WRONG answers will be offered in the multiple choice answers, but providing several similar items should enable the program to select suitable distractors in the multichoice question. (The program chooses distractors semi-randomly, but based on their similarity to the correct answer). The program is based on the philosophy that students should not be exposed to mistakes, so the wrong answers cannot be examples of poor grammar; they must instead consist of correct German sentences that fail to match the item. Prompts can be used to flesh out the questions in more detail. For instance, to test declension of adjectives, the English prompt could contain a sample German sentence or phrase with the relevant word missing.


altes : old [ein ____ Haus]
alter : old [ein ____ Mann]
alte : old [eine ____ Frau]
alt : old [Der Mann war ____]
alt : old [Die Frau war ____]
alt : old [Das Haus war ____]


To test word order, without demanding laborious typing of every word, the task could involve typing the initial letter of each word in a sentence. The English prompt could indicate, not only the English meaning that must be achieved, but also which German words need to be arranged in order. Because this format is only suitable for testing in one direction, the items should either have the 'E2G' (English-to-German) checkbox selected within the Edit dialog (E2J for Japanese, E2F for French, etc) - or, equivalently, they should have the usual colon delimiter ':' in the '.lst' file replaced with an arrow made from an equals sign '<=', where the arrow indicates the direction of testing.


EhsFeSg <= He has given his wife a hearty kiss. [Er... hat... gegeben... seiner... Frau... einen... Schmatz]