Advanced English with SuperMemo 8

Introduction

Advanced English is a question-answer material designed for learners of English vocabulary and grammar. In combination with SuperMemo, it is probably world's best and fastest avenue towards excellent command of English surpassing the linguistic knowledge of native speakers. You will be able to order international or Polish release of Advanced English on two CD-ROMs in September 1997.

History

Advanced English is a proprietary material developed at SuperMemo World specifically with the view to using SuperMemo. The system has first been released in eight parts in 1992 as a text only version for SuperMemo 6. In 1993, it was re-released in once piece comprising 35,000 items and designed for use with SuperMemo 7. In 1994, an improved version illustrated with 25,000 audio recordings was released on CD-ROM (you can download 1994 text-only version from this site).

Over the last three years, Advanced English has continually been improved with newly emerging language constructs and adapted for use with SuperMemo 8. All users of earlier versions should highly appreciate the new release even if they have already memorized a substantial proportion of the 1994 release.

Features

1. 40,000 items of updated lexicographic material with newly popular phrases such as: network computer, website, HTML, CDR, DVD, Prozac, taxol, Ecstasy, rowbike, mad cow disease, and many more.
2. access to individual items by: (1) lexical category, (2) substring search, (3) alphabetical, (4) priority of the item in the learning process, (5) item difficulty, and many more.
3. system entirely editable and extensible including texts, translations, sounds, comments, phonetic transcription, and many more.
4. categorization of the material into a knowledge tree with main categories: (1) General English, (2) Sciences and Technology, (3) Economics, Law and Political Sciences and (4) Culture and History. For example, excitatory synapse can be found by category in Advanced English : Sciences, Technology and Medicine : Medical Sciences : Physiology : excitatory synapse.
5. phonetic transcription comprising 72,000 items presented using IPA notation (the transcription registry is extendable and editable).
6. instant phonetic transcription on mouse move (the program replaces English texts with IPA phonetic transcription).
7. updated audio material comprising 28,000 recordings of which over 5,000 are completely new (American pronunciation). All sounds are sorted in editable sound registry by name.
8. separate sections of the system for testing pronunciation, spelling and comprehension.
9. additional supporting systems such as English Grammar, etc.
10. all new exciting features of SuperMemo 8 such as: browsing items belonging to a given category, random test on categories, random learning, item filters, item range and subset operations, append nodes, item ordinal numbers, item path, etc. including all features of earlier versions of SuperMemo 7 (many of these features are not yet included in the presently available SuperMemo 8)
11. additionally, users in Poland will obtain translation of the system to Polish with new options such as: editable translation registry, instant translation on mouse move, etc.

Coverage

Apart from including over 20,000 items on general English, Advanced English puts a strong emphasis on science, techology, medicine, business and economics. It practically covers all areas and language aspects that should be known to a well-educated modern individual. Here are the main categories of Advanced English including the statistics expressed in SuperMemo items:

• general English: over 20000 items
• medical sciences 2500
• idioms and proverbs 2000
• technology 1300
• business and economics 1200
• zoology 900
• slang 800
• computer science 700
• sports 600
• grammar 500
• colloquial English 500
• chemistry 400
• humorous English 400
• foods 400
• derogatory English 400
• mathematics 400
• military technology 400
• botany 400
• phrasal verbs 400
• religion 400
• geography 400
• political sciences 300
• agriculture 300
• music 300
• other categories such as: geology, British English, loanwords, telecommunications, physics, architecture, useful phrases, metrics units and numbers, irregular verbs, plural forms, euphemisms, abbreviations, antonyms, literature, history, and more

Upgrade and Beta-Testing

Apart from Advanced English released on two CD-ROMs (one CD-ROM for SuperMemo 8 with relevant knowledge systems and one jam-packed with audio recordings) there will later be a surprise upgrade to 32-bit version with some new technologies that are still kept under veil (available yet in 1997).

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