Word Tutor User Manual
Part I: WordTutor Manual

1. General Description
    WordTutor is a super memory aid software. It is a must have learning tool for memory intensive learning. No matter you are preparing for language tests such as GRE, TOEFL and GMAT test, or preparing for certification exams or class exams, WordTutor can help you to improve your learning efficiency and reduce learning time.
2. Features
    1. Two easy to use study interfaces to provide you flexible choices. You can either study one word a time using Word Card interfaces or study multiple words a time using Word list interfaces.

    2. Most of people like to write the words on a piece of paper while they are memorizing the words. Using WordTutor, you do the same thing. You can write / draw a word and content on the screen while you are memorizing the word.

    3. You can study words in Alphabetical, Reverse and Random order.

    4. You can edit existing words and add new words.

    5. You can display the word and its content in lower and upper case.

    6. You can view the overall statistic info and statistic info of each individual word.

    7. WordTutor will automatically scroll down or page down.

    8. Based on Ebbinghaus's memory experimental results, WordTutor will automatically prepare words for you to drill.

    9. WordTutor will automatically give you an alert (ring) if you still do not remember a word after you memorize it for a given number of times.

    10. Database maker allows you to transfer text files into Palm PDB and then you can install the PDB into your Palm. Thus you can carry the content with you and memorize it at anytime anywhere.
3. Memory Experiments of Ebbinghaus
    Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 - 1909), German experimental psychologist, studied learning and memory experimentally using lists of nonsense syllables to examine the learning and forgetting curves under various conditions including time length.

    His experiment results demonstrated that most forgetting happens immediately after learning, and the relationship between forgetting and delay is not linear.

    Ebbinghaus discovered that people can recall what they learn immediately, then forget most of what they learn quickly.

    The Forgetting curve shown in Fig 3.1 shows that people forget about 42% after 20 min since learning, forget about 56% after one hour, 64% after about 9 hours, 67% after one day, 72% after 2 days, 75% after 6days and forget about 79% of what they learn after 31 days since learning.

(Fig.3.1)
    Ebbinghaus also discovered that to remember twelve non-sense syllables took 16.5 times on average; to remember thirty-six non-sense syllables took 54 times on average; but it took only 8 times to remember four hundred and eighty syllables from 6 poem. This suggests that you have to repeat practice in order to remember words.
4. Study Interfaces
    WordTutor provides two study interfaces, Word Card (Fig 4.1) and Word List (Fig 4.2a and 4.2b).

    Word Card screen shown as Fig 4.1 displays a word and its detail information such as Phonetic, Meaning, Example, Analogy, Synonym and Antonym under the word. You can set which item to be displayed in Display Prefs screen shown as Fig 5.3

    Word List screen shown as Fig 4.2a and 4.2b displays multiple words with (Fig 4.2a) or without (Fig 4.2b) detail information. To show or hide word detail information, please tap on or button next to the home icon shown in Fig 4.2a and Fig 4.2b.

    You can switch between Word Card screen and Word List screen by tapping on the third square icon left to the pen icon.
    (Fig 4.1)Word Card screen
    (Fig 4.2a)Word List screen
    (Fig 4.2b)Word List screen

    Fig 4.3 below demonstrates the usage of tool bar buttons in Word Card screen (Fig 4.1). The usage of tool bar buttons in Word List screen (Fig 4.2) is similar. button shown in Fig 4.2 allows to setup word list scroll prefs (see Fig 5.4).

(Fig 4.3)

5. Menu
    There are two major menus, Options menu (Fig 5.1) and Statistics menu (Fig 5.2), in Word Card screen (Fig 4.1) and Word List screen (Fig 4.2).

    There are 8 menu items under Options menu.

    (Fig 5.1) Options Menu
    (Fig 5.2) Statistics Menu

6. Settings
  • Overall Settings(Fig 5.1)

    • (Fig 5.1) Overall Settings

    Review: The default review category is "Unfinished". Words in any categories except "Finished" category are treated as Unfinished. If you select "Unfinished" as review category, you will be able to study all of words except those in "Finished" category. If you select any other categories except "Unfinished", you will be able to study the words in that category only.

    Order: You can set the words to be sorted in Alphabetical, Reverse or Random order.

    Grid: This item works for Word Card screen only.

    List setting: Setup the number of words in each list. The total number list is calculated by WordTutor.

    Auto-Run: When you select this item, WordTutor will automatically move to next word. You can specify the interval.

    Ring: Select this item, WordTutor will ring after you study the word for the specified times and you still did not remember the word. For example, specify 4 times, when you study a word the fifth times, then WordTutor will ring to warn you that you still do not remember the word.
  • Drill Settings(Fig 5.2)

    • (Fig 5.1) Overall Settings

    After initial learning, you need to drill the word several times before you remember it. Based on Ebbinghaus's memory experimental results (Fig 3.1) seven drills are determined and the drill intervals are calculated from initial learning. The first drill time is 20 minutes from initial learning, the second drill is 60 minutes from initial learning, бн, the seventh drill is 30 days from initial learning.

    You may have many words need to drill at a time, you can limit the number of words you want to drill each time by filling "Drill up to: ___" field. The default number of words to drill is 100.

    If you select "Drill alert when app is launched", WordTutor will check if there are some words need to drill when it is launched, and it will ask you if to drill those words.

  • Display Prefs(Fig 5.3)

    • (Fig 5.3) Display Prefs

    Display Prefs works for Word Card screen only. You can set to display word only or you can set to display word with at least one of the following: Phonetic, Meaning, Example, Analogy, Synonym, Antonym and Note.

    You can also change current word's category. For example, move current word to "Difficulty 4" category if you find current word is pretty hard to memorize. If you already remember current word, you can move it to "Finished" category.

  • Scroll Prefs(Fig 5.4)

    • (Fig 5.4) Scroll Prefs

    Scroll Prefs works for Word List screen only. You can set how to scroll the word list from here. There are two options, "Scroll one word" and "Scroll one page". "Scroll one word" will allow you move to next or previous word when you press page down or page up button, or tap on scroll arrow buttons. Similarly, "Scroll one page" will allow you move to next page or previous page.

    You can also change current word's category. This functionality is the same as that in Display Prefs (Fig. 5.3).

  • Word Preference(Fig 5.5)

    • (Fig 5.5) Word Preference

    You can setup how words are displayed by specifying the Word Font, Word Case and Word Align (Note: Word Align works only for Word Card screen).

    You can also setup the font of detail information such as Phonetic, Meaning, Example, Analogy, Synonym and Antonym by specifying the Detail Font.
7. Writing(Drawing) a word
    Lots of people have such study habit: they like to draw a word on a piece of paper when they are memorizing the word. Writing a word while you are memorizing it can help you remember the word. WordTutor adopts such study habit and allows you to write on the screen while you are memorizing words (see Fig 6.1). Tap on the pen icon at bottom of the screen to clear your handwriting.
    (Fig 6.1) Drawing a word while memorizing it

8. Statistics
    WordTutor provides overall statistics (Fig 7.1) and word statistics (Fig 7.2). To view statistics info, from Statistics menu (Fig 7.3), select "Overall" or "Current word" menu item.

  • Overall statistics:
    • it contains total number of words in the database, how many words are finished, first time and last time to study the words, total time spent to study the words, and how many words have been studied for zero time, one time, two times, бн, seven times and over seven times.
  • Word Statistics:
    • it contains the number of times the word has been studied, the first time and the last time the word was studied.
    (Fig 7.1)Overall Statistics
    (Fig 7.2)Word statistics
    (Fig 7.3)Statistics Menu

9. Drill
    To remember a word, you need constantly repeat it until you remember it. Ebbinghaus discovered that people forget most of what they learn very quickly. Fig 3.1 shows that people can only keep about 44% of what they learn within one hours. Thus, to improve your memory efficiency, you have to drill what you learnt shortly after first learning. Based on the experimental results, WordTutor sets seven drill intervals which are calculated from initial learning: 20 minutes, 60 minutes , 8 hours, 24 hours, 2 days, 6 days, 30 days.

    The first time you learn a word, WordTutor will save the time and the drill intervals are calculated from this initial study time. If you study a word at 1:00pm, ideally, the first drill should be around 1:20pm, 20 minutes from the initial study; then second drill should be around 2:00pm, 40 minutes from the first drill; then third drill should be around 9:00pm, 7 hours from second drill; and so on. Based on these drill interval settings, WoudTutor will remind you that you have some words to drill and will automatically prepare drill words for you.

    You may change the drill interval settings (see Fig 5.2) to meet your own needs.

10. Change Field Labels
    The default field labels are: Word, Phonetic, Meaning, Example, Analogy, Synonym, Antonym and Note. These field labels are good for vocabulary. If you build a library for certification exams or class exams, the default field labels are no longer appropriate, you may need to change the field labels, for example, change the field labels to: Question, Answer, Explain, бн etc.

    To change field labels, select "Change Field Labels" menu item (see Fig 5.1) to open Change Field Labels screen (see Fig 10.1). From here you can change any or all of the field labels.

    (Fig 10.1) Change Field Labels
Part II: WordTutor PDB Maker Manual

WordTutor PDB maker is a PC software which allows you to build your own PDB for WordTutor.


(Fig 11.1) WordTutor PDB Maker

1. How to build PDB
    WordTutor PDB maker converts Tab delimited text file (Note: it must be a Tab delimited text file) into Palm PDB file. To build a WordTutor PDB, you need:

      1. Create a Tab delimited text file (see section 2: How to create a Tab delimited text file for detail).

      2. then run WordTutorPDBMaker.exe (see Fig 11.1).

      3. Click "Browse" button to select a Tab delimited text file.

      4. After file selection, WordTutor PDB maker will automatically generate PDB file name for you. You can change the PDB file name if you want.

      5. Select Palm user where you want to install the PDB.

      6. Click "Make PDB" to convert the Tab delimited text file into Palm PDB file.

      7. Do hotsync to install the PDB into your Palm.

    If you make any change to the Tab delimited text file and need to regenerate the PDB file, you have to click "Remove" button to remove previously generated PDB file, and then you can re-generate the PDB file. If you change the PDB file name to a different name, you do not need to remove the previously generated PDB file, but after hotsync, both previously created PDB file and newly created PDB file will be installed into your Palm.

    If you do not want to install the generated PDB file into your Palm, click "Remove" button to remove the file; Or you can manually remove the file from the Install folder under the Palm user name folder, for example, delete the PDB file from C:\Palm\Test1\install folder.
2. How to create a Tab delimited text file
    The easiest way to create a Tab delimited text file is:

      1. create a Excel file with 8 columns shown as Table 1. Column one is "Word" column; column two is "Phonetic" column; column three is "Meaning" column; and so on бн If there is no content for a column, leave that column blank.

      2. save the Excel file as Tab delimited text file.

      Table 1: Excel File format
      Word
      Phonetic
      Meaning
      Example
      Analogy
      Synonym
      Antonym
      Note
                     
                     
                     

    Note: when you fill the Excel file, "Word, Phonetic, бн, Antonym, Note" cannot be the first row of the Excel file, otherwise, it will be built into PDB.
3. Display layout
    In Word Card screen, column 1 of the Excel file is displayed at top of the screen followed by column 2, 3, бн, 8. WordTutor will skip a column without any content.
    (Fig 11.2 Word Card screen display layout)

    Word List screen only displays two columns, column 1 and column 3. If you want to use Word List screen, you have to put two most important items in column 1 and column 3, for example, put "word" in column 1 and "meaning" of the word in column 3 for vocabulary; put "question" in column 1 and "answer" in column 3 for class exams.
    (Fig 11.3 Word List screen display layout)


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