Use your PC to Master Japanese and Chinese
Why Are We Here?
One of the most thrilling experiences for a foreign language student comes from
being able to read copy written for native speakers without the aid of notes or
furigana. What a sense of accomplishment and pride that moment brings when you
are finally able to read and comprehend the text with some degree of fluency.
Traditional Analysis Methods
As a beginning language student, or even as an accomplished speaker, you have
probably marked up text with notes to help you learn unfamiliar material. This
tendency to mark the page commits you to seeing these notes every time you
review the material. As it isolates you from the text, it delays the pleasure
you find in speaking fluently, once your study is completed.
Reading without Notes
With Smart Characters for Windows, there is no need to mark your text. Instead,
you use Smart Characters to look up and enter your vocabulary and notes into
the computer. Then you and the built-
in
vocabulary tutor engage in drills which force you to learn the
vocabulary with a response time of around a quarter of a second. When this
process is complete, you are able to read the text without notes of any kind,
to the amazement of your teacher, fellow students, or co-workers.
Printed Manual Conventions
The following document conventions are used throughout this manual:
Courier is used to indicate either a specific key on the keyboard
such as Enter.
Bold Text is used to indicate a specific, unchanging menu or dialog item
or title, like View.
| The vertical separator is used to indicate the hierarchy of menus and
menu items. For example, to select File | Save, first select File
then Save.
Italic Text is used to indicate a topic heading, a reference to a topic
heading, or a name.
tiny numbers follow an italicized topic reference and indicate the page
number of a topic heading.
- between keys, indicates that each key is pressed in sequence.
+ between two keys, indicates that the first key shifts the second key. Press
and hold the first key, then press the second key.
^ indicates a
control character(30-
2)
(codes 0-31). You can generate control characters by pressing the Ctrl shift
key plus a letter key (e.g. Ctrl+W is equivalent to ^W).
Differences between the Manual and Help
The on-line
hypertext(30-
4)
help system duplicates this manual exactly except for typography, and that the
help system does not contain the User's Guide acknowledgments, license
agreement, or the printed index (use the Help Search command instead).
Help, Menus, and Dialogs May Be Changed
Smart Characters is highly configurable, that is, you can change what it does
and the way it does it. In particular, you can change the menus, dialogs, and
the help screens to suit your preferences, or for special purposes. For
example, you may want to use Chinese or Japanese menus, dialogs, and help
screens, or customize a version of Smart Characters so that it can be used only
for vocabulary drills. See
Customizing Menus and Dialogs(12-
1).
The printed User's Guide corresponds to the standard English menus and dialogs
from the distribution disk. Chinese, Japanese, French, or otherwise customized
menus and dialogs will be similar but not identical to the examples in the
User's Guide. Although good practice requires that anyone who changes the menus
and dialogs should also change the on-line help, there may be a discrepancy and
subsequent users (e.g., you) may have difficulty. In this event, you may wish
to restore the English menus and dialogs, and the standard English help files.
Apropos Customer Service home
page 617-648-2041
Last Modified: March 23, 1996
Copyright © 1996 Apropos, Inc.