POP-ENGLISH 3.0 for Windows

Pop-English is a great and pleasant surprise in terms of its language sophistication and the sheer number of interesting exercises" (Piotr Płóciennik, Gazeta Wyborcza )

It is undoubtedly the best of the Polish programs known to us" (Anna Pierzchała and Tomasz Kowalski, IATEFL Poland Newsletter)

No other program offers such a rich set of exercises, and the amount of attention paid to the pronunciation of English makes the package unique" (Paweł Topol, Pracownia Nauczania Podstaw Informatyki, Wydział Studiów Edukacyjnych Uniwersytetu im. A.Mickiewicza w Poznaniu)

At last --- a product on the Polish software market which is worth your money!" (many users and reviewers)

It was conceived and made in Poland: it is not a translation or adaptation of other similar programs, it is an entirely original creation.

It is geared towards the real needs of Polish learners: it anticipates typical problems they may have with English sounds, words and structures; it concentrates on common difficulties and error-prone items and areas.

It was created by expert teachers of English and backed by decades of first-hand experience of teaching English to Poles at different levels of proficiency.

It is as comprehensive as programs of this type can be: all essential areas of English phonetics, vocabulary and grammar are covered, including, for example: weak forms, frozen expressions, comparative structures, colloquialisms.

While setting off at an intermediate level, the program takes the user through carefully graded intensive practice into the open-ended realm of advanced language study.

Many exercises will even be useful to college and university students of English as a foreign language.

It contains structured exercises which can (and should) be used not only for testing acquired skills and knowledge, but for learning as well. To this effect three modes are available in the program: LEARN, EXAM and TEST mode. The first allows unlimited time, extensive comments on wrong answers, a prompt facility, a textbook-study option, etc. The second forces the user to go through exercises under some time pressure and with no on-line help of any kind, except a review of all questions and answers after the completion of the exercise. The third applies a user-prepared test compiled from any exercises available in the package (see below for TEST-EDITOR).

It comes with a powerful EXERCISE-EDITOR where users can design up to two hundred of their own exercises (4000 questions) complete with sound and graphics. Exercises themselves are of sixteen different formats, from multiple-choice to cloze (fill-in-the-gap).

Three difficulty-level tags can be appended to custom-made exercises to assist the user in streamlining the package to his or her needs.

The built-in TEST-EDITOR (EDYTOR SPRAWDZIANÓW) is a truly revolutionary feature of this version of POP-ENGLISH. Through an extremely easy user-interface it can build up a test containing any exercise selection desired: single exercises or exercise-sets (including those made by the user with the help of EXERCISE-EDITOR) can be pulled out of the package, meeting with pin-point precision the current needs of the user, and then saved as an on-screen pop-english test, an ordinary text-file for future use, or printed out for a custom-made hard-copy test which can be directly applied in the classroom.

The printed test can be manually edited in the TEST-EDITOR if so desired but the layout of the test makes it immediately useable with no further editing (see attached example).

The HYPER-TEXT SELF-STUDY MANUAL is a context-sensitive fully-on-line resource of about 150 pages in the hard-copy version included in the package. It is integrated with the course in terms of structure and expected proficiency level, but, at the same time, a complete textbook in itself, covering the three areas of English study treated in the program: grammar (syntax), vocabulary and phonetics. It can be referred to, browsed and navigated (through a sophisticated, yet simple-to-use, system of cross-referencing) at any point in the program. Parts of the manual can be easily printed for further study in the classroom or outside.

With an integrated bilingual SPEAKING DICTIONARY (which includes about 9000 words phonetically transcribed for the more inquisitive student and which can be activated from any place in the program simply by clicking the desired word) POP-ENGLISH is a completely integrated self-teach and self-test package, which can, however, also be used under teacher guidance in a classroom situation.

It helps learners with real English: structures are contextualized, formal language is avoided, and the functional side of linguistic competence is emphasized. A variety of exercises in each module address the skill of every-day communication in typical situations. For example, in the phonetics module, puns and trade-marks are used to practise colloquial pronunciation.

Although the thrust of the program (both in terms of language and situations) is British, comparative British-American exercises appear in all three modules, with explicit treatment of American phonetics, vocabulary and grammar.

An extensive help facility (which can be activated at any time while in LEARN mode) includes a complete English-Polish and Polish-English dictionary, a list of 150 irregular verbs, and a manual.

A lead-in information screen pops up when an exercise is selected from the menu: the aim of the exercise is explained, and an example question asked (and answered). The user can then enter the exercise or back up into the menu.

In the exercise itself, common spelling variants and other possible problems are anticipated to avoid the frustration of having a good answer rejected because of a missing comma. Multiple correct and incorrect answers are handled where appropriate.

Current score is kept and screened at all times to give the users instant feedback on their progress.

With this variety of exercise types, modes and modules, with the hyper-text navigation facility, with the multi-media support, and with the sheer number of about 7000 questions (or problems) in the program, it is virtually impossible to get bored. Especially as graphics, sound, window-layout, menu-language, answer-time, mouse-speed, and a host of other configuration variables can be manipulated by the users to their heart's content.