(Continued from Page One)

by Brian Rhodes

"World Famous Speeches" is a spinning globe with icons representing twelve 'famous' Americans, including John F. Kennedy, Mae West and Neil Armstrong, from which users can choose to view short movie clips. Here users are instructed to click and drag missing words in a paragraph to complete a 'cloze' speech. Word choices may allow for a mistake such as, "The beagle has landed", but after checking the answer, the correct answer 'eagle' will suddenly appear in its proper position. Unfortunately, if a word is mistakenly dragged across a cloze space intended for another, the programming doesn't allow for a change of mind. The rule to follow for this cloze is just to click and drag the words in the order they are heard. No English help is available: the help button jumps to a Japanese explanation, although for an experienced non-Japanese user of a computer mouse, it should be easy enough to master this exercise. The speeches are well worth listening to for their American 'cultural content', and for a learner of English, the onscreen text which is present is very helpful. It might have been helpful also to include a glossary where a click on an unknown vocabulary item would reveal its meaning in a pop-up text box -- perhaps in a future release.

If you've played the popular "MYST" CD-ROM, you will know what "MAZE" the 3D game is based on; one could comment on a blatant infringement of the MYST look, sound, and appeal, but if criticized light-heartedly, MAZE is simply screen candy, with 300 multiple-choice vocabulary-building and grammar questions built in that help you on your way to gathering the 6 magic keys which will allow you to exit MAZE Island.

The "Overview" section is simply a self-running explanation of what the CD offers. Sit back and watch, read, and listen. Beginners of English might find the background music a bit too loud, hindering their comprehension of the narration; otherwise, the narration covers everything efficiently.

"The Tests" section should be the main reason for buying the CD-ROM, and each of the 7 sections can be repeated with the help of a built-in random-choice question generator. However, there is no individual feedback on performance by item, and a user may leave each section being quite frustrated due to this lack of information as to which items were answered correctly and otherwise. To be fair, the program does offer a report in terms of percentage correct, though this is hardly adequate. The "Analyse" feature of the program is only slightly more helpful; paragraphs with general tips (with parts 5 and 6 in Japanese) and "checking for trends" are inadequate feedback (click on graphic to see demo feedback screen).

For the "Learner" mode, I would like to see individual feedback with four user-optional steps. For example:

a) "No, not quite. You are not hearing the difference between 'collect' and 'correct'. Listen again and remember, in English there is a difference between l & r."

b) "Listen to the conversation again by clicking on the sound button."(For the audio sections of the test this is adequately done.)

c) "Look at the script of the conversation by clicking here."

d) "The underlined words can be clicked on for their meanings which will appear in a pop-up text box."

Having immediate, individualized feedback, either as an option after each question or at the end of each section, is an advantage that computer assisted language learning can offer, and is unfortunately missing from most sections of this CD-ROM. Produced in Macromedia's Director, a most useful piece of multimedia software, Mindstorm's TOEIC CD-ROM easily could have incorporated optional instant and comprehensive feedback.

Who should use this CD-ROM? Of course, if you are a speaker of Japanese, and are studying for the TOEIC, by all means make the purchase. It will be a useful weapon in your arsenal, and was obviously created with the "local" market in mind. Otherwise, consider it carefully. The Japanese-only help sections and the overly-general explanations may be off-putting for some non-Japanese students. With English help options, more individualized and specific feedback, and better quality audio, however, the Mindstorm TOEIC CD-ROM could be an adequate self-study medium for most would-be TOEIC examinees.