Introduction
The course consists of 15 units. Each unit focuses on a particular profession or field. The units are numbered from 1 to 15 but this does not represent an order of difficulty or grammatical progression. Also, of course, a user interested in Tourism may not be interested in Agriculture. You can choose a unit separately without having to follow a fixed sequence.
Apart from the 15 units there is also a Grammatikteil that you can use for study or reference.
The Vokabelverzeichnis contains the vocabulary and phrases from all the units sorted alphabetically by the original term and by the translation.
Unit Structure
The structure of each unit is uniform. First you see a unit index, which includes links to all the sections of the unit. The first section is Lernziele. It informs you briefly about the focus of the unit and lists the grammar points which will be practised, with links to the Grammar Bank.
The next section contains a listing of vocabulary for the unit. You can browse through the vocabulary, see the translations and play native speaker recordings to hear the correct pronunciation. Simply click or press on the word or phrase and the sound is played (if your system is properly configured – see Technical Requirements).
Five sections of exercises follow. In general it is better to do the exercises in the order in which they appear, but you are free to choose what part of the unit you want to work on. For example, you can work on vocabulary (Section 1) and then move on to grammar (Section 4), or go back from text 5 in Section 2 to text 1 in Section 2 in order to do it again.
The final section, Checkliste, lists the skills that you have practised and should have acquired.
Navigation
Before starting to use the course, you should learn a little about how to find your way around. This will simplify your navigation and improve your orientation. The start page, or base, for navigation is the Kursindex. From here you can access any unit and all the other pages. Each unit takes one page and this page begins with a local index which lists all the sections in this page. When you follow one of these links, you go to the heading of the corresponding section on the page. Each section heading also works as a link back to the index of contents.
The stand-alone version of this course also has the “Navigation Bar” at the bottom of each page. The navigation bar allows you to go to the next or previous page in sequence and to jump up in the hierarchy (e.g to the Course Index). The following shortcut keys are assigned to these movement commands:
- Alt-1 ... Go to the previous page in sequence.
- Alt-2 ... Go one level up in the hierarchy.
- Alt-3 ... Go to the next page in sequence.
- Alt-4 ... Go directly to the course index.
If you are not using the stand-alone version, you will probably use the course within a Learning Management System. Consult the documentation of your LMS in this case to find out more information about navigation.
How to get Help
You will find a link named Übunghilfe at the beginning of each exercise. Use it to find out how to control the exercise and how to get your results. The help text opens in a new window (if your browser allows this) and therefore you can easily switch between the exercise and the help text. An overview of all exercise types and links to corresponding help pages can also be found in the Hilfeverzeichnis.
You can also visit the Eurochance project homepage to get support, find more help or information about the course.
Technical Requirements
The user interface was designed to work on most platforms, with a wide range of assistive technologies, including Braille devices and voice synthesisers. You can read texts and do exercises in written form where appropriate, as well as aurally/orally. Native speaker recordings are available for most content and users must make full use of them to obtain maximum benefit.
You will need JavaScript support in your browser to be able to use automatic exercise evaluation and other interactive features. The course is still usable without JavaScript, but with less convenience. The exercise help mostly assumes that JavaScript is on, i.e. active. Look for JavaScript notes in the help if this is not the case.
Your browser must be also configured to be able to play back the MP3 sound format if you want to use native speaker recordings. Please note, that if you are using the course over Internet, you must expect delays when playing the sounds. When you click the Wiedergabe button (or a vocabulary item etc.), the sound file must be downloaded first and it may take a while depending on the speed of your Internet connection. You don't need to click the button again, just wait... If you want to avoid these delays, you can download the whole course to your computer or get it on a CD. See Eurochance project homepage for more information.
Information how to configure any particular software is beyond the scope of this document. Please visit Eurochance project homepage to get support.