Kdeedu Language-Learning Programs

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If you are learning a foreign language, you will be interested to know that there is a very useful set of programs available to you in the Kdeedu (KDE Edutainment) package, which includes a Spanish verb trainer (KVerbos), a French alphabet pronunciation program for kids (KLettres), and two flash card programs (KVocTrain and FlashKard). It also has some educational applications that have nothing to do with language learning (such as a cool star atlas).

To install any of the individual Kdeedu programs, you must install the entire kdeedu package. You can do this quite easily by using Synaptic. After starting up Synaptic, type kdeedu in the Find box and then follow the standard procedures you learned in Chapter If you installed your system from a 3-CD Fedora or Red Hat Linux 9 installation set, you can just copy the kdeedu RPM file to your hard disk from the RPMS folder on Install Disk 3. After that, just double-click on the file to install it.

Flash Cards

As I mentioned, there are two flash card programs included in the Kdeedu package. The more complex of these is KVocTrain, which you can run by going to the Main menu and selecting Run Program (none of the Kdeedu apps appear in the GNOME menu). In the Run Program window, type in kvoctrain and then click Run.

KVocTrain is, in my opinion, needlessly complex in terms of creating your own word lists for study; however, it is quite good when studying or appending the various study lists available for it online. These files, which end in kvtml, include vocabulary lists, verb conjugations, and even non-language items, such as world capitals and musical key signatures. To get some of these lists, go to the Kdeedu Contributed Learning Files page at http://edu.kde.org/contrib/ kvtml.php and download whatever you want to your hard drive. I would recommend creating a special folder inside your Home folder in which to keep these files. You might call the new folder kdeedu_data.

Once you’ve opened the files in KVocTrain, you can view the entries in them in list form or as a flash card or multiple-choice quiz (see Figure 17-9).

Figure 17-9: A KVocTrain multiple-choice quiz

If you are interested in a more straightforward way of creating your own flash cards, FlashKard is a more appropriate choice (though it can also use the same .kvtml files that KVocTrain uses). To run FlashKard, just go to the Main menu and select Run Program, and in the Run Program window, type flashkard and then click Run. FlashKard will then appear, and you can start inputting words that you want to study (see Figure 17-10 on the next page). After you have created a vocabulary list, you can quiz yourself, in typical flash card fashion, by going to the Function menu and selecting Quiz.

Figure 17-10: FlashKard in input and quiz modes

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