ADVANCED THESAURUS FEATURES The thesaurus in your Language Master offers meaning statements, synonyms, antonyms and compares. The meaning statements precede the other information and help you choose the correct set of synonyms, antonyms, etc. The Language Master includes "antonyms" and "compares" in its thesaurus information. Antonyms are words which mean the opposite of the word you looked up. Compares are words which are close in meaning to the word you looked up, but not close enough to be a synonym. Use a compare when you're looking for a word that approximates the one you looked up. Use a synonym when you want a word exactly like the one you looked up. Press CLEAR . Type in astute. Press ENTER . The dictionary information for "astute" appears. Press . Your screen now looks like the one below: Use the down arrow key until the screen below appears: Notice the antonym and compares on the screen above. Let's look at the example below to see what the number next to a compare means. Press ENTER . The word "SYNONYMS" is now highlighted. Use the arrow keys until "sharp" is highlighted. Press ENTER , then press . The thesaurus information for "sharp" now appears. Press the "FWD" key. You are now viewing the second thesaurus entry for the word "sharp" which is a compare for the word "astute." You may also use the "pick" method of looking up a word to see information about a word's antonym. 11 GRAMMAR GUIDE The LM-6000 comes equipped with a complete Grammar Guide. You can access the Grammar information at any time by pressing GRAMMAR -- from a dictionary entry, from the thesaurus, or from the typing screen. To see the complete list of Grammar topics, press CLEAR and then press GRAMMAR . You will see: You can now move the highlight down through this table of contents using either or Shift. When you see a topic you'd like to read about, press ENTER . Or, simply start at the top with the "Parts of Speech" chapter and read straight through, pressing FWD for each new chapter. But there's another way. The Grammar Guide has been electronically indexed to respond with the precise passage or passages relevant to your particular question. For instance, suppose you are interested transitive verbs. Type "transitive" at the "Type in the word" screen and press GRAMMAR . You will immediately see the Grammar Guide section on transitive verbs. If more than one section is relevant to your query, you will see a menu of the relevant sections. For instance, if you type "possessive" and press GRAMMAR , you will see three topics from which to choose: The Grammar Guide will accept as a query any word or phrase that is in the LM6000 dictionary. Therefore, you could type "direct object" and press GRAMMAR , be12 cause the phrase "direct object" has its own entry in the dictionary. But you couldn't type "transitive verb" or "verb that takes an object after it", because these phrases are not separately defined in this dictionary. You can even use the Grammar Guide to get information about the punctuation marks on the keyboard. For example, you may wish to know how to use the ";" (semicolon). You don't even need to know the name of it -- just type it and press GRAMMAR . If a word is not a special grammatical term like "superlative", but just an ordinary word like "albatross" or "relieve", then pressing GRAMMAR while such a word is selected will bring up just the chapters relevant to that word's part of speech. If you see a word in the Grammar Guide itself that you would like to look up in the dictionary, press ENTER to highlight words in the Grammar Guide, move the cursor to the word you want using the arrow keys, then press ENTER . Grammar Quiz Some sections of the Grammar Guide have Quiz Exercises to help you sharpen your grammar skills. A message at the end of the section tells you when these are available. Press GAMES while viewing the grammar information to see the exercises. SPEECH Speech is a powerful teaching tool with the LM-6000. You may actually listen to the word you are viewing. The Language Master has a Dynamic Pronunciation Guide (DPG) which will pronounce the individual sounds of the word you listened to. To make the learning experience even more complete, examples of a sound's usage are shown on the screen. Type the word yachting. Press SAY nounced and the screen below appears: . In a short while, the word is pro- 13 The screen you are now viewing is called the Dynamic Pronunciation GuideTM screen, or DPG screen for short. Notice that the "y" in the words "yachting" and "you" are highlighted. This is to illustrate the first sound in the word "yachting." Press ENTER to hear the first sound: y. FWD To hear the next sound of the word "yachting," press nounced and the screen below appears: . The next sound is pro- The letter "a" in "yachting" is now highlighted, as are the occurrences of the letter "a" in the examples under it. At this point you may press REV to hear the previous sound or FWD to hear the next one. You may even try using and . Notice that as you move around between the sounds of the word, the examples change. Press ENTER repeatedly to hear a word's sound more than once. Press SAY to hear the entire word pronounced again. Press BACK or CLEAR to leave the DPG screen. Speaking from a Dictionary Screen There are a few ways you may use the speech feature from a dictionary information screen. Type in the word mice. Press ENTER . The screen below appears: 14 Press SAY . The Language Master pronounces "mice", the word that you typed in, and the DPG screen for "mice" appears. To return to the dictionary response screen for "mice", press BACK . To hear the headword "mouse" pronounced, press ENTER . Notice that the word "mouse" is highlighted. Now, press SAY . The Language Master pronounces the word "mouse" and presents its DPG screen. Speaking Full Sentences stopped by yesterday. Press You can even make the Language Master speak sentences or phrases. Type we SAY . If the Language Master doesn't recognize one of the words, a correction screen will appear. After you select a correction, the words which you typed in will be spoken. Some words also have more than one pronunciation. For example, there are two pronunciations of "tear". Choose which version you want to pronounce and press ENTER . The words you typed are now pronounced. REVERSE DICTIONARY A regular dictionary gives you the meanings of a word you look up. But sometimes it's the word itself you want -- you can't look it up because you've forgotten the word. The Language Master offers several tools for finding the word you want, just from the meaning of the word or from pieces of it that you may remember. CASE 1: You remember just part of a word or phrase For instance, "There's a fancy kind of milk that you sometimes find in health stores, it's good for you in certain way, ...something-something milk". SOLUTION: Since you're sure of the "milk" part, you can use MatchMaker. Type + milk and press ENTER . (The "+" stands for the part you can't remember.) You'll see a list of all the phrases that end with the word "milk". The one you want, "acidophilus milk", heads the list. Press ENTER to look it up. CASE 2: You know a word that's similar in meaning to the one you've forgotten. For instance, there's a fancy word that means `prohibit', it's longish but you aren't sure of enough of the word to use MatchMaker. SOLUTION: Type in prohibit and look at its Thesaurus entry. Ah, there it is, "in15 terdict". To verify that this word has the shade of meaning you want, highlight it and press ENTER . CASE 3: The word has no synonyms but you know another word likely to be classed with it in some way. For instance, there's an animal whose name you can't recall but it's rather like a clam. Or, it's one of the atomic elements or whatever they call them -- hydrogen or gold would be another example. Or, it's a part of a horse, you know it but you're blocking on it -- the only part of a horse you can think of at the moment is "mane". SOLUTION: Type in "clam", or "hydrogen", or "mane" as the case may be, and look at the Classmates. CASE 4: You know more or less what the word means If you have enough further information about the word that it falls into any of Cases 1 through 3, then MatchMaker, Thesaurus, or Classmates is quickest. But maybe your memory of the word is very hazy and you can't think of a synonym or anything. SOLUTION: Search Definitions. This deserves a section of its own. Search Definitions Press MENU . Use the arrow keys to highlight the Search menu, if necessary. The Search function lets you find every word whose definition contains a word you type in. Highlight the command "Type word(s) to search on" and then press ENTER . You now have a place to type your query. Suppose you're trying to recall the special kind of insect that can give you malaria. Type "malaria" in the space provided and press ENTER . You are taken to the first entry whose definition mentions the word "malaria". Press the "FWD" key for the next such entry. Keep pressing the "FWD" key until you find the entry you want. (Ah, there it is: anopheles.) Press MENU . Notice that now there are three commands under the "Search" heading: Continue searching..., Search on "anopheles", Type word(s) to search on. The first command allows you to search for the next definition which includes the word(s) you already typed (malaria). The second command allows you to search using the headword of the definition you found (anopheles). The third command lets you type in something else to search on. 16 You can type more than one word at a time to search on. For instance, get the Search menu again and type "chinese vegetable" in the space provided, then press ENTER . You will see the first entry whose definition contains both the words "Chinese" and "vegetable". Keep pressing the "FWD" key to see all such entries. Often you may want to find an entry that mentions either of two words, not both of them. This is especially the case when you have no way of knowing exactly how the definition will be worded. In this case type your first word, then "or", then the second word, and search on these just as you would on a single word. Examples: "prehistoric or extinct"; "boat or ship". (Note: anytime you search on a noun, the Language Master automatically searches on both the singular and plural forms, so you don't have to type things like "horse or horses".) You can have up to three words in your query at one time, not counting the word "or". If you search on "boat or ship or vessel", you will find entries that mention any one of these words. If you search on "American Civil War", you will find entries that use all three of these words. You can combine the "or" kind of search with the other kind. If you search on "radioactive form or isotope", you will find all entries that use either "radioactive" and "form", or "radioactive" and "isotope". If you search on "extinct or prehistoric mammal" you will find all entries that mention either "extinct" and "mammal" or "prehistoric" and "mammal". Please bear in mind that the Language Master is searching through thousands upon thousands of definitions to find the words you want, so Search Definitions is relatively slow compared with the other functions of the LM6000. CONFUSABLES Do you occasionally have difficulty distinguishing between words which sound alike yet are spelled differently, or words which are similar? We call these types of words "Confusables". The Language Master can help you differentiate between them. Type check, then press ENTER . The screen below appears: 17 The "Conf" icon is now in bold font, indicating the availability of "Confusables". Use until the following screen appears: Each of the "Confusables" is followed by a one-word description which will differentiate between them. The descriptions will help you choose the correct word. If you want to look at a more in-depth definition for one of the words, simply "pick" it off of the screen and look at its definition. Press BACK to return to the "Confusables" screen. USER LIST The User Word List is a very handy feature. It allows you to add a list of personal words to the Language Master. You can practice with words added to the User List by using them in one of the Language Master's many educational games. Adding words to the User List There are a variety of ways to add words to the User List. Let's try the first method now. At the "Type..." screen, type the word comma and then press User List menu: LIST to view the 18 The first command is "View the list". When this command is highlighted and ENTER is pressed, you are taken into the User List. There you may view the list and/or edit it. Press ENTER . The message "List is empty" appears because there are no words in the User List yet. You are then taken back to whatever screen you had been viewing before. In this case you are back at the screen with the word "comma". Press Press LIS ...