Lexinomicon Workbooks

After you have installed the application Lexinomicon on your hard disk, you are ready to install the associated exercises, which are contained in "workbooks." (If you have not yet installed the application itself, go back to Installing Lexinomicon.). If you have difficulties, note the "trouble-shooting" section at the end of this page. Please read all of the following before growing impatient.

Because we have just switched textbooks, the drills associated with the fifth edition of Na klar! (by Di Donato, Clyde, & Vansant) are still in the process of being entered. You will need to download each chapter as a separate workbook. To do so use a right click [Windows] or control-click [Macintosh] for each:

• Einführung
• Kapitel 1
• Kapitel 2
• Kapitel 3
• Kapitel 4
• Kapitel 5
• Kapitel 6
• Kapitel 7
• Kapitel 8
• Kapitel 9
• Kapitel 10
• Kapitel 11
• Kapitel 12
• Kapitel 13
• Kapitel 14

If your browser insists that this is a zip file, that's okay - it is a special form of zip. Simply change the extension to '.lex'.

If your browser expands things on its own, keep the file ending in '.lex' and delete the expanded folder. Put the downloaded files (which should end in ".lex") in a convenient spot on your hard-drive. Note that you can open them only from inside Lexinomicon. No other application will work.

Some intermediate-level review exercises are also available (with more on the way). You download them from this page (again: right click [Windows] or ctrl-click [Macintosh]):
   Indicative Verb Review
   Relative Clause Review
   Passive Voice Review
   General Subjunctive Review
   Special Subjunctive Review

Now open the Lexinomicon application itself. It takes some time, so be patient.

Because it's the first time, you'll first need to create a profile. Give yourself a name and password. (In the future, if you have previously left Lexinomicon by means of "quit", you will not need to repeat this step again on the same computer. But you will need to click on your name and enter your password. You can, if you want, transfer import your profile from, or export it to, another computer).

After that, you should get the program and be ready to roll.

Now go to the "File" menu and select "open." Open up your workbook for, let's say, Kapitel 1 (You'll need to know where it is on your hard drive). Importing each subsequent workbook is a separate action.

In a minute you'll have something like this:

From now on, whenever you open Lexinomicon you'll find this same set-up, with your drills listed in the left-hand column. You will not need to be connected to the internet. By clicking on the arrow next to each workbook, you can open up the main folder to see the chapter folders. Similarly, you can open a chapter folder to see the individual exercise groups.

And finally, you can open an exercise folder to see the individual items:

Thus you can pick any place to start, or you can skip ahead or back, by opening a specific item. The "continue" button moves you to the next item in the sequence. You'll see it in the large window when Lexinomicon opens, but it's also always in the movable window in the upper left-hand corner. Getting the right answer also moves you to the next item. Usually the sequence follows the same order, but some exercises are accessed randomly.

There are three kinds of exercises:

1. Fill in the blanks:

Here, as the instructions tell you, you're asked to fill in the proper form of the verb "heißen".

Make sure your cursor is in the blank space and type in your answer. If there is more than one blank to be filled in, you can press the tab key to advance to the next one or else click within that blank.

2. "Transformations":

Here you supply a more complete answer, which can sometimes be a complete sentence. In this case, you just write "acht".

3. Multiple Choice:

Note that this particular multiple choice exercise also contains an audio file. Click on the player icon to hear it. You can repeat it as often as you wish, as a whole or in part.

Lexinomicon will cache such an audio file. In other words, the first time that you access it, it will automatically be downloaded to your hard disk. After that, you need not be connected to the internet to play it.

Press "return" or click on "check your answer" to submit what you have written.

The "Preferences" menu will give you some choices about how you want responses configured. It will, for example, allow you to dispense with those annoying "correct" messages.

A wrong answer will prompt a red signal in the progress bar. In the case of fill-in-the-blank question, there will also be a red line in the problem area. Occasionally, but not always, you will get an explanation of why your answer was wrong. Edit your answer and try again. A predetermined number of wrong answers will cause Lexinomicon to give up on this item, invite you to consult the instructor at a later time, and move on to the next question.

You can ask to see the correct answer by selecting "show answer" in the "Help" menu. In many cases, there's actually more than one right answer, but only one, the most likely one, will be displayed.

Special characters:

While Lexinomicon will usually (but not always) accept ss instead of ß, it rigorously insists on umlauts. If you are using a Macintosh, it's easy to type ä, ö, or ü: just hit option-u and then the desired vowel. If you want an ß, just type option-s. Windows makes it much harder to work in languages other than English, especially when you're not using Word (and Lexinomicon doesn't - it's java-based). To learn how to enter German special characters (e.g. umlauts) in Windows, download diacritics.pdf. Or else use the "Special Characters" palette (which should appear automatically, but you may have to select it from the "View" menu):

Clicking on the desired character will place it where your cursor is located in the answer space.

When Germans are using a primitive e-mail system or a typewriter without umlauts, they sometimes substitute ae for ä, etc. You do not have that option.

Note: Lexinomicon is case-sensitive; i.e. it insists on proper capitalization. Your answer may be considered wrong because you have erroneously used lowercase somewhere, including at the beginning of a sentence.

In most cases, the program is forgiving about inessential punctuation. It normally doesn't matter if you put a period or question mark at the end of a sentence, although a comma is usually not optional. Spaces always count. Your answer may be judged wrong because you left out a space or added an extra one.

Installation Problems: If you have trouble installing Lexinomicon or the workbooks, contact Mark A. O'Neil. Be sure to tell him what computer system you are using, as well as how and when things went wrong. Otherwise, he can't do much for you.

Loss of Profile: Certain kinds of crashes can cause Lexinomicon to forget who you are. You may need to recreate your profile and then import the workbook again. If Lexinomicon causes a crash, please blitz Mark about it in as much detail as you can manage.

Typographical Errors in the Exercises. This is an early version of Lexinomicon, and there are probably still bugs in the program and typing mistakes in the text. Please blitz Bruce Duncan about either kind of problem. If you are reporting a wrongly-constructed exercise, please include its identification (such as 2.A.11, the designation for the 11th item in the first group of exercises for Chapter 2).

If for some reason you still can't get Lexinomicon to work, a temporary solution is DrillBits, an older version. For instructions on how to access and use that, click here.

For an old, vestigial set of drills associated with a previous textbook (Moeller/Liedloff: Deutsch heute 8th ed.), use a right click [Windows] or control-click [Macintosh] to download: German 1 for Chapters 1-6 and German 2 for chapters 7-12.