There are plenty of textbooks and teaching materials that can help you to learn foreign languages one way or another. Yet, there is no way to learn a foreign language without memorizing vocabulary and looking up words in a dictionary. This is hard and often not very exciting work, but there are a few tools that can make the process of acquiring new words and expressions a bit more tolerable and effective.

jVLT is described as “a flash card-based vocabulary learning tool”, but there is much more to it than that. Besides the flash card part called Quiz, the application also contains rather useful Vocabulary and Examples modules that allow you to store not only words and their translations, but also other useful context information. jVLT is a Java-based application, so before you can run it, make sure you have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on your machine. If your distribution doesn’t include JRE, you can download it free of charge from www.java.com. jVLT is available as a .jar file that requires no installation. Simply download the latest version from http://jvlt.sourceforge.net/download.html and run it by double-clicking on the jvlt-x.x.x.jar file. If double-clicking doesn’t work, launch the terminal, switch to the application’s directory and run the java -jar jvlt-x.x.x.jar command.

Figure 1: jVLT includes three modules to help you learn new words

Once jVLT is up and running, you must populate it with vocabulary data. Click on the Create new file icon, and press the Add button. This opens the Add entry dialog window, where you enter a word, its pronunciation, and senses (translations and their definitions). The ability to manage multiple senses sets jVLT apart from other similar applications and allows you to capture all possible meanings of the word. Moreover, if you press the Advanced button, you can add more information about the word such as categories and multimedia files. Under the Categories tab, you assign multiple categories to the word, which can come in handy when you want, for example, to browse the words from a particular lesson or topic. In the Multimedia files section, you can add a sound file and a picture. Once you’ve added all the word’s data, press the OK button. In this way, you can add as many words as you like.

Figure 2: Using filters, you can quickly find words that match the defined criteria

As you keep adding new entries to jVLT, locating certain words by simply scrolling through the list becomes more difficult. Fortunately, jVLT includes a filtering feature that makes it easier to view the words that match the defined criteria. If you tick the Advanced filter check box, you can define a filter based on one or multiple criteria. For example, you can define a filter that finds all the words belonging to a particular category (assuming you’ve assigned categories), having a certain expiration date, having specified senses, and so on.

Figure 3: The Examples part allows you to add example sentences and link words to them

These are all useful features, but what really makes jVLT stand out from the crowd is its Examples section. Basically, jVLT allows you to add example sentences and link them to the words in the database. In this way, you can not only record the words’ meanings, but also their real-life usage. To add a new example sentence, click on the Examples tab and press the Add button. Enter the example and its translation in the respective fields. To link the example to a word in the database, select the desired word in the example sentence. This displays the word and its senses in the lower part of the window. By default, jVLT displays the exact matches to the selected word. This means that if you want to connect the verb “connu” to its infinitive form “connaitre”, you have to manually edit the word in the Filter field. Next, select the sense you want and press the Add button. The clever bit is that you can link multiple words to the same example, provided, of course, that these words are in the example sentence. When you are satisfied with the result, press OK.

Now that you’ve added the words, you are ready to start memorizing them using jVLT’s Quiz section. This part is loosely based on the selective learning system proposed by German psychologist Sebastian Leitner in the 1970s. The purpose of this system was to make learning using flash cards more efficient and less time-consuming than the traditional method. Leitner’s system divides flash cards into groups, and how often you review the cards in a group depends on the group’s level of difficulty. In jVLT all the words are placed in different batches. During a quiz, words are moved into a “higher” batch if you know the word. Moreover, the word becomes “inactive” for a predefined period of time, meaning that it will not appear in the subsequent quizzes. The word is re-activated once its inactivity period has expired. It may sound a bit complicated, but jVLT hides all the theory behind a user-friendly interface.

Figure 4: Use the Quiz section to test your knowledge

Before you start a quiz, you can decide whether you want to include all the words in the database or just a subset of them. This feature can come in handy if you want to brush up words from a particular category or lesson. For example, if you are planning to eat at a restaurant, you might want to go through all the words in the Food category. To do this, press the Select words button and define a filter. During the quiz, jVLT displays the word’s senses first, and your task is to provide the corresponding word. When you press the Next button, jVLT shows the word, and if your guess was correct, answer Yes to the “Did you know it?” question, otherwise answer No. Once you have completed the quiz, jVLT displays some statistics, including your success rate and the number of words in different batches. You can use this information to monitor your overall progress, but don’t focus on it too much. The most important thing is that jVLT ensures that you learn more efficiently.

A good dictionary is an indispensable tool when you are learning a foreign language, and if you need a solid dictionary application, look no further than StarDict. This seemingly simple application hides quite a few useful features that can help you to look up words and translate texts quickly and efficiently. StarDict is available with most mainstream Linux distributions. For example, to install StarDict on Ubuntu, you can simply use the Add Programs manager (you may be prompted to enable the Universe repository in order to install StarDict). StarDict can also be run via klik, so you can try it without actually installing it on your machine. Before you launch StarDict, you have to add some dictionaries to it, and StarDict’s website provides a comprehensive list of the available dictionaries. Simply pick the dictionary you want, download its tarball version, and unpack it either using an archive manager or the tar -xjvf dictionary.tar.bz2 command, where dictionary is the exact file name. Move the resulting archive using the following command:

mv dictionary /usr/share/stardict/dic

Using the described procedure, you can install as many dictionaries as you like. You can later use StarDict’s dictionary manager to enable and disable the installed dictionaries as well as change their order.

Figure 5: StarDict is a dictionary program that sports a couple of clever features

Launch StarDict, and start using it by entering the desired word into the search field. As you type, StarDict displays a list of possible matches from all the installed dictionaries. You can also look up the word using several Web search engines and online dictionaries such as Google, Yahoo!, LEO, etc. To do this, right-click on the Internet search button, and select the search engine you want. Better yet, if the desired search engine is not on the list, you can easily add it. To do this, press the Preferences button, select the Main window > Search website, and add your search engine.

StarDict also allows you to perform so-called “fuzzy queries”, which can be rather useful when you don’t remember the exact spelling of the word. To run a fuzzy query, use a slash (/) before the search word. StarDict utilizes the Levenshtein distance to find the possible match to the search word.

Figure 6: Using the Scan feature, you can look up words from within any application

StarDict also sports another nifty feature called Scan. When it’s enabled, select a word in any application, and StarDict displays its translation in a pop-up window. This allows you to quickly look up words when you, for example, read web pages in Firefox or view documents in OpenOffice.org.

No matter how clever the language applications are, it’s ultimately you who have to do most of the work. However, language tools like jVLT and StarDict can make the learning process more effective and fun.

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