This is to introduce a new and unique news service started recently in English for mainly Japanese people who are interested in enhancing and expanding their English vocabulary. It is called Popup Eiwa News and provided by Asahi Shimbun-sha's widely and popularly known Web site, asahi.com.

What it is unique about this English news service is that the each of their English articles have an Ei-wa dictionary capability included already. Readers don't need to keep any English-Japanese dictionary with them to search the difficult words through their old and small dictionaries. Instead, what all they need to do when they encounter a difficult word is just click the word, then a popup window appears with its dictionary form, pronunciation guidance in international pronunciation standard, and word definition, without delay.

The news articles are from Asahi Evening News including a commentary and the famous Vox Populi, Vox Dei (Tensei-Jingo in Japanese) among over a dozen news articles.

If you don't use mouse-click, the articles themselves don't show any Japanese. Each reader could use the dictionary function according to their needs. As their English vocabulary expands, the number of clicking sounds will be reduced and hopefully graduate from this specific news service onto the regular English publications and the sea of information in the Internet environment without any dictionary help.

That is the idea and ideal tool to many Japanese learners of English language.

I recommend this service to any Japanese who are interested in mastering English language.

The URL for asahi.com is http://www.asahi.com/. The service requires to download and install a small Plugin software. After the installation, you can ignore the existence of this software, except the way you use mouse-click on the difficult words.

Teachers planning on using the Internet with their students may find my introductory training materials useful.

http://www2.gol.com/billp/course/contents.html

Unit One has been updated to include one version for Netscape 3, and a newer one for Communicator (Netscape 4). Others will be updated soon.

Unit one is perhaps the most useful for introductory skills (clicking, scrolling, and such), and ends with some questions and a link to Tom Robb's students' "Famous Persons in Japan" site for the students to find the answers.

These materials are limited in scope, but useful for what they do. It's "notify ware" -- let me know if you use them; feedback will be appreciated.

Bill

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Bill Pellowe
billp@gol.com
http://www2.gol.com/billp
http://kyushu.com/jalt

I recently sent a message about an online listening lab I have developed(Randall's Cyber Listening Lab

http://www2.gol.com/users/rsdavis/cyberlab/, and I appreciated all of the responses and feedback I received.

Something brand new at the site, as part of a new section "Long Conversations," is a longer conversation quiz called "Likes and Dislikes" using RealAudio that I hope will not only speed the downloading process of sound, but also add a new dimension in longer listening quiz practice not available until now. If this works well, I plan on using more RealAudio quizzes in the near future. Many possibilities are opening up, and I welcome your feedback. Give it a try.