Tense Buster is a program designed for adult ESL learners at five levels, from Elementary to Advanced, to help them learn some of the most common aspects of English grammar, vocabulary, and to encourage good language learning strategies. Each level has a number of modules and each module is comprised of around ten exercises. The program claims to follow a structured, guided discovery approach to learning, the aim of which is to help students "break through the grammar barrier"
Each level starts with a unit which guides the student around the program by showing them how to complete the different activities. At the end of each unit there is a vocabulary section. The CD-ROM comes with its own authoring program and all of the exercise types can be authored by any teacher with fairly basic word processing skills; no special expertise is required.
The Units
Each unit follows the same pattern, and is designed to lead the learner to a better understanding of the grammatical area under examination. The example used for illustration in this review is the unit on relative clauses from the Intermediate level. The other structures examined at this level are "equality" (structures with "as"), "the passive", "will and going to", and "conditionals" (zero, first and second at this level). There is also a separate unit on vocabulary, which deals with vocabulary learning strategies and introduces some phrasal verbs. The final unit, "How to learn faster", encourages learners to think of effective ways to practise the structures and vocabulary in the unit.
Unit Introduction
Do You Understand?
Unit Rules
Unit Practice Exercises
Unit: Testing Exercises
Unit Vocabulary
On Your Own
Features: Scratch Pad
The
Scratch Pad feature allows students to make their own notes, copy grammar rules, and keep copies of the vocabulary sections of each unit. The contents of the
Scratch Pad can be printed and/or exported to a Word document. The students can also open a file called, "Ideas for learning English" which encourages them to think about why they are learning the language, what their priorities are, how they are going to program their learning, and what they like about the language. This file is normally available through the
Scratch Pad, but can easily be copied and pasted into a Word document.
Features: Progress Records
Students' progress is recorded on a text file which the software can call up to show the students how well they are doing. As well as getting scores for individual exercises, the students can see how well they have done that day, or throughout the level. The summary of level shows them when they did an activity, what their score was, and how long they spent on each activity. If students repeat an exercise, no matter how often, they can compare their multiple scores.Unfortunately, teachers cannot access the progress records of individual students without using students' log-in names, nor can they see the entire class progress on one screen.
Features: Printing Options
Students can click the "Printing" icon to print an exercise, feedback, grammar rule, or any related reading text from a unit.
Features: Authoring Tool
A big advantage for the teacher is the authoring tool. The grammar areas that appear in each level are fairly major ones, but many teachers will want to focus their learners' attention on other areas--problem vocabulary or word order, for example. With the authoring tool, activities which are relevant to your students' needs and interests can be tailor-made. There are eight different types of activities to choose from including traditional gap-fill, multiple choice, and free writing activities. It is also relatively easy to include pictures, sound files, and video with the exercises. Once the material has been authored, it appears on the unit menu and you can quite easily edit it and change it.Another feature of the authoring tool is the ability to customise the activities through the "Settings" screen (Figure14) to suit the purpose of the exercise. For example, instructors can decide whether or not to set a time limit for an exercise, what help is available to the students--the rule, the marking button, and the feedback button, and what kind of feedback the students get.
