Dominie

20 Guided Writing exercises in English as a Foreign Language

The exercises are in the form of letters or memoranda covering a range of language acts: Informing, Requesting, Complaining, Apologising etc.

In each exercise Dominie presents the learner with a set of skeleton sentences to be expanded. The learner uses these skeletons to form sentences and types them in.

Dominie is capable of recognising and accepting a very wide range of possibilities for each sentence or part of a sentence.

Dominie will also recognise a range of predictable errors and indicate the nature of the mistake made. In many cases a full explanation of the grammar or lexical point in question can be accessed.

How does Dominie work?

Dominie processes the student input by accessing a knowledge base with a special structure containing a very large number of acceptable solutions and many predicted mistakes.

The database has been constructed on the basis of collated information from students of all major European language backgrounds.

Uses

Due to its flexibility, Dominie can be used in a variety of ways.

If used as individual study :-

The student will see language mistakes corrected and errors explained
The learner can interrogate Dominie and be shown a list of all possible "next words". This aids the student to experiment with vocabulary extending his/her language limits.
Competent students can use Dominie as a platform for further learning, taking up the challenging resource Dominie presents, to investigate and enrich their knowledge of the English language.

Dominie can also be used for small group teaching thus using the package as an electronic blackboard with a teacher accessing the software.

View a sample Dominie activity

Download the Dominie Demo