Introduction to the Workout Room

This page demonstrates the different kinds of exercise used in the Old English Aerobics Workout Room. There are only five, and they are very simple. At the beginning of every exercise you will see a dialog box like this one, letting you know what the exercise is all about. Click “OK” or hit the Enter or Escape key to dismiss it.

After you dismiss this dialog box, you will see the first task, with instructions. Read these carefully.

_
Ðēos bōc sceal tō Wiogoraċeastre
Þæs cyninges sword is gōd.
________ cyning ofslōh ________ ċeorl.
Penda ġeaf þām þeġne hring
King Alfred ruled the West Saxons.
Bēowulf is mīn nama.
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An exercise is divided into tasks, each of which requires that you work with a short text. This is a “Find” task, which asks you to find all the nouns in the sentence above. When you click a noun it will be highlighted. When you’re satisfied that you’ve found them all, click “Submit.”
 

If you completed this task successfully, you will now see a message below, telling you that you earned two points. A penalty (usually one point) is assessed for any mistake you make.

Use the navigation button on the right to advance to the next task; use the one on the left to review tasks you have already completed. You can’t look ahead: the right-hand navigation button will take you no farther than the current task.

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This is a “Choice” task. It asks you to supply information about a word or other sentence element (always highlighted) by choosing answers from one or more lists. Here the task is to supply the case and number of the highlighted word.
  • nominative
  • accusative
  • genitive
  • dative
  • instrumental
  • singular
  • plural
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Some “Choice” tasks repeat themselves: in these, you must click the “Go on” button to advance to the next phase of the task after you’ve looked at the program’s feedback. This task asks for the part of speech of the highlighted word (try making a mistake to see what happens).
  • pronoun
  • noun
  • verb
  • adjective
  • adverb
  • preposition
  • conjunction
  • interjection
Notice how Old English Aerobics gives you feedback. Green means “you got this one right”; red means “you got this one wrong”; purple means “this is a correct answer that you missed.”
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This one is a “Fill-in-the blank” task. The text contains one or more blanks, which you fill by dragging the tiles onto them.
se þone þæs þām þā þāra
The “I give up” button gives you one answer. In tasks that ask several questions you can click this button repeatedly. You earn no points for answers you get this way: notice how the score counter at the bottom of the task window is decremented when you click “I give up.”
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The “Combo” task combines the “Find” and “Choice” tasks. First you click on a single word (or other sentence element), and then you answer questions about it. This particular task asks you to find nouns.
  • nominative
  • accusative
  • genitive
  • dative
  • instrumental
  • singular
  • plural
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The last kind of task is translation. Above is a text in Old English and below is a box in which you can type your translation. After you click “Submit” your translation will be assigned a score and you’ll be able to compare your translation to one from the Old English Aerobics database.

Miscellaneous pointers

Look at the box underneath the task window to keep track of your progress through the exercise and to check the score you’ve earned so far.

Notice that the slide is dimmed at the end of a task: this is your signal that the task is done.

When you no longer need the roving instruction box on the right, click on it to make it disappear.

You can earn 0 points for this task.
Task 0 of 0. Total score: 0