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FAQ

General

The name "WordFleks" should indicate, that the app is able to compute the flexion of words. The "ks" at the end is a reference to the Polish language, where the "x" does not exist is replaced by "ks".

 

Not yet...

The Polish keyboard layout is selected automatically, if a Polish word should be entered. To make this work, the Polish layout has to be enabled in the iOS settings. You can do this at Settings->Keyboard->Keyboards->Add New Keyboard...

List of Words

Some forms belong to multiple words, e.g. bez can be a preposition or a noun. In such cases, all words are added to the list. If you want to remove one of these words, you can add it to the list of ignored words (see documentation of the words list)

Only words that consist exclusively of letters from the Polish alphabet are added to the list of unknown words. Words with special characters of other languages, e.g. German umlauts, punctuation, digits etc. are not added to the list.

Adding new Words

Word types differ in the set of forms and the rules. Because of this, there are seperate word types for pronouns, numbers etc.

On one hand, there are different forms, e.g. the present tense exists only for imperfective verbs, while the future tense only exists for perfective verbs. On the other hand the two types of verbs can have different participes.

You can only find out by looking it up in a dictionary.

The rule of thumb is: animals are animate, persons are virille. If in doubt, consult a dictionary.

It is possible to delete forms by swiping from the right side into the screen. If you delete the nominative plural form, all other plural forms automatically disappear.

An adjective contains a form for the nominative singular masculine of the comparative and superlative. These forms are by default derived from the rules, but you can change them to the periphrastic degrees (i.e. with "bardzo"), or you can delete them (by swiping from the right edge into the screen).

If you swipe from the right side into the screen, additional actions will be shown, in many cases also to add another entry. These entries also require a comment to identify them. As an example, you can see "rozkładać się". There are also error messages in case of empty comments or duplicate comments.

 

The original is the unknown word from the text, for which the entry should be added to the vocabulary. If the unknown word is not a form of the new entry, the entry cannot be saved.
This may happen, if e.g. the unknown word is a form of an adjective, but accidentally the new entry was created for the corresponding nouns. It is also possible that the unknown word is an irregular form.

Forms are regular in a certain way, e.g. all feminine nouns end in the instrumental singular on -ą. If such rules are violated, this above error is shown.

Forms

Each course has a different way to explain the rules. The rules that are used by the app should be correct for as many words as possible and are therefore quite complicated. But computers are good at that...

This is not a problem: simply correct it. Sometimes other information is used, e.g. the ending of a nouns in the nominative singular along with the genus and if the noun is animate or virille. In this case, the correction of this information may also help (see the documentation of the word types for the dependencies).

Testing of Forms

The app uses the standard magic cards scheme: there is a stack of forms that have not yet been answered correctly, one for one correct answer, one for two etc. 
First all forms are tested that have not yet been ansered corectly. If each form has been answered correctly, the ones with one correct answer are taken. In case of a wrong answer, the card moves back to the first stack. To avoid an overwhelming large set of questions, some questions are only asked if a prerequisite is already learned (see the documentation of tests for more information).

To avoid testing of everything at same time, the basic forms have to be learned before the more advanced forms are tested, e.g. you first have to learn the genus of a noun before the genitive is tested. If you do not like this, you can disable single tests in the settings, and then they are not tested any more.

The app makes a difference between regular and irregular form. For the regular forms, not every word is tested, but a sufficient set of examples. For the genus of nouns, there are regular forms for nouns ending on -a, -ść, -e, -o, -um, -ę or something else. If this rule does not yield the correct result, it is an exception (e.g. poeta).

Sometimes there are multiple forms that could be the correct answer, and the hint makes it clear, which answer is expected. E.g. the noun "akcja" can be translated as "action" or "company share", and in the second case the hint "financially" is added.

Learning status

For each enabled formm, there is a bar, split in to multiple parts. The leftmost part represents the share of forms that were not yet entered correctly and is coloured red. Following on the right are the shares with one, two, ... correct answers, and the rightmost part is coloured green. As you give correct answers, the red share is shrinking and the green one is growing, until everything is green. Then there is nothing left to test.
If the parts are large enough, the share in percent is shown.

The words that have already been learned with a previous text do not have to be learned again. You can concentrate on the new words.

Vocabulary

On one hand, there are words in different word types with the same basic form, and on the other hand, there are also words within one word type that are displayed identically. To distinguish these entries, the addition is displayed.

Derived words like participes, verbal nouns, komperative or superlative are not shown in the list. You can find them, when you go to the basic word. There is an entry to open the derived word. The other option is to use the search function (text field above the first word in the list): searching for derived words will also show the word.

In most cases it is sufficient to use the basic form to identify words (e.g. the nominative singular of a noun), but sometimes additional forms are also taken into account (e.g. if a verb is reflexive or not). If these forms are changed, the word becomes a different word, and it is not possible any more to connect the learning progress. Therefore this error is shown.

Forms are regular in a certain way, e.g. all feminine nouns end in the instrumental singular on -ą. If such rules are violated, this above error is shown.

Settings

The new number is used for the decision, if a form has been learned or not. If you decrease the number, there are less repetitions, if you increase, there are more. The learning progress is not lost.

The disabeled competences are not tested. If it is e.g. sufficient to learn the passive translations, you can deactivate the translation to the foreign language. If you enable it later, it will be tested again. The learning progress does not get lost.