Frequently Asked Language Learning Questions about the 200 Words a Day courses

We get many language learning questions about the 200 words a Day courses from users, and potential users.

You can contact us any time with a question, but before you do so, you may find the answer already here!

Here are some of the Frequently Asked Language Learning Questions that we receive, related to the 200 Words a Day courses.

They are in three categories:

  1. Questions asked by those interested in buying a Course.
    If you have not yet tried our courses some of these Frequently Asked Questions may help you. 95% of technical support queries are covered here.

  2. Questions asked by those using the 200 Words a Day! courses.
    If you are already an owner of one of our courses here are some of the most common language learning questions.

  3. Technical Questions
    4. Click the link if you are having technical problems with your programme.

Frequently Asked Questions from People CONSIDERING Buying a Language Course
Can I order in a way other than using Paypal
What are the prices of Courses?
How are CD-Roms sent out?
How long does it take to get to me?
Is there a more secure method of postage?
Can we download the courses?
How many words does each course have?
Will I be able to speak French, German, Spanish?
How long does it take to become fluent?
Is two hundreds words a day really achievable?
How many courses are available?

Questions asked by those USING the 200 Words a Day! courses
How do I type the foreign characters and accents?
How do I do the upside-down question marks & exclamation marks in Spanish? How do you type the upside-down question mark? How to type the upside-down exclamation mark?
I can't get the music to play?
Some words are giving me trouble?
Can I add my own notes?
I am having trouble with nouns beginning with vowels in French?
I am having trouble typing the apostrophe in French. Is there another way of typing the apostrophe?
I have a technical question.

Frequently Asked Language Learning Questions from People Considering Buying a Language Course

Question: I cannot order via the Paypal system, is there another way of ordering?
Answer:

We are currently only able to accept payments via Paypal. You do not need to have an Paypal account but can just use your credit or debit card.

Question: What are the prices of Courses?
Answer:

To view the available courses and latest prices please visit the Order Page, select the language of your choice, and follow the links to order.

You may purchase in either UK£ or US$. Paypal will calculate the amount in your local currency.

There is an automatic download link option (no postage is charged) or delivery by CD-Rom (postage is added). If you select the CD-Rom, the links can also be sent to you if requested, so you can get yourself started sooner.

Question: How are the CD-Rom courses sent out?
Answer: Postage is by Royal Mail.

Question: How long does it take for the CD-Rom/s to get to me?
Answer: Within UK 1-2 days; Europe 3-5 days and for Rest of World please allow 5 -7 working days. Often it is quicker, but around Christmas the post can take longer.
Question: Our mail delivery is sometimes unreliable in our region or country. Is there a more secure method of postage?
Answer: Please select the extra Signedfor Post charge on the Order Page. You will need to sign for the parcel on its arrival. This is required for Africa, Asia, and South American countries to ensure your order is trackable and insured.

Question: Can I get the courses as downloads direct from the internet?
Answer: Yes, a downloading option available for most courses. Currently, we are sending links manually so there may be a delay in receiving. Thank you in advance for your patience. The downloads usually take about 20-30 minutes per course, depending on your connection speed.

Although a few of the courses are combined in one link, for most purchases of multiple courses, we will need to send you multiple links. It is important to follow the instructions for installation.

If you would like the CD as well the link, please contact us for payment of postage.

If you have any queries or problems at all, we are always here to help and resolve them as soon as we possibly can.

Question: How many words does each course have?
Answer: The 200 Words a Day CD-Rom Combo courses have over 1,000 words on them, with an individual Memory Trigger, Flashcard option and Sentence, for each and every word.

Question: Will I be able to speak French, Spanish, German, Italian or Welsh with these courses?
Answer: Each CD-Rom gives you a solid base of foreign vocab, and lots of common phrases. With a solid vocabulary base, you can build grammar and conversation around this. The sentence courses combine to complement the vocab courses by giving you sample sentences of the word in action. We also have grammar modules under construction, and are producing these as fast as we can.

Question: How long does it take to become fluent in a language?
Answer: This will vary from person to person, but learning a language is a very big undertaking, for which the learning never ceases!

To become fluent you should not only use PC courses but should take classes with a teacher, preferably native speaker.

You should also include a period of total immersion in your study plans, that is a period where you live in a place where your target language is actually spoken. This way you will absorb the language and hear many expressions being used in context.

Question: Two hundred words a day of a new language sounds too good to be true. Is this really achievable?
Answer: Most people can achieve two hundred words a day if they dedicate some time to the task. It is not difficult. Many can achieve several hundred more!

If the method does not work for you, we'll be interested to know why (we cover many learning-style options). Please return the CD-Rom for a refund and if you've purchased the download we do ask you to confirm you have not retained any copies.

Question: How many courses are available?
Answer:

In addition keep your eyes open for:

  • Vocab TurboBooster - Spanish, French.
  • Excelerated Spanish Verbs.
  • Excelerated French Verbs.
  • Cook Island Maori Course 1

Frequently Asked Questions on Using the 200 Words a Day software for Users with the courses.

Question: I cannot do the foreign characters, the accented characters, like the squiggly thing over the n (ñ) (the tilde )and keep losing marks because of this.
Answer: You need to know how to use the foreign characters, as they are part of the correct spelling. Meanings of words can change considerably, if there is an accent missed.

Foreign Characters
The following steps are needed to type foreign characters:
(1) Press the key sequence to identify the required Accent.
(2) Release the accent keys simultaneously.
(3) Press the letter for the key you require accented. (Press the shift key and the letter if an upper case accented character is required). To type an:

Acute/Accent: Ctrl+’ (á Á, é É, í Í, ó Ó, ú Ú ð Ð)
Here's how to type an accent or type an acute on your keyboard.
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Apostrophe key.
(2) Release both keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u, d.

Circumflex: Ctrl+^ (â Â, ê Ê, î Î, ô Ô, û Û)

Here's how to type a Circumflex on your keyboard.
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Caret key(Shift 6). (2) Release all keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u.

Grave : Ctrl+` (à À; è È, ì Ì, ò Ò, ù Ù)
Here's how to type a grave on your keyboard.
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Grave key (to the left of the digit 1).
(2) Release both keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u.

Tilde : Ctrl+~ (ã Ã, ñ Ñ, õ Õ)
Here's how to type a tilde on your keyboard. The tilde is the squiggly character over the top of the letter n in Spanish. It makes an sound like an 'ny' sound - e.g. cañon sounds like canyon! How grand! To do the tilde:
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Tilde key (usually Shift ~).
(2) Release all keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a, n, o. Sometimes the tilde can appear on different keys depending on your keyboard.

Umlaut : Ctrl+: (ä Ä, ë Ë, ï Ï, ö Ö, ü Ü, ÿ Ÿ)
Here's how to type the umlaut on your keyboard. The umlaut is the double dots over the top of certain letters. To do the umlaut:
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Colon key(Shift ;). [So to clarify this - you will be holding down the Ctrl key, the Shift key and colon key all together at the same time.... i.e you will have 3 keys held at once.]
(2) Release all keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a, e, i, o, u, y.

Dipthong /Ess tsett : Ctrl +& (æ Æ, œ Œ, ß)
The Ess tsett is the German ‘ss’ and looks like the letter B with a tail => ß
To type the ess tsett; to type the funny B sign in German, the letter that looks like a B with a tail on it.
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Ampersand key &(usually Shift &).
(2) Release all keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a, o, s. (Ess tsett lower case s only).

Dipthong: Ctrl +& (æ Æ, œ Œ)
The dipthong is like a letter 'a' squashed together with a letter 'e'=> æ Æ,
...and the other dipthong is like a letter 'o' squashed together with a letter 'e' => œ Œ. This is used for words in French for example, like sœur, which means sister.

To type the dipthong; to type ae character; to type oe character;
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Ampersand key &(usually Shift &).
(2) Release all keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter a or o
type the a and you get: æ or Æ,
type the letter o and you get: œ Œ

Cedilla : Ctrl+, (ç Ç)
To type a cedilla, a character quite common in French.
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Comma key.
(2) Release both keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter c.

Slash : Ctrl+/ (ø Ø)
(1) Hold down the Ctrl key then press the Forward Slash key
(2) Release both keys simultaneously.
(3) Type the appropriate letter, o.

Question: I cannot do the upside down exclamation mark and upside-down question marks and lose marks (in Spanish) on the test, and never get 100%.

¿How do you type the Spanish upside down exclamation mark and upside-down question marks?

Answer: The upside question marks are needed to emphasize the different way exclamation marks and question marks are used in written Spanish compared to English.

Here's how to type the Spanish upside down question mark (¿) or to type the Spanish upside down exclamation mark, the (¡):

1. Hold down, at the same time the Ctrl key, the Shift key and the Alt key together then tap the ? or ! as applicable.
2. Release all together.

If you forget these you lose points on the Learn Spanish 200 Words a Day Accelerated Learning courses!

Note the Spanish upside-down exclamation marks and Spanish upside-down question marks don't necessarily go right at the beginning of a sentence and at the end. They usually just bracket the exclamation itself so can be in 'mid-sentence' as such!

¡Por Dios!

They are more accurate way of writing exclamations or questions, because in English we have to read to the end of the sentence to realise it was a question or an exclamation.

¡Madre mia!

Question: I cannot get the music to play on my course.
Answer: It is possible that you do not have QUICKTIME so that is why the music is not playing. You need this installed to play the music. It should have installed when you loaded your program, but it may have been changed since using other programs.
  • On your PC in ‘Windows’ Go to 'MY COMPUTER'
  • Double click LOCAL DISK (C:)
  • Double click PROGRAM FILES
  • Double click EXCELTRA
  • Double click SPANISH (or French or German)
  • Double click QUICKTIME INSTALLER (yellow folder)
  • Double click quicktimeinstaller.exe
  • Keep pushing 'enter' or 'return' after the next prompts
  • This should install Quicktime


Question: I’m having trouble with the same words all the time, and this is dragging my scores down.
Answer: For words you are struggling with is to go the LESSON called MY WORST WORDS. This is on the Lesson Menu, and it constantly updates itself as you go through the course.

Question: I would sometimes prefer to add my own remarks about a word, because sometimes I have my own way of remembering, in addition to yours, that suits me better.
Answer: You can add your own notes, by clicking the little notebook icon labelled ‘Notes’ on the menu during a lesson. Type in your own notes - you may have a better way of remembering a word for example, or a character, friend or relative who fits the Memory Trigger or Gender Trigger.

When you add your own notes, these also form a Special Lesson that you can take anytime. This is a lesson with just the words on which you have made notes. You will find this lesson in the Lesson Menu, and is numbered Lesson 800. Alternatively you can just test yourself on these words by going to the Test Menu.

Question: I am having trouble the nouns beginning with vowels (a-e-i-o-u with words like ami, amour etc) in French, and seem to always drop points on these words. What am I doing wrong?
Answer: You are probably forgetting to add the (m) or (f) after the word, when you type the word. This is necessary to ensure that you have in fact learnt the gender and before a vowel the definite article (the word ‘the’) becomes l’ for both masculine and feminine French nouns. Because they both use l’ (e.g l’ami, l’amour etc) it is not immediately clear from the lack having 'le' or 'la'.

Question: I am having trouble typing the apostrophe in French. Is there another way of typing the apostrophe?
Answer:
There is probably nothing wrong with your apostrophe. . . .phew!

...but ...

...you are probably forgetting to add the (m) or (f) after the word, when you type the word.

This is necessary to ensure that you have in fact learnt the gender and before a vowel the definite article (the word ‘the’) 'le' or 'la' becomes l’ for both masculine and feminine French nouns. Because they both use l’ (e.g l’ami, l’amour etc) it is not immediately clear from the lack having 'le' or 'la'.

So, there is most likely nothing wrong with your apostrophe!

[Another little tip while we are on the topic. When typing in the (m) or (f), you can omit typing the bracket with no points penalty. Saves you a couple of keystrokes.]

Question: I have a Technical Question.
Answer:
If you are having technical problems check out the Technical Help. You should receive an automatically generated response initially, and we generally give you a human answer within 24 hours.


If there are any other language learning questions you wish to raise with us, or members of the 200 Words a Day team use the form below.

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