SPRING 2000

Questions about hardware or software compatibility?

Click to go to FAQ's



Just say no to multiple choice!

SBP's interactive exercises stress learner production. Click Ejercicios for an overview.



Internet-enabled multimedia?

Spanish for Business Professionals allows you to download daily news and financial updates over your internet connection. Bookmark our web site for details in the near future!



Wouldn't it be nice if students could e-mail assignments to instructor without leaving a tutorial?

The educational version of SBP comes with built-in e-mail window. Check out our Noticias page from time to time for more info.



Real-time, peer-to-peer communication via the internet.

This is one of the technologies in SBP. Visit our Noticias site for updates on our progress.



Spanish for Business Professionals copyright © 1996-1999 United States Department of Education.

Spanish for Business Professionals is the property of the U.S. Department of Education. All rights reserved world wide.

SPANISH FOR BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS is an interactive, intelligent, multimedia tutorial in Spanish for international business professionals. Generously funded under the U.S. Department of Education's International Research and Studies Program, SBP is a three-year project which was launched in the fall of 1996. In its completed form, SBP will be a twelve-unit Spanish-language course residing on three CD-ROM's. It will be one of the first computer-assisted language tutorials to employ Natural Language Processing technology in its interactive component.

Our Web Site will keep you up-to-date on SBP's progress. Click on any of the buttons in the left frame to visit other SBP sites.
NOTICIAS UPDATES

Spanish for Business Professionals Beta Release 5 is now available.

This release includes a number of revisions, upgrades, new features, and bug fixes. Volume 3, for advanced students, is ready for distribution as well. We have a limited number of free beta copies of all three volumes available for academic institutions who can help us proofread the curriculum and hunt for bugs.

You can make as many copies of the software as you need for distribution at your university. This is our last planned beta before general release.

Click here for information on how to get a copy for your institution.

Coming soon to a Pentium near you... Drop in to our home page now and then for updates on our forthcoming release for Intel-standard machines. You can find more information on this project by visiting the Noticias page.


Dr. Carmen Cuevas, Eduardo Rodriguez, Raúl Pedraza, and a dozen or so student volunteers helped us record the audio component of our CD-ROM. Students of Spanish will have have access to more than 170 audio files of native speakers in realistic business situations, all digitally mastered in 16-bit, uncompressed stereo sound. The topics include Making and confirming business meetings, making plane reservations, reserving a hotel room, hiring a taxi, business dinners, discussing new technology in Spanish, and NAFTA and Latin American Trade Agreements.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SBP BELOW!

Diccionario:

The Spanish dialogs are supported by a fully hyperlinked Spanish/English dictionary. In addition to the basic Spanish vocabulary you need for every day situations, the dictionary includes up-to-date business and technical vocabulary for professionals doing business in the Spanish-speaking world. Search in Spanish or English from a single window, with direct hyperlinks to audio files!

Gramática:

SBP comes with a built-in Spanish grammar reference as well. You can access thorough, concise grammar lessons at any time while you are listening and learning from the dialogs. There is no need to browse through the lessons to find the rules you are looking for. The grammar window, like the dictionary, is fully hyperlinked to the dialogs.

Notas:

The Spanish for Business Professionals CD's will ship with their own built-in, bare-bones word processor called Notas, which allows you to take notes during your tutorials. Though small in size, Notas has many of the features which come with the full-blown word processors you use every day:

  • Save text, open text documents
  • Access to all fonts in the system folder
  • 256 text color palette
  • Select all, copy, cut, paste
  • Left, center, and right align
  • Line spacing
  • Find, change, change all.
  • Fully hyperlinked to other SBP windows.

Ejercicios:

Say no to multiple choice formats in computer assisted instructions software! In our interactive component, the emphasis is on learner production. Our exercises are designed to allow students of Spanish to use the language creatively from the start. Visit our Ejercicios site for an overview of some of the interactive formats we are working on.

Personal:

Our roster of staff and associates now includes a former CBT designer from Rockwell Space Operations at NASA, a radio announcer from La Tremenda Radio in Houston, a business attorney, a CALI(computer aided language instruction) designer from Albuquerque, and a novelist from Mexico. Visit Personal to learn more about who we are and what we're up to!

Manual:

The SBP User Manual will ship with each CD as an HTML document. You can use your favorite browser to open it from the CD or the hard drive and use the HTML hyperlinks to access all sections of the manual. If you are using SBP in a lab setting, you can load a single copy onto a file server so that users at remote locations will have easy access as well.

  • Preparation
  • Dialogs
  • Exercises
  • Resources
  • Internet.