Welcome to Spanish for Business Professionals multimedia! SBP is an interactive, intelligent, Spanish-language CD-ROM tutorial with special emphasis on the needs of students who are interested in NAFTA and international commerce.

Volume One of SBP includes four units or Unidades, which together correspond to a college-level semester of basic Spanish.

Upon its release, Volume Two will include four new dialogs to support second-semester intermediate Spanish, and the four units in Volume Three will deal with more advanced language and commercial topics.

At the core of your SBP curriculum is a series of Spanish dialogs by native speakers in typical business situations. Accompanying them is an array of cultural and commercial tips, QuickTime movies, and high resolution photos from México and the Spanish-speaking world.

The audio files are recorded in high-quality stereo sound, and supported by an online Spanish grammar reference as well as a Spanish/English technical dictionary.

All of SBP's components are tightly integrated. You will notice, for instance, that SBP doesn't normally mark hypertext or "hot words" with bold face, underlines, or special text color. That's because virtually all text in your program is hot. Click on a word, and usually something will happen. SBP will either open its dictionary and do a word search or check its grammar reference for a pertinent rule or lesson.

Once you've studied your dialogs, you can practice the Spanish you have learned by opening your SBP interactive exercise window. There you will find comprehension tests, vocabulary and verb conjugation exercises, word games, and dictations. You can record your own voice and play it back to compare it to native-speaker pronunication. There are even open-ended writing exercises, supported by natural language processing technology, which allow you to make up your own Spanish sentences and have them anaylzed by your computer. As you will see, your exercises place a great deal of importance on error-specific feedback. SBP will pinpoint your mistakes, explain in easy-to-understand language what's wrong, and tell you where you can find the information you need to correct your answer.

SBP includes a number of built-in support tools. Your Notas note pad allows you to take notes while you work, save results from your exercise, or copy any of the grammar, cultural or commercial tips in the curriculum. Copying these notes, incidentally, is entirely point-and-click. If you want to save a note on U.S. exports to México, for example, you only have to click on an icon, and SBP will automatically save it. If you want to e-mail that note to a colleague,or maybe turn in an SBP assignment to an instructor, you don't have to exit the program and boot up on your e-mail program. SBP has an e-mail protocol built-in. All you need is a TCP/IP internet connection.

Would you like to stay up-to-date on news from México? SBP includes built-in internet downloads of daily news from Mexico City. You can also access SBP Central, which provides regular tips and updates for SBP users via the internet.

Finally, SBP includes a built-in chat protocol which allows SBP users to communicate with each other in real-time over the network. You can chat in Spanish with other SBP users in your lab, or even other users at remote locations around the country and around the world.

This manual explains how to set up your SBP software and how to use SBP's components. Your first step should be to open and read the document on your CD-ROM titled READ ME FIRST! This is your software license. It explains the terms and conditions for using SBP. Read this document carefully before you use or install your software, since by using or installing SBP you agree to all the terms and conditions spelled out in that document.

Here are the minimal requirements you will need to use SBP:

• Macintosh-compatible computer with PowerPC processor.
• At least 32 MB RAM (48 MB RAM recommended).

For optimal performance, you should check your Mac for the following:

• Set your monitor to at least thousands of colors (millions recommended) and at least 640 by 480 resolution. You can do this by opening your Apple Menu, selecting first Control Panels, then Monitors and Sound.
• Check your fonts folder to be sure that Times, Geneva, Helvetica, and New York fonts are all installed. Your Fonts folder should be inside your System Folder on your hard drive.
• SBP uses Apple, Inc.'s English and Spanish Text-to-Speech software in a few places. To make sure that this feature works for you, check to see that both English Text-to-Speech and Spanish Text-to-Speech are properly installed. The documentation which comes with your Macintosh computer includes instructions for installing Text-to-Speech. You might also try selecting Find... from your Finder (i.e. your desktop) and searching you hard drive or the CD-ROM which shipped with your computer for instructions on installing Text-to-Speech.
• Make sure that your TCP/IP connection is properly configured if you would like to take advantage of SBP's internet access. If you are working in a lab setting that is already connected to the internet, then chances are that your TCP/IP protocol is already set up. Contact your systems administrator if you need more help or information.

SBP offers you the following deployment options:

• Hard drive only.
• Hard drive/CD-ROM
• CD-ROM only

The hard drive only option gives you optimal performance, but also requires a sizeable amount of disk space (about 600 MB). If you select this method, your SBP application and all of the accompanying media files will be installed on your hard disk. This method enables the auto-save feature of your note pad and allows you to set up direct internet access. If you select hard drive/CD-ROM, then the SBP application and the Quicktime movies will be installed on the hard drive, but the media files will remain on the CD-ROM. This method requires about 160 MB hard disk space. You will still have auto-save and internet access, but you will need to insert the CD-ROM into the CD drive in order to use SBP. If you are working in a lab setting, this means that you will need a CD-ROM for every station which is using SBP. If you choose CD-ROM only deployment, then no hard disk space is required. You can boot up directly from your CD-ROM. Your auto-save feature and your internet access will not be available if you choose this method. On older models of Macintosh, your Quicktime movies and your audio files may not play as smoothly as they will if you choose one of the other deployment methods. The web page DIALOGS explains how you can compensate for this using SBP Audio options window.