14 DAY TRIAL // ProVoc is an application geared towards helping you improve your foreign language vocabulary.
The program uses lists of words and their corresponding translation, for which you have several choices: download a list from the developer's site, write your own or import a text list. For the sake of ease I downloaded an English - French list called "Vocabulaire Discoveries". You can find many different such lists on the site in different languages from German to Taiwanese.
After getting my word list I opened it up and was very pleasantly surprised to see that it was broken down into chapters, and as they progressed they grew in difficulty.
With the list in my possession I turned over to the Test leaf and pressed "start test". In its default settings, the program presents a word and prompts you to type in your translation. Numbers and colors go smooth but complex words with multiple translations and verbs can be a problem. Verbs require prepositions to be accepted, however you can give the past, preset or future tense and it will be accepted.
There are two standard ways of testing, Theme and Version (basically to and from one language and another), and another third in which the first two are mixed in a random manner, although you can adjust a slider to change focus from one to another.
Also, a test can be either in plain (type in the answer) or multiple choice mode. In multiple choice mode, you can choose from 2 to 20 choices per question and the program seems to give you a decent mix of words as to not make it obvious.
Finally, you can choose between a normal, every-word-once test, and a continuous test that feeds you random words and during which you can adjust difficulty on the fly using a slider.
During the course of a test you can click on the flag icon present on the card to mark it for future reference, and you have the option to test only marked words which makes it easier to identify the troublesome words and learn them. Also, whenever you fail to give the correct translation to a word, its difficulty setting goes up, and with every right answer the difficulty will go down.
In the preference window you can set the ratio of right/wrong answers needed to change the difficulty of a word as well as change the setting for each language. You can opt to ignore capitalization, punctuation, as well as accents for each language, and can at any time return to turn these back on.
Last but not least, this program has a built in card printing option which makes it easy to print small card with a word on one side and its corresponding translation on the other side.
Although ProVoc was intended as a multilingual vocabulary enhancer tool, you can make your own lists with words and their definition or just about anything else you can think of. Its built in self evaluating tools make it easy to see what you need to take a closer look at.
The Good Very well thought out application that makes it easy to take tests and monitor your results over time. Can be adapted to almost any language or subject.
The Bad
Small number of pre-made lists that you can download from the site.
The Truth It's one of the better "learning card" programs out there, featuring all the helpful options and it's free. Yes there may not be many lists you can just download, but making your own is very easy.
Here are some screenshots so you can see for yourself, click to enlarge:
