MannX (Multimedia Annotator - XML) is a software program to control digital video and associated multimedia text: transcripts, commentaries, and glossaries. MIRC (Multimedia Intermediate Russian Course) is a MannX application that uses a version of MannX that is customized for the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet. It presents 21 language lessons (we sometimes call them episodes) based on a famous Russian novel, The 12 Chairs. In this guide we will not distinguish between them, but MannX itself could just as well be used for teaching any other language, or architecture, or zoology.
The main component of a MannX application is the MannX
Player which makes it possible for beginning and intermediary language students
to work with unabridged, idiomatic video and text. MannX can be used in a number
of ways, but a typical application would consist of episodes or lessons, each
packaged as a separate folder. Each folder contains texts which relate to a
video clip: a transcript, a commentary, and possibly a specialized glossary.
Video clips for a lesson set are large files, which may be left on a CD or DVD
or shared on a network drive, so the folder will not usually contain the video
clip itself. In MIRC, many lexical items are explained in commentaries. A large
dictionary and a set of grammar materials are shared among all lessons. This
guide explains how to use the MannX player, and the MIRC dictionary and the
grammar.
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The MannX screen is divided into four parts. The movie is in the upper left-hand corner. To the right of the movie is the dictionary. The window underneath the movie holds the script, and the remaining window holds the commentary. These "windows" are simply HTML frames, and a user with some knowledge of HTML or with an HTML editor can rearrange them in the standard way.
The central concept of MannX is the text/video segment. The video clip of a MannX lesson is divided into segments, usually a few seconds long and corresponding to a linguistic unit, such as a sentence or an exchange in a dialog. The script is divided into matching segments, and the two sequences of segments - video and textual - are linked: if you select a text segment MannX can easily find the matching video segment, and the other way around. As a result, the student can play the same segment many times while reading its text and comments linked to that text. (The linking of video to text is done by MannX, the linking of script to commentaries is done in the standard HTML way, using HTML links and anchors.)
The usual way to go through a lesson is to work through the segments in order until the text, the sound, the vocabulary and the grammar of each segment are completely understood. In the end, you have the satisfaction of playing the entire clip (usually a few minutes long) and enjoying it as a movie.
The best way to open a lesson in the MannX Playe is to use the splash screen. At the bottom of the splash screen is a row of buttons numbered 1-21, one for each episode. Clicking on a button, opens the corresponding episode in the Player. The Player window will occupy the whole screen. Closing the Player returns you to the Splash screen.
Note: Close all other browser windows and maximize the splash screen before starting the MannX Player.
More on the Splash screen: In addition to numbered buttons for episodes, the row of links at the bottom has two textual links: Select Episode and UserGuide. Clicking on the first of them will produce a list of episodes with a brief description for each episode. This might be useful when you review the episodes and remember them by content but not by number. Clicking on the UserGuide link will open this file.
(You can also open a lesson manually, by going into the lesson directory and opening the file playerFrames.htm. Make sure it opens maximized: open any page, maximize the browser window, close all browser windows, open playerFrames.html. But why do this if there is a splash screen?)
The central concept in using the MannX Player is the current selection. This is usually a segment, but it can be several contiguous segments.
There are several ways to set the current selection. (See also the table of buttons below.)
Most user interactions with the program use the row of buttons (and one drop-down list) in the movie frame. They control the movie, dictionary, and grammar. The Quicktime control bar is also available, for additional video navigation and playback.Our buttons are as follows:
| Button | Description |
|---|---|
|
Play. If you have not selected a sequence to play, this button will play the entire clip. |
|
Stop button toggles with Play; use it to stop the movie in the middle of current selection. |
|
The Next button selects the next segment. If the Off/On toggle is On, the segment will play automatically; otherwise you have to click Play. |
|
The Previous button selects the previous segment. If the Off/On toggle is On, the segment will play automatically; otherwise you have to click Play. |
|
The Dictionary button is for looking up words in the Dictionary. To look up a word, select the word in the scroll box immediately underneath the movie and press D. If no word is selected, the first word in the scroll box will be looked up. See the Dictionary section for more detail. |
|
The Grammar button gets you to the chart of conjugation classes, with links to other grammar topics. If you want to get back to the Dictionary, click G a second time. See the Grammar section for more detail. |
| sync | The sync drop-down list has three options for synchronizing to the currently selected position in the movie, script or comment window. The last opition on the list, Clear, is to clear the current selection altogether, in case you want to play the movie using the Quicktime control bar. |
|
When the On button is showing, setting a current selection will result in the movie sequence being played immediately. On toggles with Off. |
|
When the Off button is showing, you have to click Play to play the current selection. This gives you a chance to pause and think and use the dictionary and grammar. |
To look up a word, select the word in the scroll box immediately underneath the movie and press D. The dictionary will scroll so the entry you need will be, most likely, at or near the top row of the dictionary table. The reason for the uncertainty is that our dictionary does not do a morphological analysis of the word, trying to reconstruct its dictionary form (the Nominative case or the Infinitive) It looks up words by their starting letters, scrolling so that the best match is the second row from top. Most of the time it works, but sometimes the best match is a related word or simply a similar word. For instance, if you look up женюсь "I-will-marry" in Lesson 6, the dictionary will scroll to женщина, and to find жениться you will have to scroll a few rows up.
Fortunately, you don't have to do that because all such tricky forms, and most non-tricky ones, are glossed in the comments. If you click on женюсь in the script, the following comment will appear at the top of the comment frame:
..женюсь...
женќться get married
At this point, you have the dictionary form and can find it in the dictionary. In fact, if you select the infinitive form in the Commentary file it will appear in the scroll box.
When you set the current selection, the text of the selection is placed in the scroll box. In addition, if you select some text in the comment or indeed in the dictionary itself, the selection will be placed in the scroll box, replacing what's there. (You select text in the comment and dictionary frames in the usual way, by dragging or double-clicking your mouse.)
If all the words are glossed in the comments, why use the dictionary? The answer is: because it has additional grammatical information. A dictionary entry consists of three cells: the key word on the left, the definition on the right, and grammatical information in the middle cell. Those middle cells are filled with abbreviations, such as
ES NPlur. жёны f.an
(stress on Ending in singular, on Stem in plural. Nom.Plural form жёны; feminine
animate noun)
To find out what these abbreviations stand for, click anywhere in the middle column. This will display the Dictionary Abbreviations file with a complete list of abbreviations and links to appropriate explanations in the Intermediate and Beginning grammars, Some of the links, including all links relating to nouns and adjectives, will take you to a section of the on-line elementary grammar from Leed and Nakhimovsky Beginning Russian, maintained by the Russian Department at Cornell University. You need an internet connection to use the elementary grammar. All links having to do with verbs will take you to the grammar pages that come with this program, starting with the Main Grammar page. To open the Main Grammar page, click the G link on the button row. The button will toggle to the inverse-video G button. To get back to dictionary and comment frames, click the G toggle again.
The grammar pages of MIRC are adapted from the "Overview of Russian Conjugation" in Intermediate Russian 2nd Edition by S.Paperno, A&A Nakhimovsky and R.L.Leed (Slavica Publishers 2001). They contain a complete description of Russian conjugation classes, and provide, for each class:
The Main Grammar page lists all the classes and links each class name to the pages with conjugation tables, inventory and notes. Those pages, in turn, have links back to the main grammar page and to each other. The main page also has links to general grammar topics that apply to all conjugation classes, such as stem changes, aspect pairs or stress patterns.
All verbs in the dictionary are marked by the conjugational class to which they belong.
MIRC has a substantial dictionary (over 6,000 entries) and an extensive grammar. In spite of our strenuous effort, there may well be errors and typos in them. Fortunately, they are easy to fix in an electronic publication. Please email your comments and corrections to Alexander or Alice Nakhimovsky.