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From: vocab_Builder@yahoo.com (Anita)
Newsgroups: fido.science
Subject: In the year 2000, a student in India ....
Date: 25 Aug 2004 20:16:42 -0700
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In the year 2000, a student in India who was prepearing for the GRE
was facing a tremendous challenge with the Verbal section of the test.
A high score was crucial to his admission in a good university and
more importantly to seek the essential financial assistance, and his
future and all dreams depended on it. He was determined that if it was
only hard work that lay between it, it would be conquered - come what
may. The Numercial Ability or the Arithmetic was cakewalk by the
average standards of Math in his country and there was not much that
one could do about the Analytical except for practise but the Verbal
was threatening. And it all seemed to be boil down to simply
memorising words and more words that seemed to have no relavance to
the degree in Engineering that he seeked to pursue.

There were huge lists that were available to him but all valiant
efforts at them seemed to be leading nowhere. He used to mark out
segments of 100 words that he learnt over one evening and would move
on to the next but no sooner than he had moved on to the third list he
would realise that he had forgotten most of what he had learnt on the
first day. He made flashcards of the words in little Post it slips
that he stuck all around his home so that he would bump into them
every now and then - on the refrigerator, on the mirror while he is
shaving, on the cupboard and everywhere else till his home looked like
ruffled feathers but yet they lost their purpose when there were
already too many of them.

He had a computer and access to software of course but the softwares
were only fancy musical pieces which were just glorified flashcards.
They were sometimes made up of simple words only and were never
copious enough to have all the words. And they demanded too much time
doing the frills. And inspite of the tremendous potential to offer
interactivity through programming, never really did. They were simply
dumb - even the most reputed ones in the market. Being a computer
programmer himself he really regretted this.

After a while, he was taking notes on how to build a better software
that would have all the things that he could dream of. Firstly it
should have all the words that anyone else could get his hands on. And
then it should make the learning possible with the minimal time and
efforts. "It should do a lot of smart things by finding out how I am
learning and what I really need." So he kept making notes, picking up
good ideas from some of the better softwares that he had seen.

And then he finally set aside time from his preparation to sit down
and write such a software. His GRE prep can wait. He was going to
write a great software first. He was determined he was going to write
the best Vocabulary software in the world and if it really turned out
to be so it would benefit thousands of students like him all over the
world and saving millions of hours of wasted efforts. That would be a
huge satisfaction far greater than simply cracking the GRE for
himself. It would be hugely popular and people would say Thank you.
That was an absolute cracker of a motivation.

So first he scouted around for all the word lists of the world that
anyone has ever said is good for the GRE. Huge lists like the Barrons,
Petersons, Kaplans, Arcos, ETS's and so on. The lists were really
huge, so a lot of supersetting was done (like huge Venn diagrams) to
determine which are the words that were common between the lists -
such super lists were created of increasing refinement.

Side by side other sources were scouted - like the Readers Digests who
produced a compilation of all the words that they have featured or
found to be important over the years. The aim was to prepare also a
generic vocabulary software - not only for a specific test. And
finally a most wonderful source of test words was found in a Russian
website where test takers were encouraged to leave behind words that
they had come across in their own tests. Over a period that website
had all the words that the actual test software had in it. After all
it was only a software with a database. That database had got
replicated. The list from the Russian website was obtained in
totality.

With comparisons done with the other lists, a proprietory set of 5
lists were created which were layered according to their priority to
the tests. The total list of unique words going into the software was
now a staggering 5600 words - of course divided inot smaller managable
lists - but with the guarantee that it shall contain all the words
that you are ever likely to encounter in the GRE/GMAT/SAT/CAT or any
other tests. And if it was not a test that you were preparing for it
would ensure that you had a Vocabulary which was trully extraordinary
and it would include all the words that an educated person could be
expected to know.

With these as his database, he started crafting out a software to
incorporate all the fine ideas he had accumulated.

Firstly, the software must remember which words I know and which I
dont - so it wouldnt bother me to waste time on the ones I know.

There should be a way to show me the ones I tend to forget - more
frequently - till I seem to learn them.

It should be able to offer me a feedback on how soon I am forgetting
so that I get a grip on how my learning process is really working - so
it should offer me a log of my trials with that word - its called
Active learning.

There should be a way to filter only the words I am weak at so that I
can look them up in the last hours before the tests.

etc etc.

A lot of other things really went into the software.

Like the software offers alternate meanings of the words to check
whether you really got the concept of the word or you only learnt by
rote - which wont work for the tests.

The software even remembers to confuse you with words that it has
found out you are confused about and so on..

There is a whole lot of interactivity and pedagogy of Vocabulary which
was explored and incorporated.

And thus the Vocab Builder was built.

The Vocab Builder did meet with the success that it was ideated for.

It has seen distribution in popular magazine CDROMs all over the world
and it has seen many tens of thousands of downloads from the Internet
website www.insoluz.com and numerous other shareware websites of the
world.

So when you write "Vocab Builder" on google - you will find it on top
- ahead of the copy cats who are trying to cash in on its popularity
with the same brand name.

It has ensured that thousands of its users easily scored into the 90+
percentiles in the tests.

If you have prepared using the Vocab Builder, you will not stop during
the tests, you will just walk through them. Thats a guarantee.

If you really want to have a look at what its like you will find it
here.

http://www.insoluz.com/vocab/Vocab.htm

There is a FREE Evaluation version which has a small database of words
but is good for the evaluation. It can be downloaded there.

The Full version one can easily buy online for a paltry $19 and only
Rupees 350 for those who pay through cheque from within India. (online
credit card payments arent common there as yet)

Have a look, with the Vocab Builder you will never have to think about
your Verbal again.
The horrible rote was finally defeated - and with pleasure.