Language authoring with “comet”

Conclusion

From the language teacher's point of view, authoring languages and systems have always had two major drawbacks: flexibility and simplicity of use seemed to exclude each other, and features specific to language instruction were not included in the design. COMET's template collection with its variants for individual languages attempts to deal with these problems. The present package of highutility programs has proven its worth in a university context by making it possible to create-full-year language courses at relatively modest cost. Since a lesson of five exercises, containing from 10 to 20 questions each, can be input by a careful typist in one working day, the term “development” has once again become synonymous with the creative process of designing pedagogic material.

Future work will concentrate on incorporating user suggestions for improvement and creating new, specialized patterns to enhance the methodological versatility of the system.