Karl Sklar

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Karl Sklar St. Michaels College School of
International Studies
Computer Assisted Language Learning
GSL 520 Spring 1998
Instructor - Christine Bauer-Ramazani
May 3, 1998

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A spreadsheet consists of an array of addressable
cells each cell is identified by the, column,
and row that cross at that cell, (known as its
coordinate). Columns are designated by letters,
rows by numbers
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Cell A1
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Below are examples of a simple activity designed
and run in Excel. This particular activity is
designed to encourage the study of adjectival
collocates. But, it is easily adapted to many
other language based applications.
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Notice that there are two lists on the screen (
they are intentionally obscured). The list on
the left is an array of adjectives. On the
right is a list of common nouns.
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Observe the sliders next to each list. The
sliders enable the players to select for display,
any adjectival - noun pair combination from their
respective lists.
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With a third, smaller slider the player rates the
liklihood of occourance of the combination as
high, medium, or low.
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Now, well go through the steps it takes to
create this activity in Excel. Initially
intimidating, with surprisingly little practice
it becomes easy,,, even fun.
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Begin by creating a text window. Select a cell
and adjust its column width and row height until
it looks like the illustration. You do this by
dragging the appropriate column and row headers.
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The first adjustment can be rough, it will
probably change.
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The next step is to insert a function into the
text window cell. A function is a formula that
performs some action. The function we will use
here is called the index function. It looks like
this index(crcr,cr)
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index(crcr,cr) The functions
arguments are in parenthesis. They control its
behavior.(cr means column - row, e.g. b10
means column b, row 10).
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index(cr1cr2,cr3)
What does this function do? Actually, it is a
sort of pointer. When you install it in a cell
the function says, this cells value, will
become, and will display as mine the contents of
whatever other cell I point to. The pointing is
specified by the functions arguments, the
stuff in the parenthesis.
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E11index(cr1cr2,cr3)
CR1CR2 means all cells between and including
cr1 and cr2. Eg. a1a100 means include all
cells in column a from 1 thru 100. Cr3 points to
the cell which contains the offset into the
array, i.e., the number of cells down from cr1.
The contents of that cell will now appear in
e11.
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Well now begin the actual construction of the
product.
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index(c7c30,c1)
These put here to clarify offset
an array is defined by c7c30 (the orange
cells) - notice they are all empty. C1 is the
top cell in column C. Notice it contains a 5
(the offset value). Notice also that e6, the
display window is empty.
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We will now install a control object - a slider
bar. For this we activate the Visual Basic
programming feature built into Excel.
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Controls menu
Clicking on this activates the slider control
option, enabling the placement of slider objects.
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With the slider installed, the next step is to
link it to the index function. To do so we link
the slider to cell c1.
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This is the sliders properties box. Notice the
linked cell box. Observe that it is set to
c1. This done, any change in value output by
the slider will be reflected in C1. Notice that
the output range of the slider is 1 - 20.
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As the slider is moved its output becomes the
value of cell c1. This value corresponds to the
the word next to it. So, as if by magic,,, it
appears in e6, the display window.(remember c1s
roll in the index function?) (Now were into
the home stretch)

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Here is how it looks without them.
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you can now use Excels copy and paste feature to
duplicate or re create as many of these
selectable arrays as needed. Well do it once
more for the noun set selector (on the right).
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The word lists can be modified at any time.
Changing the list length argument in the
function, I.e.(c7c30), lets the list expand up
to 65,000 cells (c7c65000).
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The result of our work
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(The player has under-rated the likelihood of
this occourance)
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Having completed the mechanics, the rest is
really just cosmetics. Color, object placement
lines, boxes, sound are all optional, the
possibilities are endless.
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so
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now
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thanks
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