- Current Piece: None
Recommended:
Mobile smartphone or tablet browser capable of storing at least 5 MB in cache (check your browser's documentation), such as:
Apple iOS 3.2-5.0 beta
Android 2.1-2.3
Windows Phone 7
Blackberry 6.0
Blackberry Playbook
Palm WebOS (1.4-2.0)
Firebox Mobile (Beta)
Opera Mobile 11.0
Kindle 3
Chrome Desktop 11-13
Firefox Desktop 3.6-4.0
Internet Explorer 7-9
Opera Desktop 10-11
See jQuery Mobile documentation here for further details.
No internet connection is required. For more details, read the Running Verbatim Offline section below.
Alternatives:
Any desktop browser with HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities, and is capable of storing at least 5 MB in cache (check your browser's documentation).
Verbatim doesn't require access to any files outside of itself.
No internet connection is required, unless you wish to click on links above and in the related resources section of the manual.
The use of the browser's storage cache allows the piece to remain available in the program, even when you leave your browser, terminate your internet connection, or even shut off your device.
There are two main ways to use Verbatim offline:
1) When you have an internet connection, simply access Verbatim in your browser, and leave it set in the browser. Later, when you don't have an internet connection, you can still re-open the browser and practice with any piece you previously entered, as well as entering new ones.
2) Download the Verbatim file and store it:
a) …in your Dropbox account, and run it from your mobile device's Dropbox app (Yes, this works even without an internet connection, as long as you sync your Dropbox before losing the connection).
b) …in a browser with offline storage capabilities.
c) …in a file storage app that allows you to view HTML files offline.
If you use this latter approach, remember to verify that your chosen app supports HTML5 and CSS3, or Verbatim may not work properly.
The main page contains the following sections:
Manual
As you've no doubt already discovered, clicking on this section takes you to the Manual menu, where you can learn how to use all aspects of Verbatim.
Enter Text
Clicking here will take you to the page where you can enter the text for the piece
Current Piece
Initially, the Current Piece section will simply read None. Once you've entered a piece, the title will appear there, and a Delete button will be added.
To remove a piece already in memory, click the Delete button, and you'll be asked to confirm whether you wish to delete the piece. Clicking OK will delete the piece, and Cancel will leave the piece in memory.
When a piece is in memory, the following two sections will appear on the main page:
Memorize Text
This will take you to the page where you can begin memorizing the piece.
Test Recall of Text
In this section, you can test the effectiveness of your memorization, by being given hints of only parts of the text. This is also a great way to discover what to review.
More detail about each of these sections are available elswhere in this manual.
Verbatim is designed to help you memorize a piece of text word for word. Such pieces include, among others:
• monologues
• poems
• presentations for work/school
• religious scripture
• scripts
• song lyrics
• speeches
Verbatim does this by helping you work through the following 4-step process:
1. Choosing a piece
2. Entering the piece
3. Memorize the piece
4. Testing your recall
Each of these steps will be described in detail in the corresponding section of this manual.
All of the parts of Verbatim are accessible from the home page, and can be accessed by clicking on their respective sections.
Click on Enter Text to enter a piece to study, Memorize Text to begin memorizing it, and Test Recall of Text to test your recall.
The Memorize Text and Test Recall of Text sections only appear on the main page once a piece has been entered in the Enter Text section.
Before you even start memorizing, a piece should have some worth to you. If it doesn't, memorizing the piece word for word is a waste of time. Ask yourself, what is the nature of the piece, and why am I memorizing it?
Are you memorizing your own original speech introducing your company's new widget? The value could be the financial future of your job and your company.
Are you reciting a historical speech for school? The the speech's grade, and presumably your final grade, would be the major value.
A poem or a piece of religious scripture whose meaning find inspiring could also be a value.
Make sure and read through the piece first. Get the feel, the rhythm, and start understanding the meaning of the piece.
If the piece is your own original work, then you've (hopefully) researched your work well. If the piece isn't your own work, you should still research it. Ask yourself questions such as:
• When was it written and what were the circumstances?
• Who is the author and why did they write it?
• Are there any words or phrases you don't know or that are used in unexpected ways?
• What is the philosophy of the piece?
The better answers you can give to all these questions, the easier it will be to remember the piece and deliver an effective recitation. The internet makes more knowledge available on any piece (or just about anything else) that you care to memorize, so take advantage of this knowledge.
Memorization and understanding can build on each other in surprising ways, so this step should not be ignored or taken lightly.
Setting up a piece to memorize is very simple. The Enter Text section only contains 4 major parts:
Title
To enter a title, simply click on the field and either type it in or use your device's cut and paste featues to paste it in the field.
Author
Similar to enter a title, you simply click on the field and either type or paste it in.
Body Text
This field is for the entry of the text itself. It is recommended that you copy the piece itself from a text editor, then click on the field and paste the text in. The Body Text field will autoexpand as you type in order to display the full contents. When pasting, you may need to hit the Enter key to activate the autoexpansion.
Pasting a piece into a text editor first, and then copying it from there to paste into this field will help assure that no unusual or unwanted text characters (such as: •) is entered.
Verbatim will break the piece into individual lines for later usage in the Memorize Text and Test Recall sections, and it does so by searching out where you set up the line breaks in the text you entered.
For poems, the line breaks are usually obvious. For music lyrics, speeches, and other types of works, you may want to break them up into individual sentences. For longer sentences, you might try breaking the lines up at other punctuation, such as commas or semicolons.
How long you want to make the lines will depend on whether you're using Verbatim on a smartphone, a tablet, or a desktop. You can always return to the Enter Text section to alter the line breaks as needed.
Don't worry about including blank lines in the Body Text section, as these will be ignored by Verbatim.
Submit
Once you've entered and/or edited the piece as desired, click Submit to save it in memory.
After the piece is stored, you will be returned to the main page, where you will now be able to access the Memorize Text and Test Recall of Text sections.
If any of the fields are left blank, you will be asked to enter the information before clicking the Submit button again.
Otherwise, you will be notified that the piece has been saved, as well as how much memory it is using (in bytes).
The amount of memory is important, as the piece is stored in the browser's cache (see your browser's documentation for more details). This allows the piece you entered to remain in Verbatim, even after you exit the browser, don't have an internet connection, or shut off your device.
Most browsers only allow up to 5 MB (5,242,880 bytes) for use in a browser's cache, so if your piece starts approaching 5,000,000 bytes, you may want to consider splitting up the piece into 2 or more parts for separate memorizing sessions.
This first part of the page discusses how to use the interface. To learn the memory technique that is used, scroll down to the Memorization Technique section.
The Memorize Text area contains the following sections:
Display
This menu is used to set the number that are displayed in the text section below.
As explained below under Memorization Technique below, you will be working through the piece at anywhere from 1 to 6 lines of the piece at a time. Clicking on the button that states a number of lines willl let you choose an amount of lines in this range. When starting to memorize a new piece you will always beging by selecting 1 Line, which is the default.
Title Bar
The Title section displays the title of the piece, the author, and which lines of the piece are being displayed. The line information area include the lines at which you're currently located and the total number of lines, such as: Lines 10-12 of 20
Text
This is where the chosen numbers of lines appear. If you're at the end of the piece, there may be 1 or more lines marked with 3 dashes (---). These dashes simply indicate that a particular line occurs after the end of the piece.
Below the Title and Text areas, there are 5 buttons to assist you in memorizing the piece:
Start
Clicking on this button will take you to the beginning of the piece, displaying the number of lines you selected. For example, if you selected 3 Lines, this button will display the first 3 lines of the piece. When you're at the beginning of the piece, this button will be grayed out and inactive.
Back
This button will move back in the text by the number of lines you specified. For example, if you specified 3 Lines, this control will move back 3 lines. When you're at the beginning of the piece, this button will be grayed out and inactive.
Hide Lines/Show Lines
When the interface first appears you will see a button marked Hide Lines. Clicking this button will simply hide the text lines that are currently displayed, and the button itself will change to read Show Lines. Clicking Show Lines will display the text lines of the piece again, and the button will again read as Hide Lines.
Next
This button will move ahead in the text by the number of lines you specified. For example, if you specified 3 Lines, this control will move the text ahead by 3 lines. When you're at the end of the piece, this button will be grayed out and inactive.
End
Clicking on this button will take you to the end of the piece, displaying the number of lines you selected. When you're at the end of the piece, this button will be grayed out and inactive.
Note: The Start, Back, Next, and End buttons also function in this same manner in the Recall Text section.
The basic approach to memorizing the piece itself can be summed up in 7 steps:
a. Start by thinking of 1 line of the poem as a "unit", and start with the first line of the piece as your first unit.
b. Read the unit of the piece out loud while looking at it.
c. Hide that unit of the piece from view, and try to recite it from memory.
d. Bring that unit of the piece back into view. Did you recite it correctly? If so, continue to step e. If not, go back to step b.
e. Move to the next unit, and repeat steps b-e, until you've worked through the entire piece a unit at a time.
f. Now, increase the size of the unit by 1 line (e.g. 1 line increases to 2 lines, 2 lines increases to 3 lines, and so on).
g. If you've already gone through the entire piece with a unit of 6 lines, stop. Otherwise, begin with the first unit of the piece again, and repeat steps b-g with the increased unit size.
In short, you're going to read through the piece and try and recite 1 line from memory, and then move on to the next line, which is repeated until you reach the end. This process will then be repeated 2 lines at a time, then 3 lines, 4 lines, 5 lines, and ultimately 6 lines at a time.
Using Verbatim to help you through this process is simple. Start by choosing the piece and set the number of lines to 1 Lines (as described above).
In the middle of the page, you will see the title/author/line information. Below that, the first line itself.
Read the given line aloud. Now click Hide Lines, and try and recite the line. Click Show lines, and check if you got the entire line right. If so, click on the Next button in the bottom toolbar to move to the next line. If not, try reading, hiding, reciting, and checking the line again.
When you do move on to the next line, don't even think about the previous line(s). At each stage, you're going to focus only on the current line(s).
Work through the piece line by line in this way, until you reach the final line. Next, select 2 Lines. The piece will be reset to the first 2 lines, and you can now work through the same process 2 lines at a time. Keep going, increasng the number of line by 1 each time, until you've gone through the piece 6 lines at a time.
Even if you find you've memorized the piece before you get to 6 lines, I still suggest that you try and recite it 6 lines at a time, as that will help lock it in your memory more effectively.
You may not believe this, but once you've gone through this process, you've remembered the piece as a whole. The next step is to test this by moving on to the Test Recall of Text section.
Once you've gone through the process of memorizing the piece, you can test your recall of it by having Verbatim give you minimal hints and challenging you to recall it from memory.
Hint Method
Using the Hint Method menu, you can select the way in which the lines of your piece will be hinted to you. The options are as follows:
First Letters
In this option, only the first letters of each word (as well as the first letter following an apostrophe) will be displayed. The First Letters option is the default.
Note: In the font used for Verbatim, a small L and a capital I look very much alike (Compare: l to I), which can make First Letters a bit more challenging.
Word Lengths
Choosing this option causes every letter to be replaced by the letter X (with upper and lower case letters left intact), and any numbers to be replaced by the number 9. Any punctuation remains exactly as in the original piece.
Fill In The Blanks
The Fill In The Blanks option adds random blanks into every line that contains 3 or more words. Any punctuation remains exactly as in the original piece.
Title
The section that contains the title, author, and lines information is very similar to that in the Memorize Text section, but in the Recall Text section, it also contains a score.
Normally, this score will be set to "0 of 0 (0.00%)" when you start. The first number in the score is the number of lines you've correctly recalled. The second number is the total number of lines you've tried, and the percentage is your success rate. For example, if you've tried to guess the content of 2 lines, but only got 1 of the lines correct, your score would read as "Score: 1 of 2 (50.00%)".
If you chose Fill In The Blanks and your piece contains 1 or more lines that only contains 1 or 2 words, each such line will automatically add 1 point to your starting score, as there is nothing hidden in these lines.
Text
When you first come in to the Recalling Text section, or whenever you make a new selection, your score will be reset, and each line that is cued by your chosen method will display a magnifying glass icon () directly above it. Only 5 lines of a given piece will be displayed at a time. At the end of a piece, fewer lines may be displayed.
To move through the rest of the piece, the The Start, Back, Next, and End buttons at the bottom are used in the same manner as in the Memorize Text section.
Scoring
The scoring in this section is done completely on the honor system. You can cheat easily and have Verbatim display a 100% score. However, since the purpose of Verbatim is to assist you in memorizing a piece of text word for word, you would really only be cheating yourself.
For each line in the piece that has a magnifying glass icon above it, look at the hint and try and recall the line. When you think you've got it, click on the magnifying glass. The full text of the line will be revealed, and the magnifying glass icon will be replaced by two other icons: a green "plus" icon () above the text and a red "minus" icon () below it.
If you got the text correct, click the green "plus" icon, and 1 point will be added to your score.
If you didn't recall the text correctly, click the red "minus" icon (no points are added to your score).
Each time you click on a plus or minus icon, your score will be updated in the title information area.
When you've gone through every line of the piece, an alert window will come up and notify you of your final score. Clicking OK on this alert window will close it, and will leave the piece with the plus and minus icons just as you set them, so that you can go through them and study any lines you missed.
Restarting
Each time you make a new selection from the Hint Method menu, the score will be reset to "0 of 0 (0.00%)", and the piece will return to the first line, so you can move to another piece, or another hinting method with little trouble.
If you wish to retry the same piece with the same cueing method, simply change the cueing method to a different one, then reset it to the one you wish to use again, and your score will be reset to "0 of 0 (0.00%)", and you can try again.