Students (and others) who experience insecurity with English spelling or punctuation have a new resource at hand: the ARIES package on the web.

It consists of five units, including one on the use of the apostrophe, accompanied by automatically marked interactive exercises and tests for monitoring progress. The basic punctuation sections also serve for grammar revision, since the student is offered the choice of everyday language or grammatical terminology.

An earlier version of the package has been available in the STELLA lab and other campus locations since 1996. However, availability was limited and advancing technology was rapidly making it obsolete. The English Subject Centre came to the rescue with a grant which enabled us to hire a programmer to rewrite the package for web access. At the same time, we took the opportunity to revise its content and appearance. Throughout the project we had valuable support from the Glasgow University Initiative in Distance Education (Guide).

ARIES is now available worldwide through the English Subject Centre website www.english.ltsn.ac.uk or at www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/STELLA/ARIES/

Christian Kay, Jean Anderson, STELLA Project