Patent ID: 8348670

Claim:
A method for the computer-assisted learning of orthography, the method comprising executing the following steps by a data processing system: a) retrieving a main set of words from a computer readable data storage medium, each word comprising one or more symbols; b) retrieving an error data set associated with said main set of words from the computer readable data storage medium, the error data set comprising, 1) a word error statistic associated with each word of the main set; and 2) a symbol error statistic associated with symbol pairs; and c) repeatedly executing the following steps: 1) selecting a word from at least one of the main set and the error set to prompt a user with by computing, for each word of the main set or a subset of the main set of words, a combined statistic measure from the word error statistic and the symbol error statistic, wherein the combined statistic measure is related to the probability of an error occurring in said word when it is input by the user, and selecting the word which has the maximum value of said combined statistic measure; 2) prompting the user with said word; 3) accepting a user input specifying a sequence of symbols representing said word; 4) comparing the user input with said word; 5) updating the word error statistic associated with said word according to the user input, and storing the updated word error statistic in the computer readable data storage medium; 6) updating the symbol error statistic according to the user input, and storing the updated symbol error statistic in the computer readable data storage medium.