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Advanced language learners can test their English, German or Spanish proficiency in 3.5 minutes here using Exhale
Update: A new version of the Spanish vocabulary test is here, and the English vocabulary test has been updated here.
Go here and click English or German, or (also requiring only 3.5 minutes to take, but more for manually grading your test with this answer key) go here for Spanish, if you want to to take a simple quick vocabulary test that has been shown to correlate well with general proficiency. You can find more info here on English and German, and here on Spanish.
Interpreting against audio files sources with live feedback in Sanako Study 1200
- How will we be recording
- Individual recording
- Voice insert: student control how much time they have interpreting
- students can stop the source where they want, they can rewind and review the source, they can overwrite their initial interpretation, they can interpret at the speed they want.
- We could insert cues at sentence ends in the source; and also (but little need,) slow the source down or insert pauses
- Student track
- students have to follow along at the speed of the source can stop the source where they want, they can rewind and review the source; they can with some difficulty overwrite their initial interpretation/
- More difficult: We likely should slow the source down or insert pauses
- Voice insert: student control how much time they have interpreting
- Model imitation: like an exam,
- students all speak in parallel, without individual control
- Most difficult: We most likely need to slow the source audio down, including inserting pauses as "breathers")
- Individual recording
- What audio track will we be collecting?
- If student saves manually, student can save either or both tracks , but need to be taught.
- If model imitation, we collect only student recording.
- If lock player/collect buffer, we collect both source and student track
- Listener can focus on one track by controlling the balance during playback: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2014/03/31/how-to-manage-balance-on-stereo-audio-using-audacity-sanako-student-recorder-or-any-audio-player-on-windows/
- Listener can also split the audio tracks (= delete the source track),
- more easily (file / save as) in the sanako recorder
- More
- Teacher listening in
- Is always possible,
- just click the student icon in the classroom layout
- or use screen control / autoscan: the audio switches with the screen, this has a bit of overhead, and our computers are network are not the fastest, but we made some changes to optimize speed; best reserved for when you also need to see the student’s screen.
- Is always possible,
- Teacher speaking: Teacher providing on-the-fly feedback via "Discuss":
- Playlist Launch and open (goo.gl/2awRG/): then you can stop each individual student (students do not work in sync, remote-controlled) .
- Model imitation (goo.gl/ZL7DG/) : then you cannot talk to one (all students record in sync).
- Teacher providing non-live feedback :
- Teacher can provide aural feedback later when grading the student submissions from your office pc:
- How a teacher can use Sanako voice insert to easily add spoken comments to students’ Sanako oral proficiency exams- step–by step
- We recorded here how it is being done for Business Spanish: Protected: How a teacher can give students aural feedback on oral exams using the Sanako Study 1200 Lite Recorder
- For that voice-insert, you need to install the Sanako Recorder on your office PC.
- Teacher can provide aural feedback later when grading the student submissions from your office pc:
Slowing source audio for interpreting classes in the digital audio lab
- To judge from listening to Simult. Lesson 1, text 2 on Acebo Interpreter’s Edge (ISBN 1880594323), I am wondering whether some of our students (= personalization) would need this audio to be simplified, to gain the benefit of a well-adjusted i+1? I can pre-process the audio :
- Where the flatlines = natural pauses are in above graph, insert a audio signal as where students can press voice insert recording, Example:
- We can also insert a pause and a cue at the beginning and end to set students a limit how long they can interpret, but if students operate the player manually, there is no teacher control and no exam condition, and the students having to manage the technology tends to distract from the language practice.
- Slow down the audio without changing the pitch (just have to make sure not to overdo it, else will sound like drunken speech – my time stretching software would be able to avoid “drunken speech” syndrome, but I have not been able to work on it since briefly for IALLT in Summer 2011 for 3 years now…)
- We can use this adjusted with the Sanako grouping feature to personalize instruction (find the right i+1 for each of your student, useful if there are considerable variations in their proficiency): How to group students into sessions (in 3 different ways) goo.gl/JgXUP/.
- Where the flatlines = natural pauses are in above graph, insert a audio signal as where students can press voice insert recording, Example:
You need to click the Sanako Student Recorder Playlist and Homework tab to refresh changes
The Playlist does not sync automatically:
The playlist syncs (reflects what is actually there) when you click “Playlist”:
Learn and teach writing in your second language on Lang-8.com
Improving language learning with technology for me seems to have 2 avenues: AI and human intelligence. Automated feedback on writing provided by proofing tools – even if they have become smarter and more contextual to spot (in MS-Word 2007 and up) common errors like your/you’re or their/there – makes one wonder about the feasibility of the former. But that automated essay-scoring tools which have been developed and deployed (at least for ESL) claim to score similarly as teachers makes one wonder about much more… Correcting writing remains expensive!
So may be we should look into crowd-sourced writing correction which needs no cutting edge NLP, only well-understood WWW-infrastructural technology to connect interested parties, but requires social engineering to attract and keep good contributors (and a viable business model to stay afloat: This site seems freemium).
Reading online comments and postings in your native language makes one wonder: can language teachers be replaced by crowdsourcing? I became aware of this the language learning website that offers peer correction of writing input by native-speaker through a language learner corpus. I have not thoroughly evaluated the site, but the fact that its data is being used by SLA researchers here (http://cl.naist.jp/nldata/lang-8/) seems a strong indicator that the work done on the website is of value.
To judge by the numbers accompanying the corpus (it is a snapshot from 2010, a newer version is available however on request), these are the most-represented L2 on lang-8.com: 
How to manage balance on stereo audio using Audacity, Sanako student recorder, or any audio player on Windows
- For language lab use, stereo is more important than usual, since the channels may carry source versus translation/interpretation, L1 versus L2, teacher versus student, model versus imitation and so forth.
- You can choose which channel to listen to by adjusting the balance for stereo playback.
- In the Sanako Student recorder (free for all), click here:
- In Audacity, click here::
- From any other player on Windows, hold Win-key and press R, type mmsys.cpl, on tab playback, double click the speaker you are outputting to, and on tab levels, change “Balance”:
Software-based laser pointer in PowerPoint
- You can activate software laser pointer in PowerPoint by pressing CTRL and P (= Pointer) while displaying your slideshow. Then you can draw on your show to highlight points, just like with a laser pointer – but unlike that, it cannot run out of battery power!
- Other keys you can press:
- Erase = E (unlike with a laser pointer, you have to),
- deActivate = CTRL and A.
- Other advantages: unlike some other screen drawing tools that freeze the screen (MS-ZoomIt notably), the software laser pointer:
- allows you to proceed through the PowerPoint presentation normally;
- can be saved as ink annotations, and will show up if you convert your PowerPoint to a video or play it with narrations.
Save the web, with Clip to OneNote
No, I don’t mean save from proprietary vendors or from spies 
– I mean: save it to your personal storage during web browsing, like so:
The essence of http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/17/onenote-clipper-clip-the-web-right-to-onenote/. https://www.onenote.com/Clipper/OneNote should be useful not only for personal research on the web.
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Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
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