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LRC offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts
- Would you like to expose your student to L2 listening materials beyond the audio learning materials that come with your textbook?
- Materials customized to the learning needs of your classes? From current affairs maybe?
- Would you prefer no to send them to internet audio that may be difficult and time consuming to integrate?
- Do you lack the time to record speaking cues, oral exam questions or reading models yourself?
- Do you need audio files that you and your students can rewind/fast forward/replay, edit and record into with voice insert?
- And would you prefer using audio in your classes that comes with aligned text, whether that audio that has been transcribed or vice versa, to create glossaries, captions, multimedia assignments?
- The LRC now offers generating audio files from your foreign language texts in many languages.
- The service is based on the quality voices of Google Translate text-to-speech (better (simpler) than its actual translation portion, let alone its naïve use).
- Unlike Google translate, the service persists longer than 100 character texts to audio files (mp3) that (and the underlying digital text) we can work with further, in your syllabus, the LMS and the digital audio lab.
- Technical background and samples.
- Languages that are available in good quality: See links under this post; other languages: please test with me..
- To request an audio file generation for your class, send the following information to the LRC
- regular reading/listening materials: plain digital text should do;
- SANAKO oral exam cues: please enter the text in this MS-Word table and add information in the additional columns for exam customization.
Keyboarding game and Typing tutor for ESL students unfamiliar with Roman letters keyboards
- For ESL learners unfamiliar with Roman letters keyboards, the LRC features only a few keyboards with non-Roman character overlays, and otherwise software transliterators integrated into Windows that, while allowing typing in L1 for dictionary lookup and note taking, still require familiarity with the Roman letters keyboards. To help ESL learners getting started, here are a 2 websites I found:
- A typing tutor:
- pros: pedagogically sound: English words are given as cues, and an on screen keyboard that can be operated from the hardware keyboard, but gives hints when needed by highlighting the next letter on the keyboard after a waiting period
- cons: a bit drab.
- An arcade-like keyboarding game (Missile command/Tetris):
- cons:
- bit too much sound,
- not advertisement free
- letters only, not practice of English words
- pros:
- autostarts and thus can be directly launched for students from the teacher station as a divertissement during slow times in the LRC ,
- reasonably entertaining,
- Levels that start slow, but adaptive.
- cons:
Bab.la.com: Arabic–English Online Dictionary
Bab.la features: easy lookup (1,2,3), and for each lemma: grammar information (4), synonyms (5, with lookup (6)), usage samples (7), pronunciation help (8: audio, but not IPA), reverse lookup (9).
And an example for the reverse lookup:
.
In short, this is a real dictionary, unlike Google Translate, which is amazing in itself, but often misused by language learners. Unlike Google Translate, Bab.la helps with lookup by Arabic letter, but does not come with a phonetic transliteration to make it usable with a Roman letters keyboard. Fortunately, the LRC features to phonetic transliterators integrated into Windows: MS-Maren and Google Arabic Input.
OneNote “absolutely loved by everyone who uses it” according to LifeHacker
Microsoft’s note-taking application OneNote is one of those apps no one really talks about much, but is absolutely loved by everyone who uses it. Heck, you guys even voted it your favorite outlining tool, personal project management tool, and minutes meeting service, not to mention third place for best note taking app. It’s available for a ton of platforms, too (despite it being part of Microsoft Office), so if you’re finding that Evernote just isn’t quite powerful enough for your organizational needs, give OneNote a shot—you might be surprised at everything it can do given its lesser-known status.” (Onenote makes #1 of Top 10 Underhyped Windows Apps, via OneNote Testing). Now how to spread that love?
How a teacher can show a model student screen to other student computers in Sanako Study 1200–the ultimate training summary…
How a teacher can divide a class into groups, each sharing audio and one screen, in Sanako Study 1200–the ultimate training summary…
- … using animated GIFS
- make groups (=sessions) like shown here;
- share audio/screen within each group so that (ideal for enforcing oral communication during a shared computer task)


