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Archive for the ‘Reading’ Category

Independent study with free language learning materials from the FSI?

2012/03/22 Leave a comment

The Foreign Service Institute language learning materials  – consisting of scanned documents and digitized audio of multiple courses per language – were still a heavily-advertised resource when I visited the Defense Language Institute in Monterey in 2006.

It is nice to see these resources be made available for free. It is also nice to see the progress that has been made not only in technological adaptation of textbook learning materials since these materials were made available (post WW II?).

This, however, comes at a cost. If you shun it, and do not take a course that works which requires (and entitles you to the use of) a textbook, here are easily accessibleviewable learning materials for a large set of languages, including many LCTL: Amharic, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cambodian, Cantonese, Chinese, Chinyanja, Czech, Finnish, French, Fula, German, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, Kirundi, Kituba, Korean, Lao, Lingala, Luganda, Moré, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Shona, Sinhala, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Twi, Vietnamese, Yoruba.

The Forums , however seem to indicate that not too many still use these options. The transformation into a (technologically superficially) more modern format here is limited to very few languages and courses (and crashed my web browser).

Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Arabic, Beginner, e-languages, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, learning-materials, Listening, Polish, Portuguese, Reading, Russian, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Spanish, Swahili, Yoruba Tags:

Protected: Mock exam for Spanish combines various learning technologies in the LRC

2012/03/01 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-languages, iMacs, learning-usage-samples, Listening, Listening-Stations, lms, LRCRoomCoed434, marketing, multimedia-recording, Photos, Practice&Demos, Reading, service-is-assessing, Spanish, Speaking, Vocabulary Tags: , , ,

How to use Google translate for writing Cyrillic letters with a western keyboard, pronunciation help, and text-to-speech

2012/02/16 Leave a comment

Go to  Google translate and do like so. Useful for learning, as well as typing when teaching.

Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, Dictionaries, e-languages, Intermediate, Listening, Reading, Russian, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Speaking, Writing Tags: , ,

Nice Syntax highlighter tool from wisc.edu @ Madison

2012/02/10 Leave a comment
  1. Wish my Latin teacher at home would have had such a nice tool when he analyzed the “Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum / unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe / quem dixere chaos”, he had only me:
  2. syntax highlighter1syntax highlighter2syntax highlighter3syntax highlighter4syntax highlighter5
  3. Now how could such exercise creation made more automated by having it accept the output of NLP tools like Treetagger?
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, all-languages, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, learning-materials, Reading, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Syntax Tags: ,

Treffpunkt Deutsch Companion Website with Online Exercises

2012/01/11 Leave a comment
  1. This first-year German textbook comes with a Companion Website with free online exercises, organized by chapter, on the publisher’s website (different from the Quia.com –based workbook and lab manual exercises).
  2. From the instructor guide: “The Companion Website is a robust online resource designed to give students a chance to practice and further explore the vocabulary, structures, and cultural themes introduced in the text. For each chapter, students will find self-grading practice exercises on vocabulary and grammar topics as well as Web-based reading and writing activities. Web links to carefully selected sites in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, and South Tyrol (Italy), accompanied by interesting activities, provide additional interaction with the cultures of these German-speaking areas of Europe. Also available on the Website are the audio components of the Student Text and the SAM, as well as an interactive vocabulary flashcards tool. ”
  3. These exercises include vocabulary practice, even flash cards.
  4. The auto-correction feature provides:
    1. some useful feedback for further study, feedback1
    2. summary grades feedback0
    3. and an email to teacher function that should facilitate Syllabus integration of this useful resource: feedback2
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, German, learning-materials, Listening, Reading, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, textbooks, Vocabulary, websites, Writing Tags: ,

MS-Engkoo glossing of Chinese newspaper text

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. Learners of Mandarin can increase not only their cross-cultural knowledge, when using the English versions of two of the biggest Chinese newspapers: “China Daily has adopted Engkoo’s “hover translation” feature—hover your cursor over an English word or phrase and get an inline Chinese translation— on its China-facing website” and the People’s Daily, the largest official newspaper in China, uses the same feature in its English website”
  2. Make sure you are on the right version (English version for Chinese user) of the site (china daily versionare the choices you want to see on top) and “Enable Bing Dictionary”in lower right corner: china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]
  3. Then hover: china daily engkoo example_thumb[1].
Categories: Advanced, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, Mandarin, Media, Reading, Vocabulary, websites Tags: , , , ,

Chinese newspapers

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. China Daily is the largest Chinese newspaper available in English. It has a variety of versions: here is the version for the US, for cross-cultural learning, while the English version for speakers of Chinese is valuable both for learners of Mandarin and English.
  2. The government-run newspaper People’s Daily has an English version, also with language learner glossing.
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Beginner, English, Intermediate, Mandarin, Media, Near-Native, Reading, websites Tags:

MS-Bing Dictionary for Chinese learners of English–and vice versa?

2011/10/28 Leave a comment
  1. Link: http://dict.bing.com.cn/?ulang=EN-US&tlang=ZH-CN#%3Ahome, powered by Engkoo:
  2. This looks like a pretty evolved learning tool: It has instant suggestions that include usage information and translations.engkoo-bing-china-dictionary-learn
  3. Rich results that include contextual, parallel web-as-corpus matches in text and text-to-speech (that, on spot-checking, seems barely noticeably computer-generated). engkoo-bing-dictionary
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Beginner, corpora, Dictionaries, English, Intermediate, Listening, Mandarin, Reading, Vocabulary, websites Tags: ,