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Protected: How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part II: Implementation/instruction of examined students

2011/05/04 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: all-languages, Arabic, assessments, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Institution-is-Aston-University, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, learning-materials, learning-usage-samples, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Spanish, Speaking, Student-Computers, Swahili, Videos, Yoruba Tags: , , ,

How a teacher grades a Blackboard audio recording assignment

2010/04/08 Leave a comment
  1. Switch to interactive view, if your vertical scrollbar does not show up, and thus the assignment column is hidden (or reduce the font size in Firefox, e.g. by holding CTRL and rolling the mouse scroll wheel): clip_image002
  2. Once you see the assignment column, you can either download all submissions as a zip file, open it with the built-in zip tools in Windows (XP or newer). This is especially practical if you want to then select all recordings and drag and drop them into an audacity window, for doing easy to comparative grading of student submissions, as described earlier.
  3. To grade,
    1. you still need to click next to the green exclamation marks which indicate where there is an assignment to be graded, clip_image002[5]
    2. on the arrow keys which unfold a menu.clip_image002[7]
  4. This gets you to the grade details: clip_image002
  5. You can also listen to the student recording submission by clicking on the file linked behind “users; file”. clip_image002[5]
  6. Fill out your grade comments and grade.
  7. Instead of doing (only) written comments, you could also oral feedback grade the student recording, and re-upload this new recording.
  8. Finish by clicking button:”submit”.
  9. Next in series: How the student reviews a grade Blackboard audio recording assignments: TBA
  10. First in Series: A better way to do student homework audio recordings in the Sanako LAB 300, using Blackboard:Assignment.
Categories: learning-materials, Listening, lms, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Speaking Tags:

How a student submits a Blackboard model imitation audio recording assignments

2010/04/08 Leave a comment
  1. Access the assignment in the location of your Blackboard course that your instructor pointed you to.
  2. Download the model audio recording attached to the assignment to your desktop (if any).
  3. Right-click on the downloaded file, choose open with (something else but the Sanako Duo which you will use to record).
  4. Play and listen to the model.
  5. Imitate the model, recording yourself using the previous instruction, using pause/play as needed.
  6. Upload the recording into the Blackboard assignment by clicking “browse to local file” [i.e. where you saved your recording].
  7. Click “submit”. If you get an error “Not a valid file’, try using another web browser to open the assignment and submit the file.
  8. Next steps: see How the teacher grades a Blackboard audio recording assignments
  9. First in series: A better way to do student homework audio recordings in the Sanako LAB 300, using Blackboard:Assignment
Categories: assignments, learning-materials, Listening, lms, Speaking Tags: ,

Protected: Spanish 100 final oral exam

2009/12/01 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: learning-materials, Slideshows, Spanish, Speaking Tags: , ,

Passing around European Parliament Plenary Video Clips & Transcripts

2009/04/21 Leave a comment
  1. European parliament video clips are quite big and it would be easier not to have to pass them around. But how to communicate to somebody else which video clip to watch if the clip selected is not reflected in the browser address bar? The flash application unfortunately forces you to provide the “bibliographic” information in pieces (start url, date, possibly video format, debate title, speaker name). But in the end you get a direct link which you can pass on to save others from having to jump through the same hoops: If you just need the direct link, skip to step 7. Otherwise: Start with the calendar interface: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/wps-europarl-internet/frd/vod/research-by-date?language=en, find your (1) date, e.g. “Wednesday 14 January 2009”,
  2. The window with the recording of that date will come up; now you CAN (2) change the video format  – wmv (should work on most Windows PCs, free upgrade for MACs here:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx) or mp4 -, an option that will show in the browser address bar. If you must, change format this first, as it seems to rewind the video to the beginning of the session.
  4. Click on your (4) speaker, e.g. “ 15:16:50 Benita Ferrero-Waldner 00:13:12 15:30:02”
  5. Instead of watching online (e.g. if you find the stream quality lacking), you can (5) download the video (in the format you have chosen, either wmv or mp4). UPDATE: The web site added a disclaimer that you have to 1.read, 2.check before you can 3. download, as illustrated below:
  6. Note: you can (6) change the b-language (for relay interpreting) when streaming. Plus, when you download the video, all the b-languages are downloaded together with the a-language. See here how to select the desired b-language when playing the downloaded file.
  7. Easier than providing all bibliographical information (calendar URL, date, debate and speaker) is the direct URL of the download clip. Right click on “Download this Speech”, select (7) “Copy shortcut” from the context menu. Then paste this, e.g. http://vod.europarl.europa.eu/nasvod01/vod0301/2009/wm/VODUnit_20090114_15165000_15300200.wmv or if you chose mp4 format: http://vod.europarl.europa.eu/nasvod02/vod0301/2009/isma/VODUnit_20090114_15165000_15300200.mp4, into the calendar event for the exam – completes your checklist for the exam, and at the beginning of the exam, you can download the link from here onto the students’ computer. Or, for assigning materials to students or passing them to external examiners, email this direct link.
  8. Unfortunately, it appears that the transcripts, unlike the audio channels, do not include the relay languages and have to be accessed from a different (calendar-)interface here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/plenary/cre/calendar.do?language=EN: “The verbatim report of proceedings of each sitting (often referred to by its French abbreviation, CRE) is published (Rule 173 of the Rules of Procedure) and contains the speeches made in plenary, in the original language.”

 

Appendix: The file size of these videos is about 10MB per minute. If you feel you need to save the videos locally, use an appropriate location (where you have sufficient space, the file will not be erased, only appropriate users have access – consider this before using a public network share, personal drive). Not really more “local” is saving the video clip on the http://hale-interpreting.groups.live.com Skydrive which can also hold clips larger than 50MB[ doubled to 100MB on June 20,2011] if you pre-process them like described in the zipping instruction.

Watch a 5-minute narrated video-clip that demonstrates the above steps.

Categories: e-languages, English, French, German, Greek (modern), Institution-is-London-Metropolitan-University, Interpreting, Italian, Listening, Polish, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, Spanish, Speaking Tags: , , , , ,

Language Lab Techniques for (Self-)Evaluation and Grading of Student Recordings with Audacity

2009/02/21 Leave a comment

This quick and dirty (not narrated and uncut: time is money, and storage cheap…) video demonstrates a technique in (the free audio editor) Audacity with which instructors and students can more easily (self-)evaluate parallel recordings from (be it model imitation, question-response, or consecutive interpreting exercises in) the language lab (in this case the output of a Sanako Study1200, which automatically gets stored in a folder on network share):

When?

What?

0,00

how to load 10 student files à 5mb = 2:30min (but as a batch, allowing you do something else in the foreground instead of waiting)

2,50

how to select a part of the timeline to play

3,00

how to move tracks up to more easily work with them and the menu

3,30

how to play all tracks simultaneously (choir, normally not very useful for evaluation)

3,40

how to play only one track (solo): evaluate & compare
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Institution-is-Loyola-University-Maryland, Interpreting, Speaking Tags: , , ,

Example 8: Auralog Tell-Me-More Speech Recognition Test

2008/08/29 1 comment

How usable is the Auralog Speech Recognition for language learning? This test, by a non-native speaker of English, gives some authentic data points.

image

The test shows: Auralog Speech Recognition

  1. can be easily tripped up; however, by errors that  a non-native language learner would not normally make
  2. more concerning is that the built-in AI, instead of e.g. escalating to additional feedback or help, like the pronunciation waveforms (which in itself seem to encourage only repeated attempts to mimic a given intonation, while not being fine-grained enough to spot mispronunciations on a word, let alone letter level) – lowers the requirements when a speaker repeatedly fails (which in extreme seems to amount to “waving through” any utterance).
  3. the preset dialogue – only few exercises including wrong answer options, most exercises testing only a comprehensible pronunciation of a given reading text which makes the exercise much easier for the built-in speech recognition, but also much less realistic and useful for a language learner (or more of a reading exercise).
Categories: e-languages, English, Institution-is-Aston-University, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Speaking Tags: ,

Collaborative timeline activity for face-to-face classes on history

2006/03/15 Leave a comment
  1. An easily produced and repeated classroom activity, originally developed for listening comprehension and speaking practice in  language classes, based on filling out collaboratively a timeline spreadsheet in the digital audio lab:
    1. Listen and process/write:
      1. Advanced German class listens to segments of an authentic German cultural history documentary from the authentic German TV series “100 deutsche Jahre” (which follows a single topic throughout 20th century German history).
      2. And each student enters notable summaries of events with their time of occurrence into a spreadsheet
      3. that the teacher
      4. has at beginning of activity distributed to each individual student using the digital audio labs file management features
      5. and after listening collects from students, merges, either with student author data or an anonymous student identifier (for corrections), into an excel timeline spreadsheet
      6. and visualizes the collaborative outcome as an easily collated timeline on the projector to the entire class.
    2. Speaking: Discuss!
      1. Identify what are the gravity points for the comprehension of the video by the class: Why are these events deemed important?
      2. What are the outliers? Criticism? Justification?
      3. Also correct language errors in the  student output.
    3. nexus_timeline_excel_100_deutsche_jahre
      1. In early 2006, there was no Excel web app – collaboration likely has become simpler now
        1. launch link to publically editable spreadsheet to class
        2. visualize using excel web app charts
Categories: Charts, classroom-activities, digital-humanities, German, learning-materials, Listening, Speaking Tags: , , ,