second-language-acquisition | Thomas' Work Space

Treffpunkt Deutsch Companion Website with Online Exercises

2012/01/11 plagwitz Leave a comment

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).
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. ”
These exercises include vocabulary practice, even flash cards.
The auto-correction feature provides:
1. some useful feedback for further study,
2. summary grades
3. and an email to teacher function that should facilitate Syllabus integration of this useful resource:

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: links, treffpunkt-deutsch

Evaluating Student Writing with Adobe Acrobat Pro

2012/01/09 plagwitz Leave a comment

Interesting article on how audio comments (which save grader time) get through through to students better, by an language teaching practitioner in the EDUCAUSE Quarterly Magazine 2011.
Using simple standard and readily available tools: your version of Adobe Acrobat Professional is ready for your use under Novell Applications.
Thinking through the observation that students tend to read only the bottom line grade of a returned paper, and do not even bother looking at the teacher’s comments, and that forcing them to the latter by assigning them to revise their papers is less popular, leads one to the question: what more advanced technology is available to take advantage of the teachable moments when writing? Maybe a blend of automated corrective feedback by natural language processing tools like the MS-Office proofing tools and – for the demise of the advanced real-time online collaboration platform Google Wave – a face-to-face writing tutorial emporium where a tutor monitors the writing progress of many students using screensharing applications of classroom management systems like NetOp School or Sanako Study 1200, like here (in a better resolution than this thumbnail, obviously, but you get the idea):

Categories: grading, Writing Tags: adobe-acrobat, audio, netop-school, sanako-study-1200, screensharing

Transcribe sounds into Arabic letters on the web using Yamli

2012/01/06 plagwitz Leave a comment

How do you compare this to Microsoft Maren and Google Arabic keyboard input?

Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, mental-notes, Uncategorized, websites, Writing Tags: yamli

How to do model imitation recording exercises to improve language learner pronunciation in the LRC and beyond

2011/11/22 plagwitz Leave a comment

Sometimes teachers ask about support for voice recognition in the LRC. The term voice recognition or speech recognition (the former appears to be analogous to face recognition in authentication and other security contexts?) is usually reserved for software that can transcribe your voice into text – still no free option for this, AFAIK. Dragon naturally speaking is the oft recommended market leader outside of education (and within, Auralog Tell me more, see below). Update summer 2012: We are working on enabling the Speech recognition built into Windows 7 Enterprise for English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, Spanish, German, and Japanese.
Often times, what is actually desired is a digital audio recorder with voice graph, ideally a dual track recorder.
1. In the LRC student computers, we have for exactly this purpose a digital audio recorder as part of the SANAKO Study 1200language learning system
  1. It features a dual track recorder (allows to listen to teacher track which can be a prerecorded model to imitate on the left channel while recording the student track on the right channel of a stereo track) with a voice graph: . See this dual-track-voice-graph screencast demo from the vendor and also our student cheat sheet from the vendor documentation.
  2. The Sanako is available in the LRC, as well as in many other educational institutions around the world, but neither free nor web-based (although a web-based version seems to be in the works). It currently requires MS-Windows to run.
2. A popular and free audio editor (but not an SLA – specific application, let alone geared towards model imitation; also, for all practical ends and purposes, requires an extra download and installations of an MP3 encoder to be able to save recordings as compressed MP3) is Audacity. To use for model imitation exercises,
  1. the student can open a model track (mp3 recommended)
  2. and manage within the program the imitation portion, using the voice graph:
  3. then export back out as mp3,
    1. either her responses individually (see my demo screencast, requires Windows Media Player on Windows, which actually shows a question/response rather than a model imitation, but same principle),
    2. or, by deleting the model track, the response parts mixed down to one track,
    3. or also, if, like in my demo screencast, the timeline sequence of model (with pauses) and responses is carefully managed (so that model and imitation do not overlap), mixed down to one track.
3. In one language program, I have worked extensively with Auralog Tell me more
  1. which was (not exclusively, but arguably too much) based on this pedagogic concept of having students compare the voice graph of their imitation with the model voice graph (while it do did not allow for teachers to upload their own content, and was certainly not free).
  2. To my knowledge, Auralog Tell me more does not allow for adding teacher-produced content as models.
  3. I did like the self-reflective and repetitive practice element. However, I found that students – apart from intonation and (not useful for not pitch based languages) pitch -, did not benefit as much as one might have expected from viewing the voice graph, indeed tended to get overwhelmed, even confused by the raw voice information in such a voice graph.
  4. And automated scoring of pronunciation (or speech recognition” – not free form, but on a level that has been commoditized in operating systems like Windows 7, the level of voice-directed selection between a limited set of different options, like menu options, and in the case of Auralog, choosing between different response options) seemed iffy and less than transparent in Auralog Tell me more, even though this is their primary selling point. E.g. when I made deliberate gross mistakes, the program seemed to change its standards and wave me through ( English pronunciation example; also observed by me when testing Auralog with East Asian speakers of English).
A voice graph is not the same as a more abstract phonetic transcription (although I do not know whether language learners can be trained in phonetic symbol sets like the IPA). There are now experimental programs that can automate the transcription of text into phonetic symbol sets for e.g. Portuguese or Spanish. Maybe you will find that practice with recording and a phonetic transcription of the recorded text is more useful for your students’ pronunciation practice than a fancy voice graph.

Categories: Arabic, documentation, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Screencasts, software, Spanish, Speaking, Yoruba Tags: audacity, auralog-tell-me-more, Dragon naturally speaking, sanako-study-1200

Memrise: Another flashcard site for vocabulary learning

2011/11/21 plagwitz Leave a comment

Yet another attempt to tackle foreign language vocabulary learning with a crowd-sourced flashcard site: What is different this time, other than the layout?
The site works with a seed/greenhouse/garden metaphor for spaced repetition (how intelligent is the underlying algorithm for that?) and processing/short/long term memory
You can have the word pronounced (is this Text-to-speech? does not sound like it. So will it scale?) The focus on non-target language “ponies” seems not fruitful. Actual target language context should be under “Samples”, but seems widely missing. Communicative motivation also. Multiple meanings and grammatical information seem to be missing from the lemmata. .
Looks like a long list of flashcard lists, but note that the number of included words is descending quickly, hardly one of the many textbooks
The site allows you to download the word lists as Excel files:

Categories: all-languages, e-languages, Vocabulary, websites Tags: flashcards

How to use the online Spanish pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech

2011/11/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

Go to http://showroom.daedalus.es/es/tecnologias-de-la-lengua/phonetictrans/phonetictrans.php, enter your text, select your phonetic symbol set:
Unlike with the Portuguese help, there is no text-to-speech option here.

Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, learning-materials, Spanish, Speaking, websites Tags: links, phonetics, transcribing

Troubleshooting the wireless headsets in the TV viewing area

2011/11/18 plagwitz Leave a comment

For lack of small group work areas, the 3 headsets help sharing the LRCROOMCOED433. They amplify the sound for the TV viewing audience, allowing to turn the TV volume down so as not to disturb other users in the shared area.
No sound?
1. headsets turned on?
2. headset volume turned up?
3. headsets batteries dead?
4. transmitter turned on?
Static noise on headsets?
1. headsets batteries weak?
2. no line of sight to transmitter?
Other things you can try: