Archive
Archive for the ‘second-language-acquisition’ Category
Web-based romanized letters to Cyrillic transliteration tool.
2011/11/16
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- Our Russian tutor uses this transliteration tool HTTP://TRANSLIT.RU which allows for phonetic input on a keyboard that does not have Cyrillic letters and seems popular with native speakers of languages written in Cyrillic.
- As so often, that implies: not designed for language learners. The explanation attests to that:
Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, Intermediate, Russian, websites, Writing
character-input, websites
Microsoft Contextual Translator
2011/11/14
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Certainly an advance over the MS-Word thesaurus (unlike the MS-Word 2007 and up spell check, still not contextual). Does this work at least well enough to serve as a fruitful pedagogical exercise: “Which phrase does not belong in the group?”
Categories: Advanced, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, e-languages, English, Intermediate, Speaking, websites, Writing
links, thesaurus
Streaming Problems with Realmedia via RTSP from ereserves with VLC Player (and Internet Explorer. And NetOp School)
2011/11/10
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- VLC-player
- version 1.1.9, but also currently newest 1.1.11 as well on Windows CXP SP 3
- opens from IE8 and Firefox 3.6
- but is not able to play files (tested even multi) through. Rather, it nicely falls on its face, with the audio stream simply appearing to stop, mid-sentence, after 2:38 (pretty consistently – a buffering bug? A great way to slip through pre-testing).
- In the LRC, I could hardly bring the taskswitcher up, let alone (15 minutes of waiting) the task manager, to even find that vlc.exe is the culprit, with a CPU utilization of 99% solid (Ouch!).
- Not quite so bad in the office computer where it hovered slightly above 25%, maybe busying only one CPU core.
- My Google searches do not find anything quite similar.
- RealPlayer 14 to the rescue?
- In IE8, RealPlayer does not open when clicking on the web page link with the RM file which causes a dialogue to open if VLC-player is the default player, rather a strange unplayable content error..
- In Firefox, RealPlayer open and plays (and pre-buffers) the stream completely.
- Note that ereserves “download as zip” cannot serve as a workaround: gives you only the links like http://dlib4.uncc.edu/streaming/media_play.php?file=9364cb66b9e1cae26aed0f471e9eab5b, which require you to re-authenticate, even if in the same browser session, and do not redirect to the resource, neither audio nor web page form which you could launch the audio (in short, I do not get what this download as zip is good for)
- Next Problem: This may work on my office computer. In the lab we have NetOp School installed. That adds another layer of NetOp School problems which look like they can be resolved
next time the lab is reimaged. For now, use instead audio from Moodle metacourses where possible.next time I get around to design and run a Symantec-Ghost Software and File Action on the computers (all LRC lab PCs) and test the result (on PC10) which was now.
MS Universal Language Input Tool offers correction and transliteration on any web page
2011/11/10
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Using the UIME, you can “type any language with any keyboard on any web page, using only the Roman characters present on every keyboard.”
And you can install your favorite input language in your web browser, like so:
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, Beginner, e-languages, English, French, Greek (modern), Intermediate, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, software, websites, Writing
character-input, ms-uime
How a teacher creates and grades a Moodle streaming video assignment.
2011/11/02
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- Click button: “Turn editing on”, from the “add an activity dropdown, choose: “video”, like so:
- Edit your assignment, like so:
- using the following options (or else expect problems)
- Due date: not DISABLED (is the default)
- Prevent late submissions: YES (is not the default)
- Allow resubmitting: NO (is the default)
- using the following options (or else expect problems)
- after you post your assignment and your students took it, like so,
- and if you turned notifications (not recommended; rather grade the assignment well after the deadline, or else expect problems) on (if you get already enough email, remember you can turn notifications off, rather send a deadline to the assignments which the students can see in their calendar, and until they get used to it, tell them there will be more video assignments, best: make it a routine and leave 2 for extra credit could be enough to get everybody to catch), you will get an email like this:
- where you click either on the link (1) to go to the assignment, then click through to the submissions (3)
- or on (2) to go directly to the grade book:
- where you are best advised to click on the button: “grade” to view the video submission, , or else you might run into this bug.
- In the grading window,
play the video, add helpful comments, if any, add final Grade and click “save and next” (but click “next” if no video submitted yet and you grade before the submission deadline. Better: do not grade before the submission deadline). - If video seems unwilling to play (frozen frame), drag the play cursor forward on the timeline underneath the video.
If this does not unfreeze the video, let the timeline run to the end (both workarounds have helped with Kaltura issues we encountered here).
Categories: all-languages, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, lms, Speaking, step-by-step-guides
1.9, kaltura, moodle, video
MS-Engkoo glossing of Chinese newspaper text
2011/10/28
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- 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”
- Make sure you are on the right version (English version for Chinese user) of the site (
are the choices you want to see on top) and “Enable Bing Dictionary”in lower right corner: ![china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-enable_thumb1_thumb.png?w=244&h=40 "china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]")
- Then hover:
![china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-example_thumb1_thumb1.png?w=559&h=462 "china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]")
.
![china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-enable_thumb1.png "china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]"){kind=small}
![china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-example_thumb11.png "china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]")
Categories: Advanced, Beginner, e-languages, Intermediate, Mandarin, Media, Reading, Vocabulary, websites
engkoo, glossing, links, microsoft, newspapers
Chinese newspapers
2011/10/28
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- 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.
- 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
newspapers
MS-Bing Dictionary for Chinese learners of English–and vice versa?
2011/10/28
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- Link: http://dict.bing.com.cn/?ulang=EN-US&tlang=ZH-CN#%3Ahome, powered by Engkoo:
- This looks like a pretty evolved learning tool: It has instant suggestions that include usage information and translations.
- 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).
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Beginner, corpora, Dictionaries, English, Intermediate, Listening, Mandarin, Reading, Vocabulary, websites
links, ms-bing.ms-eengkoo
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