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Archive for the ‘Vocabulary’ Category

First steps with the Sanako Study 1200 vocabulary test activity

2013/09/06 Leave a comment
  1. Click to watch an example below of the new (in version 6, we are now on 7) activity:”Vocabulary Test” which allows you to administer during a face-top-face-class just exactly what its name says –
  2. with these benefits:
    1. needing no paper,
    2. digital contents
      1. “can” and reuse past tests with ease
      2. TBA: can you swap target and source language?
    3. blending automated and teacher feedback:
      1. the example I give below is based on what the teacher gave me: single words and very short idiomatic expression.
      2. You can use longer phrases (I prefer teaching and studying vocabulary in context), but then it become increasingly unlikely that the automated feedback is accurate (The automated feedback is limited to exact, up to case-insensitive string matching – now distance metrics).
      3. You can override the automated feedback before sending the results back to the student. This is somewhat practical, since the submitting is fast and not all students will finish at the same time, and if you provided students with the follow up activity after submission, The teacher overriding the feedback gets unpractical in large classes, so it is recommended restricting the test to short source/target language pairs. Also be clear about or minimize punctuation and, if required, the format of other metalinguistic information  (gender, plural forms etc).
  3. Issues:
    1. not communicative, how can this be used or fitted in with other activities to make best use of a fully computerized face-to-face teaching environment?
    2. simplistic autocorrecting algorithm (case-insensitive, otherwise exact, right or wrong, my way or the highway” string matching)
    3. no tracking, no memory, personalization only via the other built-in Sanako personalization features (groups – to be left to the teacher to handle)
    4. no learning content – at least no vocabulary learning materials usable out of the box for us (TBA).
Categories: audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, Learning-logs, Presenter-Computer, Screencasts, service-is-evaluating-learning-tools, Student-Computers, Vocabulary Tags: ,

WordSmith Tools are once again not licensed

2013/08/28 Leave a comment
  1. StartingWordsmith from the desktop shortcut results in this: image
  2. Didn’t I test and describe last summer  how to fix this?
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, Corpus-linguistics, e-languages, Glitches&Errors, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, service-is-configuring-learning-tools, service-is-testing-troubleshooting-debugging, software, Translation Tags: ,

LRC Fall 2013 announcements

2013/08/16 Leave a comment
  1. The LRC has upgraded to Windows 7 and Office 2010.
    1. Benefits:
      1. Your students can use the computer interface from the default English to  about 20 languages, including non-Western.
      2. Your students can also use speech recognition (in English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish), e.g. for dictation exercises (Example videos:  very bad French, decent German). Students can train the computers to their voice and take their training data with them.  I’d love to explore with you possibilities for pronunciation practice with automated intelligent feedback .
      3. Your students can use old and new MS-Office Proofing tools.
    1. Caveat:  W are still trying to restore some former functionality (e.g. no Google Arabic, Farsi and Russian IME etc.). Please bear with us while we deal with the new college tech infrastructure. 
  1. The LRC has upgraded its Sanako digital audio lab software.
    1. Because of budgetary constraints, our software agreement had to end  with version 5 . This summer, the vendor presented us with a free upgrade to version 7, with compliments for my blog posts about using the Sanako.
    2. Benefits:  We decided to implement the upgrade lest you and your students need relearn in the middle of the academic year and since Version 7 adds valuable language learning :  which I would love to explore with you: Vocabulary exercises  and Pronunciation exercises which  make use of the computerized text-to-speech capabilities we just implemented with windows 7
    3. Caveats:
      1. We are still trying to restore the old Sanako configuration. E.g. Pairing recording is not working currently.
      2. I hope to upgrade my LanglabEmailer software to support the new version after the term is underway.
  1. For students attending distance classes with Saba Centra in the LRC, microphone audio on listening stations fixed, no more 30 minute delay  when joining class.
  1. UNCC is upgrading to Moodle 2. The CTL is investigating how the LRC Metacourses for audio materials I created can be converted to Moodle 2. If you need the audio materials from the metacourses,  we can help you upload them into your individual courses temporarily. 
  1. Classroom AV: We found a temporary workaround for the projector image quality and are investigating permanent solutions. Currently no VHS video and doc cam display during classes  (we would love to  scan your text anyway and distribute them digitally).
  2. LRC Calendars and Booking:
    1. In the LRC Room and Equipment List, your will notice some new film studies equipment (calendars requested from ITS).
    2. We added new calendars to the Quicklinks on LRC home page :  Tutors and LRC assistants. Please keep checking how we fill these open positions over the next few weeks, and use the help they can offer you.
    3. When booking, you can
      1. get help at the LRC reception desk;
      2. book yourself  from anywhere,
      3. or have your “delegate” book (planned; setup requested from ITS).
  1. I will continue next week with the biweekly Sanako Clinic to aid teachers with their LRC class preparation. Please consult the LRC calendar if you want to drop in, or reschedule one with me for your needs.
  2. I am also offering LRC introductions for your class during the week 2 and 3 on a “first-come, first-served” basis, and à la carte (I suggest consulting a one-sheet menu with an overview  of LRC facilities that I am  preparing.) Please let me know if you are interested.
Categories: announcements, audience-is-teachers, Listening, service-is-tutoring, Speaking, Vocabulary, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

ELRA language corpora available in the LRC for research

2013/07/05 Leave a comment

The LRC has availed itself of a free research distribution of 55GB collection of language corpora from http://www.elra.info/, the European Language Resources Association. This “big data” should be of interest for the translation program, as well as the language learning programs, since it enables corpus linguistic approaches to language learning and automated learning material production based on natural language processing.

Here is an overview of the materials included:

OneNote_20130903_1378236359213

A list of files included can be found here:

Categories: corpora, learning-materials, Spreadsheets, Translation Tags: , ,

Voyant-tools.org

2013/03/22 Leave a comment

image

Neat encounter at the ThatCamp2013 Digital Humanities Unconference at UNCC today. Certainly a simplification over Wordsmith tools. That’s all the reviewing I have time for right now. Smile

Categories: Corpus-linguistics, digital-humanities, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Translation, websites Tags:

Bab.la.com: Arabic–English Online Dictionary

2013/02/27 Leave a comment

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).

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And an example for the reverse lookup: image.

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.

Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Dictionaries, English, Speaking, websites, Writing Tags:

Multilingual WordNet search interface

2013/02/01 Leave a comment

image

Covers a subset of the languages supported by the LRC. Based on Wordnet which is rather than a dictionary for human consumption, a machine-readable semantic network, but here is one of its machine-generated applications.

Categories: Arabic, audience-is-teachers, Dictionaries, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Vocabulary, websites Tags: , ,

Pictolang, another flashcard site for vocabulary learning

2012/12/05 Leave a comment
  1. Distinguishing mark: Pictolang is based on the Culturally authentic Picture Lexicon. Here is an overview of the currently available languages and imagery:
  2. Language  Region # Images
    German  2631
    Mandarin China 2336
    ESL  North America 2074
    Russian  1420
    French  France 1231
    Spanish  Southern Cone 1022
    Spanish  Mexico 1000
    Spanish  Central America & Caribbean 872
    Spanish  Peninsular 579
    Arabic  287
    Special Collections  151
    Ukrainian  139
    Japanese  106
    French  Canada 47
    Arabic  Oman 11
  3. You can focus vocabulary your study on specific topics, which will likely integrate it better with your core textbook material (often divided into topical chapters). image
  4. Suitable for self-study, the use of CAPL makes this an especially interesting tool for preparing work/study/travel abroad. It also allows for playing a classroom flashcard game in language culture and area studies, where the teacher can provide context and background information in the images from the target culture.
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  6. Example o the Word Match Game right answer feedback:
  7.  
  8. Wrong answer feedback:
  9. image
Categories: Absolute-Beginner, Advanced, Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Beginner, English, French, German, Intermediate, Japanese, Mandarin, Photos, Russian, Spanish, Vocabulary, websites Tags: ,