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Independent study with free language learning materials from the FSI?
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).
Eva English Word Lookup against Wordnet
- Eva Word Lookup – not listed under the extensions, but run against Wordnet, the lexical database for English – enables you to study your English words in depth. This lookup gives you information organized by the following aspects of your word, linked from an overview of each word type your search term can belong to:
- the coordinate terms (sisters)
- the derived forms
- the synonyms/hypernyms (ordered by estimated frequency)
- the hyponyms (troponyms for verbs)
- the holonyms, for nouns
- the meronyms, for nouns
- sample sentences, for verbs
- Below is what results look like for example search term “design”:
How a teacher uploads a video resource to Moodle using Kaltura
- Moodle Kaltura facilitates making segments of video (created from e.g. source DVD with the video editor of your choice) available for film studies classes, within the bounds of Fair Use and the Teach Act, since it makes video
- easily available (streamed to anywhere where Adobe-Flash runs),
- but only to those who have an account in the Moodle installation and are registered for the course
- In addition, access to the video segments can be restricted further (by choosing from the management options that Moodle affords),
- only to the teacher, for display during face-to-face teaching)
- only during a time window, for timed assignments.
- Here is a (somewhat longwinded, but authentic) demonstration of how to make a Kaltura video resource available through a Moodle course.
- The demonstration includes the server-side encoding which happens only once during teacher upload – you do not have to wait for it to finish, just if you want to check immediately, like I do on the example whether your upload went through.
Moodle Kaltura teacher and student video uploads combined
- You can combine
- a Model/Question video, uploaded by the teacher as a video resource
- with an Imitation/Response video captured by the student.
- Cons:
- When viewing the teacher upload video models/questions, the student has to alternate between pause/play (which are not even on the same button).
- Student does not have to also handle pausing/restarting the video recording, but that may be another con: The student cannot pause her video, so the grader will have to skip over pauses in his recording.
- Pros: Looks like a video recording can peacefully coexist with a simultaneous video playback (XP, IE8):
Moodle streaming video recording assignment glitch 9
- Are all things Moodle Kaltura on Windows better than on iMacs?
- I don’t think so (Windows 7, IE9): Webcamera cannot be activated, hourglass. Looks like the Flash security dialogue does not make it into the foreground.
I2speak.com: Web-based IPA Keyboard
The Sciweavers Team announces http://www.i2speak.com: “an online Smart IPA Keyboard that lets you quickly type IPA phonetics without the need to memorize any symbol code. For every Roman character you type, a popup menu displays a group of phonetic symbols that share the same sound or shape beneath typed character. Use arrow keys to select the proper symbol then hit the Enter button. I2Speak also supports the following features:
1. The Sampa English Keyboard lets you type English phonetics using Roman characters according to SAMPA (Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet) rules.
2. The IPA English Keyboard provides you with a full English phonetics keyboard. Press the symbol of interest using a suitable input device.
3. You can type directly on your physical keyboard or on the virtual on-screen keyboard using a suitable input device such as mouse or touch screen device.
4. You can change the keyboard symbols by selecting another layout from the list box located above the virtual keyboard.
5. For every keyboard layout, more symbols can be displayed by pressing the CAPS Lock.
6. When you hover the mouse over an English phonetic button, a slick tooltip will show some example English words.
7. You can save typed phonetics as an MS-Word file by clicking the Save button, copy them to clipboard using the Copy button, or post them to Twitter, Facebook, etc. by clicking the desired button.”
How to use Google translate for writing Cyrillic letters with a western keyboard, pronunciation help, and text-to-speech
Go to Google translate and do like so. Useful for learning, as well as typing when teaching.
Nice Syntax highlighter tool from wisc.edu @ Madison
-
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:
- Now how could such exercise creation made more automated by having it accept the output of NLP tools like Treetagger?
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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