all-languages | Thomas' Work Space

Deutschland Radio

2012/01/12 plagwitz Leave a comment

On popular request: Deutschland Radio still does live streaming, but their on demand archive is also very good. Unlike Deutsche Welle which has discontinued live streaming geared neither towards expats, nor language learners though.

Categories: audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, German, Media Tags: dradio, links, radio

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

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

NFLRC "Assessments for Japanese Language Instruction" Summer Institute

2011/11/21 plagwitz Leave a comment

The National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa is pleased to announce its 2012 Summer Institute:

ASSESSMENTS FOR JAPANESE LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION July 10-13, 2012 University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii

Website: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/prodev/si12j/

This four-day NFLRC summer institute (July 10-13, 2012) is intended for postsecondary Japanese language educators who wish to promote good assessment practices in their home institutions. It consists of lecture as well as hands-on sessions designed to help improve their theoretical knowledge and practical skills about assessments (including testing). To this end, the workshop will provide ample authentic assessment examples in various formats and procedures to assess learning outcomes in Japanese in classroom and program-level settings. The workshop will also cover portfolio assessments for Japanese language teacher training programs. After attending the workshop, participants will be better prepared to engage in effective formative and summative assessments for Japanese language instruction and teacher training in their home institutions.

If you are interested in participating in the Assessments for Japanese Language Instruction Summer Institute, please submit your ONLINE APPLICATION FORM BY JANUARY 31, 2012.

For more information about the workshop, application, funding possibilities, and logistics, please visit the summer institute website.

Categories: announcements, assessments, Japanese

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: