Archive
Courseworld.org offers foreign language learning video clips
Japanese Language Tools (Proofing, dictionary, furigana) in the LRC MS-Office 2010 installation
- Even if not showing in MS-Word’s Language selector),
-
There are these tools:
-
Furigana:
New problem in Sanako Study 1200 version 7 with 2 student recorder exe’s running simultaneously on client, under different user accounts?
- UPDATE: Also an issue in the spring term on the teacher computer..
- UPDATE: still an issue in the spring term.


- This cannot be good (brought this student down).
- How is this possible?
- Presumably the student logged out an admin during a Sanako activity (we frequently have to place late-coming students sit and use an administrator computer, but they do not always get at term start that they are not supposed to log the admin out and in)
- So this seems another (special) case of the recently observed student managing to exit the Sanako during an activity (helper.exe was running alright).
Protected: Native speaker recordings for Voilà vocabulary
Making computerized vocabulary quizzes for use in the LRC from Prof. Koralova’s Friendly Russian textbook
You can browse on the Group room PC to this folder with the
source files (read acces), you just need to look at the Word versions: S:\COAS\LCS\LRC\sanako\student\friendly-russian-docx-student-copy
In the source files, new vocabulary that the students have to learn, appears in 2 forms
1. Either under the heading “new words”, mostly with English meaning in a sparate column
2. Or in the running text, colored in red (and with no entirely obvious English translation for me who I do not speak Russian, but likely for you).
The target file is here (in most browsers other than Internet Explorer 64-bit, you should be able to open this in EXCEL for easier editing).
We need Russian and English in 2 columns. The computer program we are going to feed these flash cards into is quite simple in its automatic evaluation. That’s why we need to enable students to guess exactly the Russian from the English flash card side (and vice versa). Hence we may need to simplify the entries in both.
To give a few examples:
– Complicated lists of variants (inflected forms, similar phrases etc.) need to be broken up into separate rows
– linguistic metadata (like gender “fem.”– but maybe not articles: “la maison – das Haus” -, irregular verb) in a separate column, per language.
I included an example (from chapter 4, section 6) what I think the end result is supposed to look like:
Source example:
ти́хо (adv.) – quiet(ly); тишина́ (n.) – stillness; quiet
никогда́ – never; ти́хо, как никогда́ – quiet as never (before); когда́ – when
В чём де́ло? – idiom: What’s the matter?
ах да – oh yes
матч – match; game
почти́ – almost
ка́ждый – each; every
ме́сяц – month
всё в поря́дке (idiom)– everything is OK (lit.: everything is in order)
что ещё на́до? – what else (does one) need?
Target example:
|
russian |
metadata |
english |
metadata2 |
|
Ти́хо |
quiet |
||
|
тишина́ |
stillness |
||
|
тишина́ |
quiet |
||
|
никогда́ |
never |
||
|
ти́хо, как никогда́ |
quiet as never before |
||
|
когда́ |
when |
||
|
В чём де́ло? |
What’s the matter? |
||
|
ах да |
oh yes |
||
|
матч |
match |
||
|
матч |
game |
||
|
почти́ |
almost |
||
|
ка́ждый |
each |
||
|
ка́ждый |
every |
||
|
ме́сяц |
month |
||
|
всё в поря́дке |
everything is OK |
||
|
что ещё на́до? |
what else does one need? |
||
Hint: the easiest way to get the vocabulary charts Russian – English from Word into 2 columns in Excel: CTRL+H, “find:” space-space, “Replace”:^t (for tab), then copy/pasting the result makes 2 columns for Russian/English.
How to work around a possible bug of Sanako Study 1200 collecting student files opening multiple explorer windows?
- Problem: To great confusion of my teachers, Sanako version 7 often seems to open multiple collection windows (1 per student recorded?) when collecting files, like so:
- Possible Cause: From the screenshot above,
- where only 1 collection event out of 3 shows this undesirable behavior,
- and the 2 that did not, collected all file either under student computer name or all under student login name:
- is it possible that Sanako has a bug which causes it to open one Windows explorer window per student file collected, if
- some students are displayed under their computer name,
- while other are displayed under their login name?
- This is aggravated by another limitation (or bug): Students that come online after I chose show student computer names, are not affected by this setting, but display with their login name (the default).
- Possible Workaround:
- Make sure all students display under the same naming scheme.
- This is best achieved by waiting until every student icon shows up in the classroom map before changing the classroom map student display option.
First steps with the Sanako Study 1200 vocabulary test activity
- 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 – - with these benefits:
- needing no paper,
- digital contents
- “can” and reuse past tests with ease
- TBA: can you swap target and source language?
- blending automated and teacher feedback:
- the example I give below is based on what the teacher gave me: single words and very short idiomatic expression.
- 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).
- 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).
- Issues:
- 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?
- simplistic autocorrecting algorithm (case-insensitive, otherwise exact, right or wrong, my way or the highway” string matching)
- no tracking, no memory, personalization only via the other built-in Sanako personalization features (groups – to be left to the teacher to handle)
- no learning content – at least no vocabulary learning materials usable out of the box for us (TBA).

