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Computers as Language Teachers | ||
Tags: Computer | Language Teaching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6281 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 1 of 9 20 July 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Computers could be the most patient teachers in the world, never tiring of giving you
more examples and more exercises. "Do an initial test so that the system will know your starting level. Then, the system will begin to show you phrases and short dialogues with new vocabulary. Complete multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank and translation exercises in order to train yourself to use these new words. If you make a mistake, the system will remember and it will show you more exercises for the same word, until you have mastered it. The same goes for grammar: after an explanation and some examples, you will be asked to solve various exercises until you have mastered this grammar topic. If you find it easy, there will be few exercises. If you find it hard, there will be as many exercises as you need, because the system adapts to you. If you have forgotten something else in the meantime, the system will quiz you on that as well. If you want to learn words and expressions for a particular situation, you can tell the system and it will immediately start to teach you everything you need in order to master that situation, drawing on its knowledge of what you know and what you haven't learned yet. This way, the course will be truly customized to your needs." (From http://www.gofundme.com/Learn-Chinese) What do you think? Would you want to study with it? What advantages/disadvantages do you see? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4720 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 2 of 9 20 July 2013 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This has been the dream for as long as computers have been envisaged in education. There have been a few computer programmes which attempt to teach an entire language, and they have never quite proved popular with hardcore language learners (I'm thinking of Rosetta Stone, primarily).
My initial thoughts are that you will face these difficulties: * The balance between exercises to develop language and keeping the programme fun and interesting * The inability to anticipate problems. A teacher can adjust to new problems a student faces. As a programme developer, you have to try to anticipate everything. No matter how thorough you are, something will be missed. * The sheer mass of content will be a problem. Think of the quantity of material involved in FSI courses. * It is quite possible to include 3 of the 4 key skill areas. You can have exercises which test reading, writing and listening. Speaking exercises have not yet been done very well on computer systems. An additional suggestion: * The system should include some more substantial text (stories, articles, etc) for each level. Additional exercises could then involve things like dictation (computer reads, you have to type in the text), and comprehension questions. I have always hoped that a good computer programme would be developed for language learning. Most programmes have fallen short because they have focused on commercial demands such as looking pretty, fun, and being "easy". I think it is just too expensive for a commercial developer to make a comprehensive programme. Going for funding the way you are might just be the solution to this problem. Edited by Jeffers on 20 July 2013 at 7:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3955 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 9 22 July 2013 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As a component of a learning method? Sure! As a sole tool for learning a language? Nope.
I think that a computer program can help with grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure. But language is about communication, and I don't think that anything but interaction with an actual human being can teach you to communicate. Computers are predictable. Human beings are not. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lwtproject Pentaglot Senior Member Netherlands https://learning-wit Joined 4703 days ago 149 posts - 264 votes Speaks: French, Dutch*, German, English, Mandarin Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 9 22 July 2013 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The anticipated system sounds rather boring to me, like a mixture of Rosetta Stone, Anki and ChinesePod. As an autonomous learner, I don't like to be guided by some AI algorithm all day long.
I also ask myself why you don't prepare some prototype and then ask for funding... LWT (Learning With Texts) has been created by me without any funding at all. I invested more than five months full-time work into it, and I released it into the Public Domain. I did this because I think that most people are not able or don't want to pay for such a learning system. My intention was also that people from poorer countries or economies should have access to some completely free software solution in order to enable them learning foreign languages on their own with any material they will find in the Internet. Edited by lwtproject on 22 July 2013 at 6:15pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6281 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 5 of 9 22 July 2013 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is also my intention. I want to create a Chinese course that anyone can use. However, I personally cannot afford to work 5 months full-time without any income at all. I am working on this project right now, next to my paid work, but it's going too slow, I won't be able to finish it anytime soon at this rate. In order to do it right, I want to take time off work to just work on this, and I will also need to pay consultants (Chinese native speakers, web designer, sysadmin) for the work I cannot do myself, and pay for temporary office space / meeting rooms for us to get together at critical points of the project. This project is much larger in scope than LWT. I don't want to charge money from people who can't afford it, so I'm going the way of donations instead. This way, only those who can afford to pay will pay for the course and once it's ready, it will be available to people in third world countries etc. for free. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4720 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 6 of 9 22 July 2013 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Mr LWT brings up something I was thinking of mentioning: the element of choice. I think the ability to choose your own path is an important part of a good language programme. There are, of course many ways to do this while still including the idea of sequential learning. Duolingo's language tree is one good example. Even in classroom teaching, we try to give the students a certain degree of choice of task. The more you give the user the feeling that they are in control, the better they engage with the task. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 7 of 9 22 July 2013 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
This could be solved by having the computer randomly generate content from smaller building blocks (which is what language is all about, anyway). And before you object that the material will sound like what comes out of Google Translate, I think generating a short text focusing on following a particular pattern (which is being trained) from a limited but extensive database of words and expressions is a lot easier than translating from one language to another. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4720 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 8 of 9 23 July 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged | |||||
I've created drilling software to do just that. Things like, "The pen is in the house", and the software can change each noun from a set of appropriate nouns. It does shorten the task, but you still need to make an algorithm for each particular pattern you want to test. And, again using FSI as a guide, there are thousands of patterns you could use. And then there's the problem of idiomatic expressions. Whether you write every sentence individually (as Duolingo does), or create algorithms to generate each sentence, it is still a monumental task. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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