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Can this website make its own programs? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6540 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 48 06 November 2009 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Having a bank of words/phrases would make constructing comprehensive courses much easier. Hopefully this
bank of words would follow closely to a frequency dictionary. Or maybe following a frequency dictionary is not a good idea? Marcel Danesi, in Semiotics in Language Education, has a section on learning new vocab: if you want to go the semiotic approach, construct semiotic squares. To learn "rich" you can't just have the binary opposition of rich/poor. Greimeas says you need to construct a square: rich(s1)----------------poor(s2) | ; ; ; ; ; | | ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;| | ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;| | ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;| | ; ; ; | not poor(-s2)-----------not rich(-s1) So does this mean a language program needs only to start with one translation(s1)? The other 3 could be logically inferred by the rules of the semiotic square. This would in turn reduce the need for always translating vocab. Edit: I tried to make a square with lines, but the forum won't let me. So just imagine a square. Edited by Kugel on 06 November 2009 at 6:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cebeel Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6562 days ago 51 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 10 of 48 07 November 2009 at 5:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I wish somebody would just re-record FSI Basic and fix the problems with the sound quality and insufficient time allow to respond.
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| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 11 of 48 07 November 2009 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I think the big question here is: why? What would be the purpose of making our own course? That it will be much bette than all the courses aruond? Cheaper? Something for us to do instead of arguing?
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7183 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 12 of 48 07 November 2009 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is possible and we can work collectively to make one of the best courses using software already out there and course already out there. I came up with this suggestion on this site a few years ago but didn't get much reply.
It's called Anki/Supermemo and involves putting an entire course into it. I started to re-learn French. I cut up all the sentences from Pimsleur and put them into the supermemo program. The result was that the effectiveness of the course was amazing. Unfortunately it took about 1 to 2 hours to convert a 25 minute lesson. But if everyone worked together then it wouldn't be hard. Now of course I not saying we can do this with Pimsleur. Shame because we could improve the course. But what if we put an entire FSI course into say Anki or Supermemo! Seeing as it's in the public domain! It wouldn't be easy to convert the pdf's to text (using something like abbyy fine reader) cut up the sound and edit it (could use cubase), and finally then put it all into Anki or supermemo. I started doing this for German but didn't get far as my Chinese takes up so much of my time. Each chapter of the FSI course could have it's own anki file. And if needed break up each module into anki/supermemo files according to listening, grammar, reading speaking etc. Someone could take an FSI course and be the editor of it. He or she could convert one chapter of it into Anki/supermemo. This one chapter would work as the template for the other chapters that would be converted by the other people. When other people finish a chapter they could send it to the editor. We have the possibility of using free software and learning materials to make the best software/learning program in the world. It needs no computer programming skills. All you need is to know how to convert pdf files to word/text (or someone that wants to type a lot), knowledge of how to use Anki/supermemo and a sound editing program. I really think this can be done. I remember when it seemed like an impossible task of converting the FSI/DLI files but people including myself did it anyway for free. And now courses that cost $1000 + can be downloaded for free. Their cumbersome though but putting them into Anki would make the learning efficient. If enough people show an interest I could offer myself as an editor and convert a chapter or a part of an FSI course into Supermemo for ppc and basic pc version - no audio can be added here but I would in the question answer section point to audio files. This way even the most simple spaced repetition programs can use the material. Someone elso can be responsible for converting the files to Anki etc where the presentation would be slicker. I'm thinking German, French, Spanish, Portuguese would be a good place to start. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 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 13 of 48 07 November 2009 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I like the idea of producing audio - it's something everybody can do anytime he feels like it, so it requires less coordination and less commitment. Also creating powerful Anki decks sounds good to me. However, I do not think that it's a good idea to produce a course which is outdated right from the start, as would be the case if we draw on FSI. Obviously for some languages FSI is worse than for others, given spelling reforms and more or less drift, and there's the additional issue that FSI uses transliteration.
I would prefer to use that open website with parallel sentences (have to find it again) as a basis, or maybe each of us could look at a word list of the 1000 most common words in our native language and think of two sentences involving each word or so, enter them with translation in Anki and then use the in-built recorder to have the audio as well. I believe it may even be faster than trying to figure out what the FSI people are saying and cutting out the audio, linking it... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 14 of 48 07 November 2009 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Given that individually we have very different ideas on what is the "best" way of learning, any attempt to make the "best" course would just degenerate into an argument. That's why I suggest starting simple. Now, I take on board your point about practising listening, speaking, reading and writing, but I still see Gradint as the best place to start, and it is designed only to prompt you to say the word/phrase in the target language after hearing it in your native language. However, we need to make sure that the material can be used later for various purpose, and I suggest that this is best done with an index of some kind. I suggest that every xxxx_yy.wav file be accompanied by a matching xxxx_yy.txt file in Unicode format. In the first line of the file, the word or phrase should be written in the target language. The second line should contain a romanisation (eg pinyin for Chinese). It would then be fairly simple to write a small program that would automatically generate an Anki or Supermemo list from these files. Actually, I've just thought of a problem with that -- it makes naming harder. Initially I was thinking it would be easiest to name everything with the English equivalent, but then there isn't always one, is there? OK, instead, I think we should maintain the written data in a single database -- possibly a Google docs spreadsheet for easy access. Rather than having a linguistic name for each audio file, we put in an automatic key in the database/spreadsheet (ie the software gives each row a unique reference number), and use the key to name the files. This means that someone who knows (for example) Indonesian and Japanese could enter a phrase in both languages without needing to know any English. Someone who knows Japanese and Korean could then add in the Korean, and then maybe a Korean who also knows English could finally provide the English -- if it can be said in English, that is. (Of course at this point we've got the danger of the meaning being altered by multiple translations, which is why we should stick to simple stuff!) There will be lots of little niggles, problems, errors etc etc, but if we try to sort them all out before we start, we'll get nowhere. Once we make a start, we'll be able to experiment with the data and improve it bit by bit -- and different people will be able to produce different end products from the same data. (And a side-effect we'll be better able to compare teaching strategies neutrally, because there won't be differences in material to account for....) Edited by Cainntear on 07 November 2009 at 4:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6540 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 48 07 November 2009 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also think that Gradint would be the easiest place to start. I'd think that a massive course like Assimil would be
something for people who actually produce language programs for a living, and would take a long time to make. But how would you avoid copyright or plagiarism when making Gradint courses, assuming that you take the material from your favorite grammar manuals or dialogs? The very fact that the language material has to be original forces the language developer to be a native speaker. Although there are members on this forum who don't have English as their native tongue, it's not that common. Therefore, I wouldn't have a problem if the pro- member option, or any option for that matter, offered an arrangement to pay a small group of professionals to develop the requested course. Producing a course for the benefit of the general will for free might turn out a good course, but who knows? Edited by Kugel on 07 November 2009 at 4:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6261 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 16 of 48 07 November 2009 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
What about this one: http://shtooka.net/soft/shtooka_recorder/en/ http://shtooka.net/soft/shtooka_repeat/en/ http://shtooka.net/en/ http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Shtooka_Project_-_free_audio _collections_of_words 1 person has voted this message useful |
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