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Modernizing Princeton Russian Course | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 10 27 October 2010 at 8:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been in touch with David Freedel (author of the famous PRC) for a couple of years now, and although his course is simply great, it could use some improvements to its current form, to which David agrees if someone else does the work. That would be me and any volunteers we can find :)
The content of the course would remain largely untouched, but it would be completely cleaned up and optimized in the following ways: -All audio duplicates would be replaced with appropriate 'chopped up' versions; so instead of having "dialog X" and "dialog X with pauses and repetitions" we'd have "dialog X" parts 1 to n, a "silence" file and two playlists for every dialog (or listening r whatever): "normal" and "dialog plus pauses and repetitions". This alone would reduce the overall size of the course to roughly 50% or maybe even 33% (allowing the whole course to fit in a single data CD). -All text documents would be moved to a single folder tree, and properly indexed. As David finds the original Word documents, they'll be converted to HTML and properly cleaned and linked and to one another and their corresponding audio files (no more looking for the right files). Answer keys can be integrated into each lesson so the exercises can be made interactive with a pinch of JavaScript. This would allow for the whole course to be displayed, navigated and used effortlessly on nearly every modern device (such as non-smart cell phones). For the PDF fanboys out there, these files could easily be re-created in a single pass after all the cleanup is done, with interactive exercises and audio all embedded in them = no more looking for the right files that go with lesson X. I have already converted a few lessons and I'll be more than happy to show the results to any volunteers that want to collaborate with this project (a lot to discuss yet). So... who's first? :) 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6235 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 10 27 October 2010 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I like the project, but I do not like using html files. I prefer either word or pdf.
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 10 28 October 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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I won't argue about platform-specific data formats; as said, any of those can be easily generated afterwards.
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| Texas42 Triglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5478 days ago 13 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 10 22 November 2010 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That would be great. It's one of the best Russian courses available online.
What I miss in this course is the absence of answers to the exercises. I believe that if someone could provide them, it would become much more useful to study Russian from scratch. Edited by Texas42 on 22 November 2010 at 2:15pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ericounet Senior Member France yojik.euRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5437 days ago 157 posts - 414 votes Studies: English, German, Russian | Message 5 of 10 25 November 2010 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi,
10 days ago, I wrote to David Freedel : exactly what I wanted to do, with translation of the course in French (I'm French). He wrote that he'll send to me the documents in .doc format, when he'll get some time. Maybe I could suggest to use the docbook format: it's an xml format that can be processed with numerous tools to extract vocabulary, make the translations etc ...the docbook can generate html, pdf, text or any other format (just a suggestion :) ). Html will be fine if you prefer. We could join the efforts. Strange to have the same idea in the same time. (my wife is from Kazakhstan and speaks nativelly Russian, and I thought to do some recordings: she allready recorded vocabulary for the shtooka project (see http://shtooka.net). There is also available there a tool dedicated to record list of words/phrases (shtooka recorder). I wrote one for Linux 3 years ago (http://www.yojik.eu ), but I'm writing a new version at the moment (will be finished for Christmas) At the moment, I'm converting the FSI course (Russian) in docbook format (big job ..), for translation, re-recording of vocabulary, phrases, and to provide the answers of the exercices (easier when you study alone). best regards Eric! ----- ps: openoffice can work with the docbook format. see: docbook.org for docbook use and documentation, http://www.lisa.org/Translation-Memory-e.34.0.html#c33 for xliff and TMX format. ps2: all our work is GPL and free (recordings, programs ...) Edited by Ericounet on 25 November 2010 at 12:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rudy (SWI) Tetraglot Newbie Switzerland prokom.ch/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5048 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: German*, Italian, French, English Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 10 31 January 2011 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi,
I've been learning Russian at a school for adults, for four years. And I do use Mr. Freedels Princton course with great pleasure – it e.g. helps learning an every day spoken language. In the course of using the Princton files, I found quite a number of mistakes in the pdf files, and also in some mp3's (e.g. lesson SLA101/73); sometimes things are left out. I tried to correct mistakes in the pdfs with Acrobat Pro but couldn't manage because of font incompatibilities. So I already twice wrote to Mr. Freedel to send me the fonts used, but didn't get an answer. Well, if the whole stuff was created in MS Word, and if you are in possession of the files, it would be great if you could send me the plain Word files.. I would gradually return them to you with my suggestions for corrections. Basic suggestions: 1. In the grammatical parts, Mr. Freedel mostly offers the verbs' stems, but not the infinitives which isn't very helpful - my opinion 2. There are no solutions to the written homework pages, unfortunately, but I guess the answers could only be given by a native speaker - or a teacher. Looking forward to your reply, yours Rudy 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Normunds Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5966 days ago 86 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Latvian*, French, English, Russian, German Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian | Message 7 of 10 31 January 2011 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
would not it be quite a bother as there are many devices that do not support playlists? Today making it one CD more or less is of little importance. Well on a phone with little memory, that still has a player that supports playlists... maybe. And for the rest still provide the "uncut" version? On the other hand you plan support text for different other devices that possibly are not able to play the lists:
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5228 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 8 of 10 03 February 2011 at 4:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sorry everybody, I had replying here pending but I got distracted all the time...
@Ericounet: I'm not really interested in translations of the course as such; if I ever produce a Spanish version of the PRC I'll rewrite quite a good deal of it. Anyway, it is always a good idea to join efforts when possible. WRT docbook vs HTML, I have no experience or knowledge of docbook, but I think we should have no problems converting back and forth. I think the most important requirement to join efforts is to precise as much as possible our goals and see what things we can work on together. WRT that I got in touch with Anton, the guy at myrussianteacher.org, too; he said he'd announce we're looking for more volunteers but never heard back from him. @Rudy: D. Freedel said he was thinking about adding an answer key to the course but I never heard back of him again either. Meanwhile I started one on my won with a little help from my friends, but we didn't get too far. WRT to the word files, I think I scrapped them as soon as I got clean HTML because it's so much easier to work with. I can look for them just in case, though. Anyway, meanwhile you can send me your corrections. The special fonts are not needed anymore, because the cleaned up version of the course is fully UTFized, so diacritic marks upon Cyrillic vowels and such pose no problems. @Normunds: 1) An 'uncut' version can be easily generated form a chopped one, either on demand or as a permanent part of the revamped course. The chopped versions of dialogs etc. are very interesting to produce, however, because they provide 'natural' points to stop, advance to, and the like during a lesson (no need to 'rewind' or 'fast forward'). 2) I have an old (one of my students dixit) Sony Z750 phone that has a fairy decent HTML browser and supports m3u playlists. I expect everyone else to have more advanced gadgets than me. Am I very unrealistic? Nonetheless, once we finish cleaning up the course, support for any other kind of devices (f.e. generation of continuous audio, text format conversion,... ) will be fairly easy to add. Then again, the 'old' version will still be floating around for a while for those who prefer it, so that shouldn't be a problem either. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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