What is the best method for blind people (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

What is the best method for blind people
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13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

jazzboy.bebop
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Norway
norwegianthroughnove
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Message 9 of 13

21 March 2011 at 2:49pm | IP Logged

Alex, I spoke with my dad but turns out he simply uses a mixture of online dictionaries,
Google translate and Wikipedia (searches for articles in French/Italian/German for a
relevant word then changes the language to English) but is at the stage of using online
monolingual dictionaries for the most part.

Sorry I can't be of any more help, just hope you can find a good online Chinese<>English
dictionary that works fine with screen readers.
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AlexBlackman
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Message 10 of 13

24 March 2011 at 7:58am | IP Logged

jazzboy.bebop wrote:

Thank you for your suggestion... I do a similar thing myself to learn technical terms, anyway, if worse comes to worse, I could just use special software to download a website

RogerK wrote:

You could call the Blind Institute in your capital city. I went to an open day at the institute for the blind in Bundoora, Melbourne a few years ago and spoke to a blind lady who spoke numerous languages. She only said that she had studied languages at uni and not directly with the institute but I'm confident they will either have materials or be able to point you in the right direction.

Hi
I will certainly do that, thanks.

Cainntear wrote:

I think there's a Pimsleur English for Chinese speakers. I'm not a massive fan of Pimsleur, but it does have its uses.
Another thing which should be quite handy is a piece of software called Gradint.
If you get examples of words and phrases you want to learn in your target language and record prompts in your native language, it will generate automatic lessons, presenting and revising the phrases at increasing intervals. (The author says this is based on Paul Pimsleur's original formula, which isn't followed exactly by the current courses.)

I reckon it's only because I plugged a quarter of the audio from my Welsh course into Gradint that I passed the exam. I hadn't studied enough, and once I had the lessons as MP3 I could just cram loads.

But you don't have to cram with Gradint. If you supply it with the samples in a structured order, you can actually learn quite intelligently. It seems to pick the samples out in alphabetical order of filename, so don't just dump everything in together in one go.

I think a progressive audio-only course is the best way to go... For all its many flaws, pimsleur is the best. I'll definitely suggest its worth 'acquiring'

As for Gradint... I don't think it'll be useable by blind people, but if I have time spare, I could use it to make my own English for Masseuses course

Edited by AlexBlackman on 24 March 2011 at 8:27am
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Cainntear
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Message 11 of 13

24 March 2011 at 11:18am | IP Logged

AlexBlackman wrote:

As for Gradint... I don't think it'll be useable by blind people,

Not by the completely blind, no, but the author of the program is partially sighted and wrote it specifically because he couldn't find many language learning materials he could use.

He even has another page where you can see what the web looks like to him.
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AlexBlackman
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Message 12 of 13

29 March 2011 at 3:00pm | IP Logged

Cainntear wrote:

AlexBlackman wrote:

As for Gradint... I don't think it'll be useable by blind people,

I stand corrected
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Teango
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Message 13 of 13

29 March 2011 at 4:20pm | IP Logged

This is a really good question! One suggestion I came across for people who are completely blind is bilingual audiobooks. In this case, a good starting place might be Multilingualbookstore, which offers a small but growing handful of both large print bilingual books and bilingual audiobooks in a combination of English and French, Spanish or German.

Edited by Teango on 29 March 2011 at 4:21pm

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