Rapid elearning for foreign-language instruction: share your tips

[Jeanette]

Spoke with someone yesterday who's looking to use rapid elearning as a way to teach & reinforce students' foreign-language skills.

• What are your tips for helping this designer create meaningful & effective language instruction?
• What have you seen work in courses you've developed or observed?
• Even if you haven't developed elearning for foreign-language instruction before, what would you find helpful if you were a learner?

[@robkennedy3]

I haven't done foreign-language skills before. BUT, I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.....wait for it....ahhhh just kidding. Anyway, I have not taught foreign language skills, but I have looked at the Rosetta Stone series in which the focus is not so much on meaning translation but on simply teaching beginning memory and imitation. The premise is the association of pictures with words and entire phrases. So, I would probably say to anyone trying to do foreign language eLearning, it might be worth it to have a look at one of the Rosetta Stone demos and get some ideas there.

Robert

[Willoughby]

In many ways multimedia is perfect for language training because you can show visual analogies.

I remember a while back Google Images was being looked at for language training. Type in a term and view all the related images that come up. Of course you get some crazy examples but there's a learning opportunity right there to understand literal and figurative meanings of words.

Something similar could be employed in a course or Quizmaker where variations of objects or images are shown and learners are asked to connect the correct term to the image.

[gantek]

I have worked on some language training projects where pronunciation was the focus. This could be used just as easily for speech therapy as for learning of another language.

As an example, recordings of words, phrases and sentences by professional voice talents could be included with the program. The student listens to a recording and then attempts to say a word, phrase or sentence just as the pre-recorded voice said it. Then, a comparison of the speech accuracy for that recording (using wave analysis) could be provided (e.g. "Your recording had an accuracy level of about 70%. Please try again." This could be displayed graphically, allowing the user to visualize their pronunciation improvement.

Obviously, this isn't something that can be accomplished with a tool like Articulate by itself, but with web objects, features such as this might be able to be incorporated into and Articulate project.

Steve Gannon
GanTek Multimedia

[Jeanette]

There's kind of a neat (and free) tool called Vocaroo that might be a nice thing to incorporate into a language course. It allows you to record your voice and then email it. I could see adding it as a web object to a Presenter course, and having the learners email their recorded sample to an instructor.

[andrea05]

wow, my two favorite things - rapid e-learning and languages

How about Minimal Pairs? Set up a PowerPoint slide with vowel pairs hyperlinked to slides with those pairs on them. Set it up so that they can click on the words and hear a recording of someone saying those words. (for non-language nerds, minimal pairs are words that sound similar but with one different sound. They help non-native speakers distinguish between two foreign sounds. Examples: bat/bet, thin/then, hit/heat, etc.)

I am having flashbacks to HyperCard days while I write this... any old HyperCard developers out there? Pretty much anything you did in HyperCard you can do with Articulate/PPT, I think!

Also go look at LiveMocha to see e-language-learning in action! It's free to join at Language Learning with Livemocha | Learn a Language Online - Free! - I am taking lessons in Hindi and French there and chatting with people who want to practice their English. Definitely a site to check out for ideas (and much more affordable than Rosetta Stone!)

[Jeanette]

That's a cool site, Andrea - thanks for sharing! You're right, it's very Rosetta-like in the sense that there are images, audio, and text, all working together. Pretty neat!

Seems like there's some cool potential for doing something similar with a series of Labeled Graphic interactions in Engage. You could show a scene (like a family dinner, or a business meeting, or a restaurant) and all throughout the image you could place clickable hotspots that would allow the user to see & hear vocabulary related to specific items in the scene.

All this makes me want to dig out my Spanish books from college.

[nealrdavis]

Hi Jeanette and others

After being a member for only 2 months, I can't really offer any specific tips for this thread yet, but the topic is right up my alley. I teach English as a Foreign language in Thailand, and, I too am dipping my toes into Articulate waters, so as to improve my skills in elearning for foreign language instruction.

My learners, however, are NOT beginners with English; some are indeed at the elementary level, but many are much higher. Some have even have MAs earned abroad in English speaking countries. Thus, my "future" presentations will probably employ simulations, interactions, scenarios, role plays, problem-solving types of practice, which may exclude them from being directly useful for teachers who have beginning level students.

But .. I will check back to this thread and I promise to share anything that I produce under the thread that I have created under the Community Forum for the Presenter product, entitled: My First Articulate Project With Presenter---Payzone.

Neal

Ps. Does anyone know of any other thread in the Articulate Community that address using Articulate products for language instruction? Is your thread, Jeanette, perhaps the very first one? I confess that I have not done anything more than a quick, initial search, so it's quite possible I overlooked something, if it exists?

[cornell]

I'm considering using Articulate as part of a business email writing tutorial for English learners from mainland China(where I am based). The target audience would be our employees with an 'intermediate level' of writing ability (ie, who can already write for basic communications but may need guidance on structure, tone, polish, expressions used by native speakers, etc.).

I'm still in the early brainstorming stages, but so far I'm leaning towards using AP to create something that doubles as both a presentation aid for a classroom-based session as well as a ready-reference tool that can be posted on our intranet. So the content will likely include sample emails for reference, FAQs, 'choose the most appropriate phrase' and "edit this email" types of activities.

But as this will be my first try with this type of thing, does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

I'll provide an update when the project is done.

[daveperso]

Hi everyone,

Before joining Articulate, I used to be an EFL teacher (English as a Foreign Language), teaching everybody from 3-year-old toddlers to international bankers and university students. In fact language teaching is how I got introduced to Articulate.

Using images and sounds are now much easier in Studio '09 than they were previously. One of my students' favourite activities was to listen to a conversation or video in little snippets and then identify a missing word in the transcript I gave them. I used the Fill in the Gap type question for that.

Quizmaker '09 offers a host of possibilities for playing with sounds, videos etc. And of course, if you are teaching English, interactions like the Glossary in Engage are marvellous for vocabulary and prononciation.

Best regards