Language Resource Center News

3/17/03

LRC Survey

In order to receive student feedback on the LRC, we have decided to launch an online survey. It must be filled out between March 16th and April 25th and students must be currently enrolled in a foreign language course.

One winner will be drawn for every 75 entries received to receive a foreign language DVD of their choice (up to $25 dollars). Up to 4 winners will be selected.

You can view this survey at the following address which is also linked to the LRC main web page.

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lrc/survey.html

Please inform your students.

Cinema Audio/Video server

The server is back up. Eric Granquist and Jeff Wolfanger repaired, patched, and upgraded everything the server needed. We should be in good shape for several months. Maintenance and upgrade of this server have been very tedious. Thank you Eric and Jeff for your efforts and long hours on weekends, evenings and nights.

New software acquisition and installation

Windows XP and Office XP have been installed on all computer stations. Power Point is now available.

Windows XP enable students to navigate with greater ease in Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Office XP enables students to spell check and grammar check documents in many languages such as Arabic, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and perhaps Polish. Please test these and let me know if I am wrong. Office XP also enables users to convert simplified Chinese to traditional Chinese.

Arabic:

EMSA Companion (Elementary Modern Standard Arabic), grammar drills, sound for lessons, vocabulary, text stacks and vocabulary stacks.

Chinese:

- Pinyin Master: An interactive tutorial of Mandarin pronunciation and the Pinyin system. Speech recognition and dictation exercises help the user become proficient to read and speak Chinese written in Pinyin.

- Kan Na!: Authentic Chinese reading lessons from sources such as newspapers and letters and authentic videos of mainly unrehearsed interviews

- Chinese Video Language Clips, a series of authentic interviews from University of Hawaii at Manoa.

- Ni Hao IV: Basic language pronunciation/listening/vocabulary builder software. Allows the user to practice speaking and understanding complete sentences in context.

French, German, Italian and Spanish

Advanced French, Advanced German, Advanced Italian, and Advanced Spanish

Take part in an episode of the popular series, Ein Fall für Zwei, Au Cæur De La Loi, Mio Padre È Innocente, Querido Maestro, and learn German, French, Italian, and Spanish as it is really spoken. User will be able to become characters in the film, choose favorite scenes, edit sound, and play a virtual game show and many other games and visual tricks hidden in the program that are designed to aid in language learning (DVD-ROM). Windows. Mac OS. Ombretta Frau is testing the program this semester; ask her for feedbacks before she leaves us.

German

Collins Dictionary, helpful for professional and business users as a bilingual dictionary with translation capability.

Spanish Dictionaries

María Moliner, monolingual Dictionary with 82,500 entries and 190,000 definitions, etymologies, grammar and punctuation notes, examples of usage and synonyms. Includes conjugator function and root-word search. Best for 4th-year students or native speakers.

The Pop-up Oxford Spanish Dictionary provides language reference for those working between English and Spanish on the web or on PC. Includes 240,000 translations and 170,000 words, phrases, and definitions. Dictionary pops up in a small dialogue window to allow simultaneous usage. Very user friendly.

Online Placement/Proficiency Tests

The Chinese team, Lilly Chen, Chao-Mei Shen and Meng Yeh, has been working hard and just finished writing the content of the test. It will be online and tested for the first time in April with students currently enrolled in Chinese classes.

If you plan on making revisions on the French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish tests, please contact the LRC ASAP.

Tests will be online from August 1 to September 6, 2003. As in the past, please organize a grading schedule amongst your language team, and submit it to Claire.

Purchase Requests and Work Requests

Please submit all your film and software requests for fall semester by May 31, 2003. Requests submitted at a later date may not be available until the spring semester. Please use our online request system at the following address:

http://lang.rice.edu/apps/request

Technology Workshops

Please see schedule at the following address

http://lang.rice.edu/development/workshops.html

Hajime Kumahata has offered many outstanding workshops throughout the last two semesters. If you have not had a chance to participate yet, there are five more workshops left. Check above schedule.

Grant

Congratulations to Dariusz Skorczewski for receiving the CARLA (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota) grant for his Polish web project.

Presentations

Congratulations to the following for their language and technology presentations.

Rick Spuler and Hiroko Sato, ACTFL 2002

Meng Yeh, Jose Narbona, Hajime Kumahata, Lilly Chen, SOCALLT 2003 (South Central Association for Language Learning Technology)

Brigitte Crull, Lilly Chen, Hajime Kumahata, Eric Granquist, CALICO 2003 (Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium)

Marshall McArthur, Brigitte Crull, Hajime Kumahata, Eric Granquist, Henny Halliburton, IALLT 2003 (International Association for Language Learning Technology)