Teaching Oral Language via Technology

[Dale McCreery]

Hi!  I look forward to trying out Ojibwemodaa.  A few years back I
downloaded the pimsleur Ojibwe course and found it fairly useful, and have
been working towards incorporating something similar into a way of
teaching Michif.  Basically, we created a couple sequences for the
different aspects of the grammar, morphology, syntax, etc that a new
student would need to learn and have been making purely audio lessons to
teach them, though we’re still pretty early in the process.  The idea is
to combine these with a couple hundred hours of audio recording that has
been done going over the SIL Dictionary Development Plan (?), which is the
way i learnt the language myself (though I used a couple different Cree
textbooks to acquire the grammar of the language before doing the
documentation).  Once the students have the structural knowledge to
understand what is being said, they can then learn the vocabulary and
reinforce their knowledge of grammar through hearing it used in
conversations (translated) and they should also then be able to learn more
from our elders who speak the language but might not have an idea as to
how to teach it.

I think that a method that can naturally introduce the grammar of a
language (orally), combined with (lots of) recordings that explore the
vocabulary in a natural setting is probably the easiest approach, at least
in terms of how much work it takes to produce compared to the results (I
hope!).  Especially for languages where the community does a lot of
arguing over orthography.

-dale-


>>
>> Hi Craig and All,
>>
>> We have created a software for teaching Ojibwe, using tools from
>> Transparent Language.
>> Teachers are starting to use this for distance language courses (I
>> know two in particular).
>> Still not a perfect replacement for a speech community, but at least
>> offers videos of semi-natural conversations.
>> It does have built in voice recognition, pronunciation practice and
>> conversation practice.
>> Our tool is: Ojibwemodaa, find it at :
>> www.grassrootsindigenousmultimedia.org
>>
>> And write to me or Kevin if you want more info!
>> Good luck
>> What language/s do you work in?
>>
>> --------------------------------------------
>> Mary Hermes, PhD
>> Visiting and Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction
>> University of Minnesota
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 2, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Craig Spaulding wrote:
>
>> What can anyone recommend for an approach to teaching language via
>> the internet or DVD where the main goal/focus is oral language
>> without all the trappings and issues of dealing with literacy? I use
>> to work at Rosetta Stone and their approach was highly integrated
>> with literacy, though it could be customized by the user to focus on
>> the audio/verbal component. Unfortunately, they are not taking on
>> any more projects for the near future and I wondered if there were
>> other software approaches that list members know of or have
>> experience using that are effective.
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>> Craig
>
>