A language learning tool and the Qi 本 Nanonote

Richard Sharpe realrichardsharpe at gmail.com
Sat Aug 22 12:30:28 EDT 2009


Hi folks,

here is an idea I have been mulling around for quite some time,
waiting for the right hardware platform to come along.

As a student of Mandarin Chinese who has downloaded lots of
chinesepod.com and imandarinpod.com MP3s, I have wanted additional
facilities to help me learn and improve my Chinese.

I think that one such tool would be the following:

An application on a small computer that would:

Play these MP3s that can be downloaded, but:

1. Display Pinyin or characters in sync with the dialogs being presented, and
2. Highlight the Pinyin/characters as words are being spoken, and
3. Allow me to insert pauses of varying length between
words/characters (syllables in Mandarin), so that I can deal with new
material at a pace more suited to my abilities, and
4. Allow me to highlight characters or words (词) and have them looked
up in a dictionary so I can check/reinforce their meaning and perhaps
have them pronounced in isolation.

It would also be useful if I could repeat characters or words and have
my tones displayed and compared with a reference speaker (male or
female depending on your sex).

It would also be useful if it could ask me to enter the characters
being used to check that I can reproduce the correct characters and so
forth.

For the first part with items 1 through 4 above, I envision the
following pair of applications that are linked by a particular file
format. The file format is:

1. A standard MP3 file as produced by a content producer, eg, imandarinpod.com
2. A timing file/segment which lists the beginning of each relevant
piece of the dialogs or commentary in the MP3 file.
3. One or more associated files or segments with the Pinyin or
characters that go with the dialogs and commentary.
4. An answers file/segment that contains answers to any questions
asked in the dialogs/commentaries.
5. A control segment with any control information needed.

Items two through five would probably be encoded in XML and the whole
lot perhaps zipped up together as a learning bundle.

The two programs would be:

1. The player, that runs on a Qi Nanonote. It would allow the playing
of these learning bundles. It would play the MP3 file and would
display the default text synchronized with the audio track by using
the timing information in the timing segment/file. It would highlight
the relevant words/characters as they are being pronounced on the
audio track. It would allow the user to select which textual material
to display from among the associated textual material files/segments
in the learning bundle. It would allow the user to insert pauses in
relevant places in the audio material and would fade out and fade in
before and after the pauses to avoid audible clicks and other effects
that would annoy the user. It would allow me to pause at any time and
to highlight words etc on the screen and have them looked up a
dictionary so the user can check meanings etc. It would probably also
allow for selection of language to be used in menus etc. There are
more features that could be added here as well. This application could
be written in C or C++.

2. The Language Learner workbench, where the various associated
segments etc are produced that will become part of the learning
bundle. It would run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and might be
better written in Java. It would be useful if it could automatically
find all relevant break-points in the audio material, but might need
help in doing so. It would also allow input of all textual material
that will go in the associated files. It produce, at the end, a
learning bundle with all the associated pieces of info required. It
should have the ability to save intermediate information and to read
back learning bundles so that changes/additions can be made to them.

There are many more ideas that can be added, but I feel that these are
the minimum set that would make for a useful language learning tool
and that once there is a platform for playing the material and
producing the material, content developers will produce the learning
bundles (and possibly charge for them, but that is how they recoup
their investment in content).

Clearly, of course, this should not be tied to just Chinese, as it
would benefit learners of any language. It just so happens that
Chinese is the language I am interested in.

I hope to get started on these ideas after I get hold of a 本 in
October, and may do some experimenting before then ...

--
Regards,
Richard Sharpe




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