Beginner

Development of Audio-Visual Materials

Looking for Belgium: Contemporary arts as a gate to Belgian culture and history

This project will be repository of digital and scanned images, written documents, video fragments, songs and interviews that will introduce our students to Belgian culture and history through Belgian contemporary arts. Artists will be chosen within the visual arts (painting, sculpture, video art, architecture and photography), the ninth art or art of comic strips as well as those working in music, film, theatre, dance, literature and those preserving the traditions, gastronomy and popular culture in Belgium. The main scope of the repository will be artists who are currently active or who have created their work in the last decades of the 20th century. These contemporary artists will be the starting point for different chains of references to Belgian culture and artists. Indeed, this project will present contemporary materials as links to Belgian history, culture and artists of the past. It will give students access to a unique culture with different influences, mainly the French, the Flemish and the German communities living together in Belgium and each contributing to what Belgian culture represents. Therefore, artists from the three communities will be included in the repository.

The materials will be organized within a traditional MetaMedia archive, which will include the different themes around which the classes will be structured, and each theme will feature the artists most relevant to the theme being studied. The selection of artists within each theme is not exhaustive. This will allow students to make their own selection of materials to be included under a theme and to assume the role of an online curator creating different links between artists.

Analyzing and Diagnosing Second Language Acquisition in Online Chat Environments

This project intends to examine the communications between students and a native speaker in an online Chat environment at the end of German 102 in spring 2006. This project follows a similar project that was implemented in German 102, 2005. However, the proposed project will take a broader look at various aspects of communication related to e.g. vocabulary usage, proficiency, form, social interaction, feedback and self-learning. The chats from this project are envisioned as part of a data base of student texts that will furnish information on student progress at the end of Beginning German. The data will also provide insight into using new technologies in language learning contexts and in the value of online-based language acquisition.

On-Line Langauge Courses in beginning Turkish and Russian as Model for Distance Learning

This project will focus on development of two on-line language courses which address ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) standards (communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities) in foreign language teaching. On-line courses in Beginning Turkish and Russian (or another language) will allow to reach students from other universities to learn the language while working from home. As part of the project, we will create on-line lessons based on existing textbooks in both languages, and provide students with access to supplemental materials and teacher support. Courses will have specific start and end dates and are teacher-directed. The instruction is balanced between the thematic and communicative approach to learning a foreign language. (ACTFL) Teachers will review students' work via the BlackBoard course management system, monitor student discussion groups, provide support, and grade essays and compositions.

Pilot project to digitize audio, visual, and spiraled web interactive materials for the teaching of first year Yiddish (GRMN 4

I propose a pilot project to develop web-based materials to enhance the teaching of Yiddish language at Penn. I hope to hire a student worker to begin the process of editing media files and perhaps text files, to upload them to the media server, and to link these files to Blackboard, as well as to help me develop language assessment tools, threaded discussions, and other communication tools on Blackboard for first year Yiddish, GRMN 401/JWST 031 and GRMN 402/JWST 032.

Vocabulary Acqusition with an Online Learning Resource

The Online Learning Vocabulary Project is designed to help determine whether or not students are better able to learn, retain, and use new vocabulary items through the assistance of an online testing program that incorporates audio and immediate feedback to student input. The goal of the project is to better understand how students learn vocabulary and which technological resources can assist them in acquiring new vocabulary. The project will take into account different learning strategies and styles that individual students use in learning vocabulary and examine the use of online audio and assessments as a means for enhancing traditional learning strategies.

Supplementing the Elementary Italian curriculum with listening exercises based on film clips

This project arises out of the need for appropriate listening material for first-semester Italian at the University of Pennsylvania. The text currently used, "Qui Italia", published in Italy, is lacking in helpful listening exercises. Film clips will serve to provide a much richer input than voices from a cd or a cassette and will enable students to immediately understand at least the context in which the dialogue takes place. The use of clips will be followed up by a viewing of the entire film, which will be much easier to understand in its entirety because of the work done previously with the clips. Because this course is taught in multiple sections, the material will be made available on a website for the purpose of making it readily available to all instructors.

Material Development for Teaching the Shona Language at the University of Pennsylvania

The purpose of this project is to develop curriculum materials to enhance the teaching of the Shona language at the University of Pennsylvania. I have a 2 tier approach to developing the materials. In the first part of the project, I created exercises intended to give an understanding of the Shona language and culture to elementary level students. The type of exercises assumes the student has little or no knowledge of the language, and focuses on general, but socially useful, conversations that are explored through dialogues.

I have also created 15 Shona units for the Online Multimedia Vocabulary and Pronunciation Project, which was carried out under the guidance of Dr. Audrey Mbeje. The project provides Shona vocabulary items that are useful‎ in different situations and is intended to provide students with a vocabulary and pronunciation guide.

Colloquial Egyptian Arabic: Lessons for a Second Semester

Continuation of a series of lessons and related materials to enable the instruction of a second semester of colloquial Egyptian Arabic at Brown University.

Elementary Japanese Online

Development of computer-based exercises for first-year Japanese.