LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Robert Godwin-Jones, Chair, Foreign Language Department
Virginia Commonwealth University

ABSTRACT

At the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Foreign Languages, we have developed a Web server which both provides information on foreign language and international resources on the Web and serves as a local delivery system for multimedia materials.

The "

  1. Interesting international sites (both in English and other languages)
  2. Clickable maps of Web sites
  3. Country by country and regional information
  4. Language learning materials and foreign language texts available on the Internet
  5. Information on discussion groups and other resources on language study and international studies
  6. Demos of locally developed language learning materials

Particularly exciting for us is the opportunity to serve as a repository for materials produced through the Central Virginia Consortium of Colleges and Universities. Demos of software and courseware are available directly to Web browsers. This includes foreign language texts in HTML format which incorporate illustrations and sound recordings. Already available are several children's stories from nineteenth-century Germany, which include original illustrations, recordings of the texts by native speakers and, in several cases, short video clips of selected scenes.

As an extension of our Home Page, Mosaic will be used this fall in our Computer Lab as the principal means for sending out digital audio and video to student stations. The automatic call-up of applications which handle these materials provides a user-friendlier interface than manual downloading off the server which students have used up to now. Mosaic thus solves a local problem for us, but it also creates a new opportunity to share materials developed world-wide.

INTRODUCTION

The Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond has set up a World Wide Web server to provide the following services:

PART 1: ADVANTAGES OF ESTABLISHING A WEB SERVER FOR THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

The Department has recently been undergoing a number of changes, which it would like to make known both to the local and university community and to colleagues and interested parties at other institutions. Establishing our own Web Home Page allows us not only to announce but to demonstrate and document some of the recent developments in the Department. For example, a link off the departmental Home Page goes to a copy of recently adopted proficiency guidelines being implemented in language classes. Another link highlights our annual French Film Festival. This link will feature short video clips of featured films for 1995 in digital form.

Information on the departmental Home Page is easily updated and can be kept more current that is possible with a newsletter format, such as the Department has used in the past. The Home Page will also allow those potentially interested in the Department -- students or job applicants, for example, -- to gain up-to-date information both on the Department and on other units of the university linked to our Home Page. Information includes profiles of faculty, descriptions of degree programs and study abroad opportunities, and a list of resources available in the Department's Language Learning Center.

In addition to the departmental Home Page, the Department has developed an "

The first grouping in the "International Guide" is of "Scenic Side Trails" which highlights international sites of particular interest, especially those which incorporate multimedia and/or foreign language use in their Web pages. The first link, for example, is to the Louvre web server, which offers samples of pictures from the Louvre collection as well as documentation in English and French. As an example of the mix of global and local resources in the Guide, there is also in this first section a link to multimedia versions of German children's literature created by VCU faculty.

The second section lists "International Sites by Map", linking to clickable resource maps for a variety of geographical regions. The listings are hierarchical and formatted so as to show the progression from continent to country to city. This includes in the case of Russia a further step linking to the Kremlin. Since clickable maps are of little use to browsers without graphics capabilities, links to alphabetical listings are also provided. Under the third section, "International Information", there are links to informational guides by country and to sources of information on international studies. In the first category are "official" county web sites. Sites were selected for inclusion based on (subjective) decisions on the usefulness of the site and of its potential interest to VCU faculty and staff. Sites here and elsewhere in the Guide have been added in response to recommendations from users at VCU and elsewhere. The second part of this section is also more specifically related to VCU in that it highlights Latin American area studies, for which new minors were recently introduced. The local emphasis is maintained in the following section as well, "Where to pitch Your Tent," which offers links to international sites of particular interest to the VCU community, such as partner universities in Brazil.

The fourth section, "Campfire Readings: Language Resources and Texts," offers an annotated list of language resources available on the internet, grouped by language. The short annotations give the type of resource (i.e. text, audio program, interactive dictionary, hypertext document) and/or the retrieval method (gopher, FTP, http, telnet) and, in selected cases, comments on the documents or programs themselves. Users have requested that file size be included, which be implemented in the next update. Listed resources include links to:

Included in the list as well are materials created by VCU faculty. Several faculty plan to use this format to provide "teasers," demos of work in progress. This is obviously one of the pedagogically most important parts of the "International Guide." To make it as useful for students as possible, this and similar lists should offer annotations whenever possible. As access to information sources world-wide becomes more widespread, education professionals will find themselves more and more in the role of being "knowledge managers," helping students to navigate to what will be truly useful for their needs.

The last section, "Other Language Learning Resources" provides links to miscellaneous information such as a list of language-related internet discussion groups and a schedule for the SCOLA foreign satellite news broadcasts. Plans for this section include providing links to other language-related services, such as the Voice of America foreign language broadcasts in digital form.

The "International Trail Guide" has just recently been made available to students so there is not as yet feedback from that targeted group. Faculty have expressed a great interest in the Guide for use in orienting their students (particularly majors and students in advanced classes) to Internet resources and providing easy access to specific sites or tools on the Internet.

PART 2: MOSAIC AS A LOCAL/GLOBAL SOLUTION TO MULTIMEDIA FOREIGN LANGUAGE COURSEWARE DELIVERY

BACKGROUND

The VCU Department of Foreign Languages has in recent years developed multimedia materials for language learning, materials which incorporate graphics, digital audio and digital video. The programs are primarily for use by intermediate and advanced students, but some applications for beginners are also available. Courseware created includes the following:

  1. hypertext editions of texts with accompanying digital audio recordings
  2. digitized clips of foreign news broadcasts taped off satellite and annotated with exercises, vocabulary and transcripts
  3. multimedia modules on different regions of target countries incorporating pictures as well as digital media

There are significant advantages to using multimedia resources in computer applications for foreign language learning:

Multimedia language learning programs can create a powerful and exciting simulation of interactivity with a native speaker. Linguistic utterances can be given in all their authenticity and complexity since the computer application can supply different kinds and levels of help This allows for the same materials to be used for learners at a variety of ability levels. With satellite broadcasts materials developed can be absolutely current. Through the use of digital video rather than laserdisc, multimedia courseware can be developed quickly in house, once courseware templates have been created.

PROBLEM

A major impediment to the effective use of multimedia courseware is finding an appropriate and practical means for its delivery. Digital audio and video files pose both a storage and delivery problem due to their size and to the requirements for effective playback. Digital video playback off a server does not at this time provide satisfactory performance, even over a fast (ethernet) network. Student workstations, on the other hand, generally do not have the necessary storage capacity . At the Language Center we have been temporarily downloading multimedia applications to student machines. With different groups coming in to the Center throughout the day and the necessity of making materials available to students at other times, this has proven to be a problematic solution. We are experimenting with creating our own CD-ROM's, which offers a good delivery option. Caveats are that students need access to computers with CD-ROM drives and that materials once put on a CD can not be changed. Turn around time is also not as flexible.

SOLUTION

We are implementing a new approach this fall, using NCSA Mosaic as our front-end for multimedia courseware delivery. Although Mosaic is intended as a means of accessing the Internet, it offers a number of advantages when used as a local multimedia interface:

* SOLVES STORAGE PROBLEMS * When users call up programs created with Mosaic, helper applications handle the delivery of graphics, audio and video and do so by creating temp files which are then deleted when the user exits the program. The programs created can be stored on a local PC server or on a larger Unix system. Our Mosaic courseware, for example, will eventually be placed on our local DEC computer, which has larger storage capacity than our own server.

* OFFERS FLEXIBILITY TO USERS * Documents on Mosaic are displayed directly on screen, but they can also be downloaded to disk, for later use locally. Users can save text and graphics files. Due to storage considerations, it is less practical to download incoming digital audio and video. The built-in cross-platform capability of Mosaic makes it attractive in environments using a mix of computer types.

* EASE OF USE * All Mosaic documents have the same basic hypertext interface which is easy for users to learn. Materials can be located and retrieved easily using hypertext "jumps". Client software is customizable; users can change fonts, set "hotlists" for quick jumps to sites and programs and set other preference settings effecting screen display and performance. Retrieving documents is the same process whether the materials are stored locally or on the other side of the globe.

* DISTANCE LEARNING * Mosaic offers a local solution with global implications. Once placed on a Web server, materials can be accessed by any user with an Internet connection. With the appropriate SLIP connection, this includes access from a modem. We intend to use this capacity to make materials available to learners outside of our metropolitan area. Eventually we would like to offer some courses at least in part through Mosaic. Once learners are connected through Mosaic, they have access to all the many resources for language and literature study on the Internet. With this capability, courses can be developed which combine local and global resources for instruction. The World Wide Web can in this way serve as a virtual classroom.

COURSEWARE EXAMPLES

A variety of language materials have been created at VCU for use under Mosaic. Most are multimedia editions of literary works which incorporate glosses, graphics and digitized audio and/or video. Multimedia editions published on the WWW can serve both as resources for scholars and general readers as well as instructional tools. In the editions I have created, users have a choice among different versions of the same text, depending on their needs. Editions are available with and without vocabulary glosses and audio/video annotations. An example is "Max und Moritz".

Scholarly material is easily appended to Mosaic texts. These may include overviews of the author, specific information on the work as well as traditional scholarly appendages such a footnotes, bibliography and reviews of criticism. Translations into other languages can also be made available. The Mosaic editions of Grimm Brothers' fairy tales I have produced, such as "

I have taken advantage of the multimedia capability of Mosaic to make available several German children's stories which contain abundant illustrations. Graphics are included as either embedded pictures or as external files, retrievable to the screen with an external graphics program. One text is the well-known story by Heinrich Hoffmann entitled "

Such materials can be used pedagogically in a variety of ways. Pages can be cloned so that the original text and two different translations are displayed simultaneously thus allowing the user to compare different ways of translating the same text. With the help of vocabulary glosses and other added information, the same text can be used by students with very different language abilities. This is in keeping with current theories on language learning which advocate using authentic texts rather than artificially produced texts. Using the forms feature of HTML, exercises and quizzes on the material can be delivered. Scripts can be written (in Applescript on the Mac, for example) to provide automatic feedback to users on the correctness of responses.

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Godwin-Jones is Associate Professor of Foreign Languages at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is Chair of the Foreign Language Department and Network Administrator of the VCU Language Learning Center. He teaches French and German and has published principally in the area of nineteenth-century literature. His most recent book is Three Swiss Realists: Gotthelf, Keller and Meyer (with Margaret Peischl; University Press of America); he is the author of the forthcoming George Sand: Romantic Vision and Narrative Strategy (Summa Publications). He has taught as a Fulbright Visiting Professor in France (Université de Pau) and Germany (Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe). He is currently at work on hypertext editions of 19th-century German literature.

rgjones@cabell.vcu.edu