Skip to main content

Home/ Resources for Languages/ Group items tagged reading rights

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Claude Almansi

Allow Everyone Access to E-books - Reading Rights Coalition's petition - 0 views

  •  
    Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2. The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd
Isabelle Jones

Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom:: Morph your voice in Audacity - 0 views

  •  
    Morph your voice in Audacity Did you know that by applying certain effects to your voice in Audacity , you can sound dramatically different and take on a character of your own. To do this, first highlight your vocal track and then follow the instructions below to generate each effect: 1. If you'd like to sound like ... a robot Click on the Effect Menu and then Delay ... Change the Decay amount to 10 Change the Delay time to 0.009 Change the Number of echos to 30 Click OK Click on the Effect Menu again Click Repeat Delay Repeat this 5 times or more if necessary Listen to this example: Download Creating_a_robot_voice_in_Audacity.mp3 2. If you'd like to sound like ... a demonic spirit Click on the Edit Menu and then Duplicate Highlight the second track Click on the Effect Menu and then Change Pitch ... Change the Semitone (half-steps) to -1 Click OK Highlight the first track Click on the Edit Menu and then Duplicate Highlight the third track Click on the Effect Menu and then Change Pitch ... Change the Semitone (half-steps) to -5 Click OK Click on the Effect Menu and then Bass Boost ... Click OK Drag the Gain slide on the left of the third track to +3DB Highlight the second track Click on the Effect Menu and then Echo ... Change the Delay time (seconds) to 0.1 Change the Decay factor to 0.6 Click OK Listen to this example: Download Creating_a_demonic_voice_in_Audacity.mp3 3. If you'd like to sound like ... a chipmunk Click on the Effect Menu and then Change Pitch ... Change the Percent Change to 100 Click OK Listen to this example: Download Creating_a_chipmunk_voice_in_Audacity.mp3 4. If you'd like to sound like ... a telephone operator Click o
Claude Almansi

Babel Not: Machine Translation for the Technical Communicator - By Sandra Bologna - Dec... - 0 views

  •  
    So how do you know if Machine Translation is right for you? Researching MT software and reading feedback from actual users will help you get the full picture. For starters, I've outlined the major points below.
Claude Almansi

Le avventure d'Alice nel paese delle meraviglie by Lewis Carroll (Trs Pietrac... - 1 views

  •  
    "Le avventure d'Alice nel paese delle meraviglie by Lewis Carroll Help - Available eBook formats (including mobile) - Read online Bibliographic Record [help] Author Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898 Illustrator Tenniel, John, Sir, 1820-1914 Translator Pietrocòla-Rossetti, T. (Teodorico) LoC No. 44020342 LoC catalog record Title Le avventure d'Alice nel paese delle meraviglie Language Italian LoC Class PR: Language and Literatures: English literature LoC Class PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres Subject Fantasy EText-No. 28371 Release Date 2009-03-20 Copyright Status Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook. Base Directory /files/28371/ Download this ebook for free Hand-Crafted Files [help] Format [help] Encoding ¹ [help] Compression [help] Size Download Links [help] HTML none 224 KB main site mirror sites P2P HTML zip 1.44 MB main site mirror sites P2P Plain text iso-8859-1 none 169 KB main site mirror sites P2P Plain text iso-8859-1 zip 64 KB main site mirror sites P2P Computer-Generated Files [help] Format [help] Encoding ¹ [help] Size Download Links [help] EPUB (experimental) [help] 92 KB main site EPUB with images (experimental) [help] 1.44 MB main site Unicode Plain Text (experimental) [help] 171 KB main site Mobipocket (experimental) [help] 146 KB main site Mobipocket with images (experimental) [help] 1.43 MB main site Plucker (experimental) [help] 100 KB main site QiOO Mobile (experimental) [help] 124 KB main site ¹ If you need a special character set, try our online recoding service. Web site copyright © 2003-2009 Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation - All Rights Reserved. "
Andrew Graff

TPR Foreign Language Instruction and Dyslexia - 2 views

  • For language teachers, this accepted presumption of incapacity is a huge hurdle, because it keeps many children and adults from even dipping a toe into the language pool!
  • TPR was and is a wonderful way to turn that presumption on its head and show the learner that, not only can we learn, but under the right circumstances, it's fun!
  • When we are infants our exposure to language is virtually inseparable from physical activities. People talk to us while tickling us, feeding us, changing our diapers... We are immersed in a language we don't speak, in an environment that we explore with every part of our body. Our parents and caregivers literally walk and talk us through activities - for example, we learn lots of vocabulary while someone stands behind us at the bathroom sink, soaping our hands until they're slippery, holding them under warm water, rubbing or scrubbing, all the while talking about what we're doing and what it feels like. In this way, movement and feeling are intimately tied to the process of internalizing the language.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Classes are active - you are not in your seat all period. The focus for the first weeks is on listening and moving in response to what the teacher says.
  • There is heavy emphasis on listening comprehension, because the larger your listening comprehension vocabulary is, the larger your speaking vocabulary will become.
  • Lots of language is learned in happy circumstances, especially while you're having fun.
  • In a TPR class, grammar and syntax are not taught directly. Rather, the teacher designs activities that expose the student to language in context, especially in the context of some kind of movement.
  • I'm asked with some regularity about appropriate foreign language instruction for students with a dyslexic learning or thinking style. I'm quick to recommend finding a school or program that includes - or even better - relies on TPR as its principal instructional strategy.
  • Typically, the initial TPR lessons are commands involving the whole body - stand up, sit down, turn around, walk, stop.
  • Fairly soon, the teacher quietly stops demonstrating, and the students realize that they somehow just know what to do in response to the words.
  • You're also encouraged to trust your body, because sometimes it knows what to do before your brain does!
  • As class proceeds, nouns, adverbs, prepositions are added until before you know it, students are performing commands like, 'Stand up, walk to the door, open it, stick your tongue out, close the door, turn around, hop to Jessica's desk, kiss your right knee four times, and lie down on Jessica's desk."
  • It's just that the instruction is designed to facilitate language acquisition, not learning a language through analysis, memorization and application of rules.
  • But consider your native language: you did not need to learn the grammar and syntax of your native language in order to learn to speak it. You learned those structures, unconsciously as you learned to speak.
  • The first is that in a TPR classroom, the focus is not on analysis of linguistic structures, but on internalizing those structures for unconscious use.
  • When we use TPR strategies to teach, our goal is truly to be able to understand, speak, read and write the language, not "about" the language.
  • I think this creativity, the synthetic rather than analytic experience, the low stress, and generally accepting environment engineered by the teacher, are a large part of the reason so many students, including students with learning challenges, find TPR classes so effective and enjoyable.
  • Within these real experiences, students are free to generate all kinds of expressions using the language they're studying, and to lead instruction in unique directions.
Barbara Lindsey

NEA: World Languages - 0 views

  • "The fact that our students study a language from grade one not only teaches them how to learn languages, it gives them the mindset that languages are just as important as any other subject," says Janet Eklund, now in her 20th year at Glastonbury, where she's one of two Russian teachers.
  • "All along, we're working to make them not just language proficient, but culturally aware," says Oleksak. "We always remind them that they have to learn more than just the words to relate to people from other cultures."
  • "There's a Chinese saying, that if three people pass by, one of them is your teacher. We learn from just about every experience we have," says Wang. "Then we make sense of it through our language."   
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Asia Society's Shuhan Wang cautions against a "language of the month" approach for districts working to build their language programs. It's more important, she says, to build on community resources and to do what you can to make language learning real-world and relevant to them.
  • Presidential candidate Barack Obama hit on some deep-seated anxiety when he remarked in July that we should emphasize foreign language learning from an early age.
  • "The U.S. will become less competitive in the global economy because of a shortage of strong foreign language and international studies programs at the elementary, high school, and college levels," the Committee for Economic Development stated plainly in a 2006 report. "Our diplomatic efforts often have been hampered by a lack of cultural awareness," the report went on to say. The world is becoming so interrelated, if we don't teach our young other languages and cultural values, says Wang, "We are denying them access to the new world. It is just plain and simple. If we continue to view language learning as for the elite, for the "smart ones," or for the family who can afford to pay for it, we are really widening the gap."
  • What does it say about America that we are the only industrialized nation that routinely graduates high school students who speak only one language? Frankly, it says that if you want to talk to us—to do business with us, negotiate peace with us, learn from or teach us, or even just pal around with us—you'd better speak English.
  • "The norm is still either no foreign language or two years in high school," says Marty Abbott, director of Education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
  • Foreign language programs are often among the first things cut by urban school administrators desperately adding math and reading classes to raise test scores.
  • "It's time to reassess what 'basic skills' really means for the 21st century," says Asia Society's Wang.
  • Not only will students learn new vocabulary in the target language, but they get to work on the concepts they need to master for other classes, and yes, for high-stakes tests. That's how they do it in Glastonbury, says Oleksak: "We pre-teach, co-teach, and post-teach what's going on in the elementary classroom."
  • The kids reason out what you get when you add three butterflies plus four butterflies: Seven, yes, but really it's practice in Chinese and math, as well as a reminder that caterpillars turn into butterflies.
  • Right now, districts like Glastonbury—with an articulated, sequential program spanning grades 1–12, state-of-the-art language labs, and all the support an administration could give—are the exception.
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20 items per page