Livemocha and language learning.

Posted on February 5, 2012

If you’ve hung around this blog any amount of time, you probably know I’m into languages. I don’t know what the fascination is or where it comes from, yet I have it. Since this blog started, I’ve taken classes in Japanese, French, and Mandarin Chinese, plus a bunch of classes relating to linguistics and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Prior to blogging, nearly lost to the mists of time, I took Russian at Pikes Peak Community College in the 1990′s and Spanish during sixth grade (the only non-English class I failed, FWIW).

A few weeks ago I went to Norway for vacation, and for all practical purposes, I didn’t know a word. I planned the trip last summer, and picked up some ‘Learn Norwegian’ type books during the fall, but never really got into them. They were work, and I wasn’t that interested. Instead, it seemed like an interesting idea to go to a country where I knew no one, and where I didn’t know the language. How far would I get only knowing English? Pretty far, actually. It was a complete waste of time (just kidding, Norway ;-). As mentioned in a previous post, English seems to be a very common second language in Norway. Still, I picked up a few Norwegian words and phrases while visiting, which sort of gave me the impetus to learn more. I’m hoping to go back to Norway for TIFF again next year, so I’m planning on preparing.

I thought about learning Norwegian, and thought about the problems of learning a ‘foreign’ language in general. Language is a ‘brittle’ sort of knowledge. If it isn’t used, it falls apart. It is most definitely not like riding a bike. I’ve taken language classes and done very well in them, but the language doesn’t really stick. Language classes are good if you want to learn on a schedule. The homework is usually useful in helping to understand a language, and the classes themselves are good because the teacher can help with pronunciations. The problem is that aside from homework and classes, there isn’t much opportunity to use (practice) the language. Thus it doesn’t stick.

‘Learn X language’ type books, CD’s, DVD’s, and software are cheaper than taking classes, and you can learn at your own pace, but as hinted at above, motivation is a factor. If a person is prone to procrastination, as I am, then learning a language this way is pretty futile. If a person takes the time to actually do the work, there are still problems. While you can say the words, there is no one who can judge if you are saying them correctly. As I’ve found in French and Norwegian, even though they use the same alphabet as English, the pronunciations are often different. Someone learning a language this way might do a book full of exercises and feel pretty confident about their ability, but when they go to a country where the language is actually spoken, they are likely to be dismayed.

IU doesn’t offer Norwegian language classes at the IUPUI campus (let alone any other Scandinavian language), and I’m too cheap/poor to hire a tutor. Back to pondering. While in Norway, I looked on the web and found a possible solution: Livemocha (a name after my own heart).

Livemocha offers free lessons in over 30 languages and is (slowly) adding more. It’s a bit like a game. You create an account and start taking an online class (i.e. Basic Norwegian (Bokmal)). Each class has units, which are subdivided into lessons. Each lesson starts with a “learning” segment: a series of words, phrases, or sentences, along with appropriate images, the English translation, and audio of a native speaker. Finishing the “learning” segment, the lesson is 50% complete. After this is the “review” segment, which is a bit like a free-form quiz. They supply an audio clip or some text, and you choose the most appropriate image. The “review” section also has a “magnet” exercise, where they supply the image and the English phrase, along with a bunch of words in the chosen language, and you have to assemble the right words in the right order. This is probably the best type of exercise in the “review” section because it actually causes you to think. Finish this section and the lesson is done, but they also have some “skill builder exercises” for reading, listening, and a quiz. They aren’t required, but they are helpful. By finishing lessons, you earn points, which is where the game part comes in.

Another way to earn points is to help others learn English (or any other language you happen to know). Some classes, such as English, are more advanced and they offer students the opportunity to submit writing and speaking exercises to native speakers. These members can correct and/or encourage the students. They can submit text or audio comments. As someone who studied TESOL, it’s also pretty satisfying. By reviewing lessons, you earn points (bonus points if you are the first reviewer). The students can also rate whether you are helpful or very helpful. Sadly, they don’t offer these exercises for Norwegian. Not yet, at least.

Livemocha also offers the opportunity to chat with others around the world, so you can practice with them or help them learn. I haven’t done that yet, because my Norwegian is still very poor, and I’ve been having microphone problems. When I fix the latter next week, I’ll start chatting. The nice thing about the chatting is that it doesn’t limit you to only those who know the language you’re learning. You can chat with anyone on there.

This week I really got into Livemocha and learned quite a bit of Norwegian, though still very basic. When I left Norway, about all I could say was tusen takk and lufthavn. Now I can write Jeg heter Michael og jeg kommer fra Indianapolis. Jeg sitter ved bordet og skriver.

As with other methods of language learning, Livemocha has it’s drawbacks. The quality of the audio clips in the lessons varies widely. It sounds like most of them are done by native speakers on their home computers. That’s not a huge problem, but I wish there was a way for learners to flag the ones with poor audio.

While Livemocha isn’t learning by rote, it’s pretty close. For every four samples during the review and skill building, they use the same set of four pictures, asking you to choose the best one. If you know one or two words in a sentence, it’s possible to eliminate most of the wrong images. Also, by the fourth question, you know which image will be the correct one, regardless of whether you know the words. It’s gaming the system. It would be better if the images and language samples were more randomized.

They don’t teach the rules of a language. I’ve finished two units/eleven lessons, and I haven’t seen any explanation of when to use en, ei, or et in Norwegian. I assume it has something to do with masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, but it hasn’t been explained. This makes me think Livemocha isn’t the be-all/end-all of language learning, but that it should be an adjunct to other forms of language learning.

The writing and speaking exercises are only for a small portion of the languages they teach. I understand. Only a few languages on Livemocha have large numbers of native speakers who are members, and they probably need a certain amount who are willing to help people who want to learn them by reviewing submissions. It’s understandable, but still a bit frustrating.

Closing in

Posted on August 3, 2008

I can tell school is soon approaching. I’ve already seen my bill online for the coming semester, so that’s a big sign right there. I’ve been lucky enough to miss the back-to-school ads (the benefit of not watching TV or listening to the radio), but the new books are starting to show up in the bookstore.

This semester is FREN-F 119 Beginning French III and ENG-L 506 Intro Methods of Criticism/Research, which is supposed to be a class on literary criticism. So, lots of reading and writing for the semester. The past few semesters, my classes each met once a week. This semester, one of them is meeting twice a week. IIRC, one is a Monday-Wednesday class while the other is a Thursday class, but I can’t remember which is which. This semester is worth 8 credit hours.

I’ve been slacking off with the French. While I’ve watched a few French films over the past few months, I’m still pretty reliant on subtitles. However, with the new iPod, I can listen to podcasts and watch video podcasts.

I’ve still been thinking about possible subjects for a thesis. I like the idea of using corpus linguistics to help out, since it seems to be a very valuable tool/skill/method. It’s unfortunate this campus doesn’t seem to offer a class on the subject. The idea of formulaic language skill intrigues me, but I’ve also been thinking of shibboleths, and since this is an election year, the use of language by political candidates during the primary and general election season. I should talk with some professors about this.

For an irreverent look at grad student life, check out PhD comics.

Summer in the city

Posted on May 5, 2008

Now that classes are over and I don’t begin again until August, I’ve been thinking of some things to do over the summer. As mentioned previously I’m scheduled to take the GRE this week. Once the grades for that arrive, then it’s a matter of making a formal application for grad school. Still, those things won’t occupy much of my time, so it’s a matter of figuring out what else to do.

My office and apartment both need Spring cleaning, so I think that is what I will work on this week, at home and at work. Actually, cleaning the apartment might go into next week. Calling it dirty would be giving it too much credit. I’ll try to work in sections and see how that goes.

I’ve also given myself a reading list for summer. Some have to do with the idea that I’m going to be a grad student (knock on wood) and should bone up while I have the chance:

• Surviving your Thesis by Susan Burton
• Developing Multicultural Educators by Jana Noel
• The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
• Reflections on Language by Noam Chomsky
• Language and Responsibility by Noam Chomsky
• Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, Processing and Use by Norbert Schmitt
• Formulaic Language and the Lexicon by Alison Wray

I’ve read the last two already while researching a paper last Fall. Since I keep thinking about that subject, it may be the basis of my thesis. I’ve never read Chomsky before, even though he is supposed to be very influential in Linguistics. What often happens is people will describe what they think Chomsky said or wrote, and they are only mentioning what is needed to support their point. To get my own idea about what his ideas are, I figured I should actually read his books. The other books caught my eye for some reason.

I also plan on reading House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, and maybe Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. When I read novels, they usually only take a day or so to read, so that idea should hold for these books, but not the ones up above. Hopefully, this will take care of all, or most of the summer.

Multilingualism

Posted on April 13, 2008

I’ve had this blog in my bookmarks for a few months. I’m usually cautious when blogs are associated with products, because I usually get the feeling they keep trying to sell me their stuff. In the cases where blogs are associated with boks and/or magazines, they usually make blog entries about some current event, then tie it into something in the book, without giving any detail. You have to buy the book or the magazine to find out about it.

Blogos: The Multilingual Blog is different in that it doesn’t constantly make reference to MultiLingual, which is the journal they’re associated with. There are some references, but not in every article. The blog and the journal are mostly intended for IT people who deal with localization. Localization deals with making products usable for people who speak other languages. While it is often used in the sense of making software or websites usable in other languages, the term can probably be applied to things like ingredients on a food item, or an instruction booklet for a camera.

The site is worth a peek if you are interested in multilingualism and multiculturalism.

Automaticity

Posted on April 10, 2008

Last semester in Second Language Acquisition class we learned about a concept called automaticity. IIRC it means when a person is learning a new language, there comes a point when certain things are understood automatically, without having to translate back into the person’s first language. I’m getting a bit of this in French class. At least, it’s getting to the point where I don’t have to mentally translate words or phrases back into English. I still rely heavily on translating back into English, but it’s less often than before. This may be because some phrases are used throughout the class. Setting up verb conjugation tables in a spreadsheet probably helps, too.

Three weeks left in the semester, including Finals week. We had our last Oral exam in French this evening. I have a final paper and presentation due in each class in the next couple of weeks. Sociolinguistics is a 15 – 30 page paper with an approximately 20 minute presentation. French has a two to three page paper with about a five minute presentation. The presentation in Sociolinguistics is due in two weeks, while the paper is actually due May 1st. In French class, the presentation and paper is due in our last class session. Each class also has a final exam. In Sociolinguistics it’s a take home exam, but it is due next week because we will be doing presentations the last two class sessions.

No classes for me during the summer, because the ones they offer that I’m interested in are only offered during the day.

Time keeps on slipping

Posted on February 28, 2008

I need to study more. Today we had an oral exam in French, while we had a regular exam last week. While we were on break in class this week the teacher handed out our graded exams from last week, and I am a bit disappointed in myself. I got a 79. Since I missed a week where we started a new chapter, I missed some information, but I thought I had it covered by reading the pages that were covered. To my thinking the grade is a high C or a low B, but it reminds me that I should have spent more time studying.

This week was probably slightly better. For one part we just had to read/record a short poem in French and we were given the text we had to read. For the next section, we had were paired up with another student and we had to have a short conversation in French. We were given English instructions for what the conversation was supposed to cover, e.g. “Find out the last time he/she went out.” One student asked questions while the other student answered. We can write out our questions and answers ahead of time, but we cannot have them in front of us when we are doing the recording (it’s a computerized language lab). Though it’s not too surprising, I had a hard time remembering what I came up with, and I also suck at spontaneous conversation in French. I do okay writing it out, as long as I have a book in front of me so I can check my work, but speaking French spontaneously is something I have to work on.

In Second Language Acquisition last semester, there was a lengthy discussion (that kept popping up throughout) about using the L1 in the L2 classroom. At early levels it is needed, but at some point it becomes a crutch for the student. In the second semester of Beginning French we are to the point where we should be able to have some simple conversations, but have problems expressing ourselves because we still don’t have a large vocabulary and don’t know all of the rules of grammar. I need to hit the books a bit harder.

Also, since I got Poser last week, it has proven to be big time waster. I was never very interested in gaming, but I think this is a similar situation. To create props, clothes, morphs, etc for Poser, you have to export the model from Poser as a generic file (I used .obj) and import it in a different 3D editing program. I used Blender in this case. Surprisingly, even for a speedy computer like my Mac, Blender takes a long time to import .obj files – like 1/2 hour or more. Once it is imported, I save the file as a .blend file so it will load quicker next time.

After the post about battery life, I found myself making sticky notes with the time I unplugged the laptops to see how long it takes for the error messages to pop up. I also started doing that with Blender importing .obj files. I thought it was strange that I did that, because it seems a bit anal in retrospect. Although if I actually compiled the data in a spreadsheet and graphed the data, that would be a bit too much, so I guess I’m okay for now.

A few words about formulaic language

Posted on December 27, 2007

For the final paper in my linguistics class this semester, I wrote about formulaic language. Even though the semester is over, I’ve still been thinking about it quite a bit. There are many definitions for the term “formulaic language”, but a general definition is something like: a group of words, a word, or part of a word, that is interpreted by a person as a whole unit, and not broken down further. Usually it is phrases that are commonly used, like “par for the course,” “break a leg,” and “have a nice day.”

From what I understand from my readings, it’s a bit antithetical to what Chomsky talks about, though I haven’t read Chomsky, so I’m not sure if it’s true or not. In a nutshell, Chomsky-ites propose that based people can come up with an infinite number of original phrases, sentences, etc based on grammar, and presumably their vocabulary. That’s probably a simplification, but I think that’s the gist of it. The people who subscribe to the idea of formulaic language believe, even if they can make an infinite combination of unique phrases that make grammatic sense, they most commonly use a relative hand few over and over again.

Here’s a simpler way to look at it: We use 26 letters in the English language. By various letter combinations we get words. Some words are only one letter long, others might be dozens of letters long. The Oxford English Dictionary has a little over 300,000 main entries, though it is unlikely many people know every entry in it, even the editors. Estimates vary widely, but it has been estimated the average college grad has a vocabulary of around 60,000 words. However, even though they have a rich vocabulary, it’s unlikely they use “gaggle” or “hippocampus” very often. Most people are only likely to use a few thousand words on a common basis, so it is thought. So, from 26 letters we get at least 300,000 words, of which we might know around 60,000 and use only a few thousand on a regular basis.

Formulaic language can be looked at in a similar way, but it’s difficult to come up with numbers because it’s a nascent area for research. From various word combinations, we get phrases and sentences. Chomsky’s idea, so I infer, is kind of like the OED of phrases and sentences. The people researching formulaic language propose we used a much more limited set on a regular basis.

The idea of formulaic language dates back decades. Lev Vygotsky, a developmental psychologist in the Soviet Union, described something similar in the 1930′s. For the past few decades, Chomsky’s ideas have been prevalent, and linguistic research has gone along those lines. However, computers have helped us learn a lot more about language because they can be used to look for patterns in the data. A corpus, Latin for body, is a set of data. In linguistics it’s usually a body of text from a certain source, such as magazines, transcripts, etc. Some organizations collect them and make them available for researchers. Google even donated their corpus a few years ago. With corpora to access, corpus linguists can find which words frequently occur next to each other. Though I haven’t played around with actual corpora much, I have been thinking about how word combinations are used.

The idea behind formulaic language is that people hear certain word groupings and they know exactly what is meant. They’ve condensed it to a concept, so the brain doesn’t need to spend time analyzing it. The funny thing is it doesn’t need to be true. Using an example from above, the (former) Soviet Union. For a lot of people, the Soviet Union was equivalent to Russia, even though Russia was only part of the Soviet Union. USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics = Soviet Union != Russia (!= means does not equal) While all Russians were Soviets, not all Soviets were Russians. Similarly, UK = United Kingdom = United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland != England != Britain. While all English are British, not all British are English. They might also be Scottish or Welsh. I haven’t figured out how the Northern Irish fit in there, since they are technically British. They are all Royal subjects, if I understand correctly.

I’m kind of rambling, so I’ll keep on going ;-)

I think a lot of formulaic language carries certain cultural allusions. Since the class was Second Language Acquisition, this was kind why I was interested. While we can teach certain phrases in language classes, it’s impossible to teach them all. Even within a culture, a formulaic phrase might not be understood by everybody. Take the word frog. Most people hear frog and they think of the amphibious creature that likes to croak. It some areas, a frog is an ornamental fastening on a garment, or it is part of a horse’s anatomy. Still, for most people, a frog is an animal that spends time in ponds. Take the following phrase:

________________ frog.

I think most people would put a verb or an adjective on the blank line. However, only certain verbs or adjectives will make sense. Jumping frog, a frog, one frog, green frog, swimming frog, and small frog all seem appropriate. Now if someone wrote singing, dancing frog that wouldn’t make sense unless you saw the old Warner Brothers cartoon, or maybe the Muppet Show. That’s a cultural allusion. Crunchy frog is another cultural allusion, this one based on a Monty Python skit.

“We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in finest-quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope and lovingly frosted with glucose.”

I’m done for now. Time to read.

Free Rice!

Posted on November 11, 2007

Not for you though. Free Rice is an online game where you test your vocabulary. It’s multiple choice, and for every correct answer you give, the sponsors donate money to buy 10 grains of rice. Now this doesn’t seem like much, but it’s pretty easy to rapidly earn much more. In less than 30 minutes, you can probably earn 1000 grains of rice. I’m guessing that maybe 1000 grains of rice is equivalent to a good (though not substantial) meal for someone.

The program is run by the United Nations and gets money from sponsors who place ads on each page of the game. The game started in October and only a few hundred grains were earned the first day (probably somebody testing it out). Over the past couple of days, it’s pretty well exploded in popularity. It’s a good deed and good for the karma. Normally I don’t like ads or endorsing things, but this is very worthwhile.

Play the game, expand your vocabulary, and feed the hungry. Whoever thought it up must be a genius.

Geeky ponderances

Posted on November 1, 2007

I’ve been reading a bit about rich internet applications, which are net oriented applications that can be run on the desktop, as opposed to a browser. The information I have been looking at is mainly dealing with Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) and Mozilla’s XULrunner. Both of these are runtime environments that allow code to be written once then run on multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). This is actually what Java was originally intended to do.

Adobe AIR was released as a beta earlier this year and there are already some apps made with it. I downloaded one called Bee, which is supposed to be a place where people can update their Flikr or WordPress blogs. I wasn’t able to get it to work with my site however. I have XML-RPC turned off (it’s a security thing) so that may be why Bee isn’t working, but I am not sure.

XULRunner should be differentiated from Webrunner, which is also a Mozilla project. Webrunner was recently renamed Prism and from what I understand, it is simply a very lightweight browser that is set to only open one page, which might be handy for a bank or an email setup. XULRunner, however, is a runtime environment so people can create actual programs to run on the desktop. The best example I’ve found so far is Songbird. Songbird is a music player that can play local files, but it can also play songs over the net and display web pages. It’s also skinnable, though they call them feathers instead of skins.

I’m not sure how different they are from Java (well, JVM), but my experience with Java applications in the past was that they were slow and didn’t look that great. however, that might have been more of a problem with the application developers rather than Java itself.

Even though I’ve let Giraf/Lingo/whatever languish, I still hope to do something with it, though I am not sure what yet. At first it was going to be a website I developed to be accessible from a mobile, then it was going to be based on MediaWiki. Now, I wonder about AIR or XULRunner. Of course, it would help if I knew what I wanted Giraf to do.

I would like software that has a multilingual dictionary. If the dictionaries are in a standard format, I would like to be able to download the dictionaries so the software can read them. However, I would also like the software to be able to read dictionaries that are posted online. In this case, it would probably be best if the dictionary format was in a text file. I also like the idea of flashcards. I like the idea of people being able to use the software to create their own dictionaries and their own flashcards. I think writing new words down reinforces them in the vocabulary. I like the idea of using the software to display conjugations. It’s hard to decide which aspect is most important. I’ve seen lots of multilingual dictionaries, and even some flashcard type software, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything that displays conjugations, so that’s something else to consider.

PHP 5 and WP 2.2.2

Posted on September 2, 2007

As I’m prone to do, I decided to give myself a project this weekend. It involves the Lingo/Giraf thing I was working on months ago. My coding skills aren’t quite that good, so I figured I would see if MediaWiki 1.10.1 could be adapted for use in that project. It looks like it works okay on my PC, but with the site on the PC, I can’t check it with the Palm T|X.

Long story short, I upgraded the whole website to PHP 5. As suspected, it broke some things, namely WordPress. I upgraded WordPress to 2.2.2 to see if that helped, and it didn’t really. What I had to do was remove the SpamKarma2 plugin along with the wp-contact-form. The contact form isn’t a big loss. SpamKarma2 was a mixed bag. Ever since installing it, I would get all kinds of fatal errors relating to memory (e.g. tried to allocate …). Plus, I found myself logging in less often because I knew SK2 would take care of the spam. I got lazy.

Anyway, WordPress seems to be back to normal more-or-less, minus a couple of plugins. I’ll probably have to sort out problems as they occur.

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