Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: lessons deadline

From: Jim Carter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 10:05:22 -0700 (PDT)

On Thu, 19 Sep 2002, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> What I meant to add was, a book chrestomathy may render it
> superfluous to add reading passages to the lessons. Although thinking
> better on it, I now disagree.
>
> We're talking one or two paras at the very end of each lesson. In
> fact, we're quite likely talking 4 or 5 in the lessons, rather than 1
> per lesson...

>From my own language learning experience, I think it's valuable to reinforce
each point with some pseudo-live text illustrating it, that may stick in
the student's head. Humans seem to be programmed to pick up languages by
remembering what other speakers say.

Here's an idea for a suite of language learning software. I'm not saying I
have all of these programs, or even that I know how to write some of them.
Anyway:

1. Vocabulary practice, particularly structure words. There would be an
order, designed by the author, for learning the words, or importance grades on
each one. We have several of these programs already.

2. Word finder. For showing the definition and proper usage of a Lojban word.
A natlang keyword could also be the search key. (We have one of these too.)
Useful features would be to add the word to your vocabulary practice list; to
show all members of a category, e.g. given any digit you could ask to see all
digits; to show a few sentences in which the word is used properly; to show a
picture of the referent of the word, when feasible: a picture of a cat is
simple; a picture of "truth" is not, or perhaps a picture story: a comic book
style illustration of how the word is used. I understand that the graphic
elements are a lot of work to make and would take a lot of disc space, but I
quote: "Ask for the moon; they might give it to you!" For the user interface,
in addition to having a type-in box it should accept drag-and-drop and/or
should accept the clipboard contents.

3. Grammar lessons in a conventional narrative style, but with computer aided
integration with the rest of the suite. Words for the upcoming grammar lesson
would be added to the vocabulary practice list, and conversely, the grammar
controller would prefer lessons whose structure words the student knew, and if
he insisted on trying lessons before learning the words, it would admonish him
to work on vocabulary.

4. A writing analyser. It would detect unrecognized words and ungrammatical
or semantically bizarre constructions, and would point them out as possible or
definite errors. For the "Lojban as a second language" student, the ability
to translate into low-quality natural language would be helpful. Our existing
software is a good beginning. Besides working on whole files, it needs an
interactive interface similar to the word finder.

5. A "net buddy", an artificial intelligence that would conduct vapid but
grammatical conversation. I had in mind something along the lines of "Couch"
or "Eliza", maybe with a little more work put into holding up its end of the
conversation. It would mostly stick to words and grammar already known,
emphasizing recently learned material. It should also push the student by
using material from the next lesson, and for some students this will be a major
means to advance in vocabulary.

James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: [email-masked] http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)