Perapera-kun: Chinese Popup Translator and Learning Tool

in his answer to a query concerning learning of CL at the recent REACH forum, PM Lee mentioned two translation tools that can be useful. one is google translate (which i guess i need not mention), and the other is perapera-kun, which works as a firefox add-on. the translations are based on the open source Chinese-English dictionary, CC-CEDICT. i have downloaded, installed and tried it myself, am impressed by the capability of the ability to recognise word and phrase (字词分辨). there are still room for improvements for some translations but as of what it is now, it definitely minimise the need for one to switch to another dictionary software, or to flip a physical desktop dictionary. of cos, learners might start complaining the ‘confusion’ caused by too many definitions given at one glance, but isn’t this a problem of most dictionaries all along? advancement of technologies will one day help us resolve this issue i believe (:

and in case you’ll like to hear PM’s words:

graduation, ma thesis, AUDIOblogs

nearly 1 month ago, 20th june marks the day that i’m officially graduated from my (1st) MA course and this is the envelope that flew all the way from singapore:

besides sharing the joy, here’s my research for sharing:
Title:
An Exploratory Study on a Metacognitive Approach to Teaching and Learning of Spontaneous Speaking in Chinese Language with Audioblogs
Keywords:
chinese language, speaking, audioblogs, metacognition, language learning, language teaching, educational technology, weblog, edublog, 华文, 口语教学,元认知,博客,信息科技,有声博客
Summary:

Language learning involves four areas, namely listening, speaking, reading
and writing. This study focuses on speaking, an area that is often neglected by
teachers for various reasons. In many Chinese Language classrooms, which are
teacher-centered by tradition, students have minimal opportunities to actively
participate in the negotiation of meaning during lesson. To develop students to
become independent learners of speaking in Chinese Language, a metacognitive
framework developed by Goh and Zhang (2002) was adopted in this study. Twenty-five
Secondary Two Express stream Chinese Language students, aged 13 to 14,
participated in this eight weeks study. Audioblogs was used as the mediating
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tool through which the students
interacted as they developed their metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive
awareness. Through the use of scaffolding questions, the students carried out self-appraisals to evaluate and monitor their oral performances and planned for their
future speaking tasks. The students were also tasked to provide comments for peers’ oral performances. Seven usable sets of data were analysed and based on inferential
statistics, the treatment may have led the students to improve significantly in their
pretest-posttest oral performance scores. Through peer commenting and self-appraisal
activities in the audioblogs, the students developed greater metacognitive
knowledge and metacognitive awareness.

and here’s the thesis in PDF format. you may need to grab acrobat reader 8 or above to read the content.
and last but not least, i would like to thank the following friends once again, as without their help and encouragement, this research would not have been possible:
Dr Tan Seng Chee (my sup), Dr Christine Goh C.M., Mr. Lim Sing Gee, Mdm. Tan Hiok Keng, Mdm. Ho Fui Ling, Ms. Hoe Joe Hwee and Mr. Amos Goh Yoong Shin, Mr. Darren Anthonio Marino Nonis, Mr. John Ow Eu Gene, Ms. Jeanne Marie Ho Pau Yuen and Dr. Chua Guat Kheng. and last but not least yh2, yh3 and yh4 🙂

real life example for (ed)voicethread

exactly 3 months ago i posted about voicethread and about 22hrs ago a comment left by a fellow singaporean CL teacher came as a pleasant surprise. he’s 德顺(his students would call him 关老师)from rulang pri sch, and he has got some real voicethreads going live! check out his reflections on his experiment with his students, and be sure to drop by his collection of voicethreads too!
great work keep it up and keep the voicethreads coming 🙂

Essays the Gathering

today marks the last day of my first semester in fudan and this is my final installment for the series of (feels like never-ending) examinable essays:

Title:新加坡华文华语与青年的调查
(in English): A sociolinguistics study of youths and Chinese language in Singapore
Synopsis:
This paper presents a sociolinguistics study conducted with 56 youths who have studied Chinese Language (CL) during their secondary/junior college days in Singapore and have since left and ‘graduated’ from the CL classroom. Two primary research questions drove this study:
1. Is there any change in the youths’ proficiency level of CL after leaving the CL classroom?
2. How are the youths using CL after graduating from secondary schools/junior colleges?
Three secondary research questions were explored to provide input to the two pri qns.
Data collection was conducted through the administering of an online survey.
Keywords: singapore, chinese language, education, survey, youth, sociolinguistics

Acknowledgement:
A BIG THANK YOU to all my students and friends and students’ friends who have contributed by completing the online survey, without which this study would not have been possible. And since it’s still 大年十一of the Chinese New Year, may I wish one and all “新年快乐,万事如意!学/事业进步,阖府安泰!”
And here’s it, may I present … (the free Acrobat Reader is needed to view the reports)
Essays the Gathering Release Y1S1
1. 《窥探中外语言教学对学习动机的尝试与研究》
2. 《探寻篇章语法给华文教学的一些启示–从”我们中国人老早就认识’康乃馨’牛奶水”谈起》
3. 《语法与作文教学实践探索–以三维语法为线索》
4. 《探索交互白板于汉字教学的应用》
5. 《新加坡华文华语与青年的调查》
6. and FOUR other essays (for record purpose; meaningless ones meant for self-consumption)
and here we go again … semester 2 here i/we come … “Live Long & Prosper”