The ALTEC Language Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder has begun developing foreign language lessons that about 2,500 students will be able to access via the World Wide Web in the fall 1999 semester, enhancing coursework in six foreign languages.
Japanese, one of the six languages that will offer expanded practice lessons for students through the Web sites, has already begun to field-test pilot exercises created for first-year Japanese students through the ALTEC project. ALTEC, the Anderson Language Technology Center, provides technical support for enhancing foreign language instruction at CU-Boulder through audio, video and computer technology.
The special Web sites have been made possible by a $40,000 grant from CU-Boulder's ATLAS initiative, the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society. In addition, another $16,000 has been committed to cover faculty time spent on the project.
Besides Japanese, the six foreign language programs that are creating Web sites for next fall will be beginning level courses in Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Although some other universities have or are creating foreign language Web programs, CU-Boulder's Web offerings may be "the most comprehensive in terms of the number of languages that we are developing sites for on the Web," said Kuan Yi Rose Chang, director of ALTEC and co-director of the Foreign Languages at a Distance project.
The beauty of the foreign language Web exercises is that they take students to foreign Web sites in the languages they are studying, instead of using exercises created by a professor from menus or train schedules collected on trips, according to Brian Lewis, co-director with Chang of the project and a professor of German. The exercises take students to the Web sites of hotels in France or China, for example, where students can practice their vocabularies as they read about hotels in those countries.
The Web exercises also include restaurant menus, train schedules, shopping sites, Japanese identification cards and other resources.
Several features will make the Web exercises beneficial to students, according to Chang and Lewis.
One is that the Web sites automatically make a wide array of foreign language Web resources available to students, who might otherwise spend a lot of time searching for them or who might never use the Web to supplement their language training, Lewis said. The sites also allow students to work on exercises remotely, possibly reducing the amount of practice time needed in the ALTEC facility on campus.
The sites help familiarize students with what is expected to become a key learning tool in the future -- the Web. And they provide "the kind of information that makes learning a foreign language easier and more enjoyable, that is, authentic foreign language material," Lewis said.
"In the past instructors would have to travel to these countries to collect this kind of teaching aide," Lewis said. "It's a tremendous task for instructors to get this sort of information together. But now we have easy access to it on the Web."
According to Chang, the language sites "are not textbook dependent. We have our CU students in mind as we develop these sites, but they are beneficial to all language learners, in addition to CU students," she said.
Another plus for students is that graduate language students are helping to develop the six Web sites, and language students most likely will be involved in maintaining and updating the sites, Lewis said. "This is very good experience for our students when they go into the job market because so many jobs now require knowledge of technology," he said.
Students in Japanese 1010 this summer will begin using the Japanese Web site, which was revised over Christmas break and is being field-tested this semester. Â鶹ÊÓƵ 200 Japanese students eventually will use the site, Chang said.
Merrill Lessley, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, called the ALTEC project "an example of how faculty can be involved in defining the cutting edge of new teaching theory and applications. We can't be satisfied with the status quo. It's our job as a research university to invent and create new strategies in language instruction that will make it more meaningful to students, and to use technology in a way that will reduce barriers to the interpersonal connections between students and faculty," he said.