Research Project at Radboud University – Searching for videos for NT2 Learners

[Anoniem]

Dear Educators of Dutch as a second language,

We are two PhD students at Radboud University Nijmegen who are building a computer program with the purpose of helping people to learn to speak Dutch. We were wondering if we could appeal to your experience teaching Dutch learners and ask for your recommendations for video clips on the web (e.g. on Youtube) that students find interesting or motivating.

A bit of background: The program we are building (called ‘GREET’) is a computerised language tutor for learning Dutch grammar. With GREET, learners can practice their grammar in spoken language exercises. After watching fun video clips, the system asks questions, and learners respond by speaking their answers. The cool part is that our system uses automatic speech recognition to automatically detect incorrect grammar and provide instant feedback.

Below is a link to a Youtube video that shows how the system works.

http://youtu.be/aNrAV3WJrfE

Currently, our system uses the same instruction (i.e. same video clips and question exercises) for all learners. However, we would like to give the system the ability to personalise instruction.

A crucial step in personalising grammar instruction will be to add new videos. The content of these videos should match different personal interests and goals of the many kinds of learners who use our system, with the goal of motivating them to continue practice.

Our research (a survey with CEF A2-level high-educated students) suggests the following themes could be interesting:

1. Getting along with and making friends with Dutch people
2. Feeling shy or embarrassed when speaking Dutch
3. The importance of knowing other people who are also learning Dutch
4. Discussions of Dutch news, books, or magazines
5. Integrating into Dutch society
6. Improving your Dutch to improve your career and education
7. Difficulties in every-day situations because of a lack of ability to speak Dutch
8. Changes in your feelings towards your home country or towards speaking in your native language after living abroad

We were wondering if you might know of any freely available videos related to the themes above and wouldn’t mind sharing them. Also, if you think a particular video is good for Dutch learners but does not match the themes we would still be very interested in hearing about it! Once completed, we would be happy to post the collection to this forum to share with the community.

It might be important to point out that we are not a commercial organization and that we do not intend to make a profit from our system or charge learners for using our program. Practice with the computer program is free, and all recommendations you make have the potential to benefit learners of Dutch.

Finally, if you would like more information on the project, please feel free to contact us. We would be happy to hear from you.

Thanks in advance,

Steve and Bart

Steve Bodnar: s.bodnar@let.ru.nl
Bart Penning de Vries:  b.penningdevries@let.ru.nl
The FASOP Project
Centre for Language and Speech Technology
Radboud University Nijmegen

[Anoniem]

Naprawdę chcę wiedzieć W jaki sposób witryna się indeksuje i większość informacji na jej temat wystarczy do wyjaśnienia?

[Auteur]

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