How e-books could revolutionize the learning of languages
Ever tried learning a foreign language?
Have you noticed how the books you could read were often boring? And were the books you wanted to read just that bit too hard to understand?
Did you wish for a quick translation of a complex passage? Or want the precise meaning of the word from the spread of twenty that dictionary entry offers?
With paper books, you’re pretty much stuck. But e-books—with the right combination of software and open formats—may soon prove to be just the solution to keep you reading and learning in the new language. The language-learning market is attracting billions of dollars. Imagine the financial rewards for someone able to make the best of e-books’ promise in this area.
Here’s a head start for the ambitious—an overview of what is achievable today. Then we’ll progress to the possibilities further down the line.
- Parallel texts - Intermediate and advanced readers appreciate being able to read original text, while still having a good translation available a glance away.
Paper books like this do exist, but just a few, due to a high cost of production and distributed target market. For e-books, the ever decreasing price of the storage makes the size of the download irrelevant - slashing the cost of physical production. And with electronic distribution, the market reach is as wide as the internet itself.
If you still have doubts, this model is already being exploited extremely well in another multi-lingual market—Bible study. There are many Bible translations and scholars like to be able to read them side by side to understand the deep meaning better. A number of free e-readers exist to make this task easier, including a portable one for the PocketPC.
- Dictionary bundling - Continuing with the theme of practically unlimited storage, we can easily imagine a book being bundled with a look-up dictionary that is capable of providing a translation of every word and expression in the text.
This is only possible with specially adapted texts at the moment and, even then, only some words and basic phrases are provided. With e-books, it would be possible to embed invisible hints that will show the specific meaning of the phrase in the exact context of the paragraph.
Again, something similar to this has been done for Bible study with Strong’s numbers, but, with good dictionaries, the concept can be extended to any text. Many of the current e-book readers allow dictionary lookups, so the basic functionality is already available.
- Grammar learning through real examples - Most of the texts provided for learning grammar are boring and feel artificial. How about being able to choose your own text and have the reader software automatically highlight the structures you are learning this week, whether it is color names, present perfect constructions or conjugations of the irregular verb ‘to be’?
With the material being presented completely in context, the rules will be easier to understand and recall.And even if you are rereading the last week’s passage, you are learning something new, as the highlighted parts will change.
- Automatic text leveling - If we can bundle additional text that does not show up in the book normally, why can’t we have the same text several times with different levels of reading difficulties. That way, a book may contain adapted/simplified text as well as an original one.
Then, any number of combinations might be used, depending on whether the reader is connected to other systems or not. For example, if the book is delivered as serialized chapters from a website, there might be grading tests in between chapters with the simplification level of the next chapter adjusted automatically based on the test results.Or it could be a Choose Your Own Adventure type of book, where the language level of the ‘next’ page depends on the language introduced in pages seen before.
This is not something that can be done economically at all for printed books, since they are frozen at the time of publishing, but with e-books the material can be reused in smaller chunks across multiple learners and therefore will allow for a viable publishing model. Especially, if we can throw the increasingly ubiquitous broadband wireless connection into the mix with pages arriving in near-real-time directly to the reader device.
- Text generation - If a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ format is suitable for language learning, why not a computer generated book all together.It is nearly possible with current technologies to create a book as a concept graph and have the computer generate the actual text.
With a bit more design, the generated text will purposefully incorporate new words and grammatical structures to match the learner’s progression in the learning plan. It would even be possible to dynamically generate grammatical explanations, since the text-creation system has to figure it all out anyway to generate the sentences. Again, combined with feedback from external or on-device tests and near-real-time downloads, the text can always be just ahead of the learner’s own language knowledge.
- Finally, with e-books’ texts being available in open electronic formats, it would possible to use them to generate additional contexts (such as geographic mapping) or tests based on the exact texts the learner was reading for his or her own pleasure.
There are many more possible uses of texts available in e-book rather than print form. I have just scratched the surface of what is possible.
Nor have I discussed technical details that would make each of these items really tick. Perhaps I will in a future post, if there is enough interest.
For those curious now, I will just mention two concepts. They are Computational Linguistics and CALL/ATALL. Follow the directions these fields of study point out and your thinking adventures will be more wondrous than those of Alice.
(Creative Commons-licensed photo.)
October 8th, 2006 at 9:23 am
i’m a big fan of language learning but I can’t do it with non interactive media. I would kill for a good interactive ebook that would focus on less commonly taught langauges although most of the stand alone software products do amazing things that ebooks never could.
October 8th, 2006 at 10:49 am
I’m currently teaching 1st year Russian in two sections– one using a textbook from 10 years ago with a bundled (outdated and incredibly corny) video, and one using an e-textbook I’m writing as I go. These options sound fantastic, and I’m looking forward to seeing (and, if possible, helping) them become mainstream.
Only one problem comes to mind, though: while the electronic format is absolutely necessary, I’ve found that my e-textbook students hate reading and working from the screen. Every time, they come in with a big pile of print-outs. Maybe they’re “too old” (20’s-30’s) and younger people are more comfortable working exclusively from computers, but it could pose a problem for widespread adoption. Even if the younger students would be fine with it, it’s the teachers making the decisions. If they find it difficult to work with the material, it’s less likely to become a major part of the class.
October 8th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
To: ebooklvr:
To my surprise, I discovered that some of the less commonly taught languages have better training courses than more common ones.
I think this might be because the commmon languages are a more established market, so the tools use old technologies. So, companies trying to create software specifically for new - less commonly taught languages - will use the latest and greatest in research and techniques and will do a better job.
There is even a conference, I believe, on teaching those languages.
To Quinn:
I think e-textbook will be easier to work with when they become easier to annotate; possibly via pen interface. Still, have you tried asking the students why they chose print-outs. The results may make an interesting article worth blogging.
October 8th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
I agree that ebooks could revolutionize language learning, but I think it’s overshadowed by online gaming, which offers new opportunities for situational learning. When I taught English as a foreign language in Ukraine, students responded well to PC computer games. Although the games were very visual, there was a strong verbal component which students had to understand in order to succeed. Also, there are lots of vocabulary/grammar drill games on the market for students to use.
When I studied German back in the last century, most of our advanced classes were textual analyses of Schiller, Novalis, etc. I actually loved that, but the other students in the class were easily bored. Looking back, it did not seem to be a very efficient way to improve language fluency. Other tools: nowadays it’s fairly easy to turn on DVD subtitles. If this could be combined with some sort of testing to measure review/reflection, it could be an effective way of improving language skills.
The idea of a dictionary specific to a text is great; i can’t tell you how cumbersome it was to look something up in a foreign language dictionary (which usually was falling apart after so many lookups).
The idea of an Alice-type languagebot would also be great.
Dave, do you know if Sony Reader lets you load a dictionary?
October 9th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Some thoughts about the look-up function. There seems to be still a long way to go before this is really help-ful for foreign language reading. My rather dismal experience has been with the mobipocket reader. The first problem is the size of the dictionaries which are offered by mobipocket, they are usually too elementary for rading beyond very easy texts. Once ýou have a certain fluency in the foreign language, the odd word which you are looking for is usually missing in the dictionary.
Secondly, if the word you are looking for has the slightes inflection, for instance the female ending of an adjective in italian instead of the standard male one, you are proposed to search for the word yourself.
Thirdly, in the last version of the Mobipocket reader you are not even invited to do this. The dictionary just doesn’t open for a direct search.
Is this better for other readers?
Peter
October 9th, 2006 at 8:31 am
Out of curiosity, I did ask them when they were bringing in big stacks of paper (they all have laptops). The answer, unfortunately, wasn’t a very interesting one: we hate (focused) reading from screens, and especially hate studying from screens. Which is a position I can honestly sympathize with, since I have trouble doing that for long periods of time, myself.
October 9th, 2006 at 11:22 am
To Quinn again:
There are couple of factors I know of that might contribute to these answers: laptops are not as comfortable to hold as a book (angled screen, weight, etc), there is no easy way to mark text with a pen/pencil and/or there is no easy way to flip between two/three sections of text for comparison or . The first two items might become less relevant once TabletPCs become more standard. The last one is a function of the software and education.
To Peter (lindemaximilian):
The answer is in two parts. I don’t remember about MobiPocket, but at least some of the readers have API for external dictionaries such as Ultralingua and Slovoed. At least one of those plugin dictionaries may have been normalising conjugations and inflections to the base forms on the lookup.
The other option, and the option I really had in mind, is to do heavy computer processing on the server to make sure that _every_ word (and possibly even colloquialism) is available in the dictionary. This kind of processing is the ‘technical secret sauce’ that can be provided by the technics from the Computational Linguistics area of research.
To Robert Nagle:
You point about the computer games is valid and I agree with it on many levels, but it would need another post to give it justice. If you blog it with details on your site, I will link to it.
October 9th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Hi, Robert. I don’t know for sure re the Reader and loading of a dictionary. But I do see the following in Engadget—maybe accurate, maybe not:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/26/sony-reader-prs-500-gets-launch-date-price/comments/2257049/
Thanks,
David
October 9th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
[...] I have added my opinion to the forum and pointed to the TeleRead hosted copy of my article on the issue and I invite you to join in the conversation either at Philips forums or in the article’s comments area for your view on the situation. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I once saw a nice language teaching tool for a Russian text by Nabokov. If you scrolled your mouse over any word, it would give you a translation, and what noun or verb form it was. This would be particularly ideal for Greek, Latin, or Old Church Slavonic, where the form of the verb is of great importance. Unfortunately, I was never able to find the site again, but if I ever write a textbook for OCS, I want ot include that feature.
October 10th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
Don’t hold your breath while waiting for that to happen :-).
I love my somewhat antique Toshiba M200 tablet-PC (except that it runs Windows, and I suppose it could be a pound lighter), and using it with ReadUp fixes the last two items on your list. But tablet PC’s in general don’t seem to have caught on. Most people apparently aren’t willing to pay the premium for the built-in touch screen.
October 11th, 2006 at 4:14 am
Bill, aren’t lighter and cheaper tablets inevitable? Thx. David
October 11th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Perhaps in the fullness of history :-). For the moment, they seem to done poorly (apparently to Microsoft’s surprise), and have only a niche market. So there’s little economic incentive to improve them. Meanwhile, schoolchildren are learning to “keyboard” and “text” rather than to write with a pen, so there’s an interesting skills transfer issue as well.
October 12th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
See this discussion, which points to this article in the Washington Post.
October 12th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Bill,
I think the touch-sensitive screens will win out an in the medium - rather than the long - term. There is a lot of interesting research going on that requires touch screen technology.
I am talking multitouch screens as shown at last Wired’s NextFest (among many other touch-based interfaces). I have also seen some research into tabletop games that use touch-screen instead of the board. Even current infatuation with interactive maps is a push to have those interfaces available as a standalone touch-screen based interfaces.
And projects like ReadUp (thank you for the link) may have some impact too. Especially, if they are released as open-source libraries that other people could incorporate into their own projects.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
[...] (Disclosure: I have previously written an article about e-books for language learning for the TeleRead blog) [...]
October 16th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
[...] [This article also appears in a slightly edited form as a TeleRead entry] [...]
February 11th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
[...] TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home - I like the blog (I even contributed once), but I am not so sure about their podcast yet. This one is on trial currently. [...]