Web-based Materials for Self-studying the Kansai Dialect

Grant Details

Amount: $5,000

Project Start Date: 05/31/07

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Japanese Japanese

Project Level:
Intermediate

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Ikue Shingu (ikue@mit.edu)

77 Massachusetts Avenue
14N-232
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-3543

This project involves the creation of a web-based, guided, self-study program on the Kansai dialect, a powerful regional dialect spoken by over 20 million people in the Kansai area of Japan, where Osaka and Kyoto are located. The website helps users gain basic knowledge of structure and intonation patterns of the Kansai dialect, and build up basic aural and oral communication skills with Kansai native speakers. By including video clips of interviews with various individuals from the region, this site is also a helpful resource to examine how this dialect relates to local identity. This project was funded from the Consortium in 2006, (refer to the previous description at http://www.languageconsortium.org/node/175) and four out of seven chapters have been created and uploaded as a prototype that contains texts and exercises along with numerous audio files and video clips. The prototype website has been presented and disseminated at language/technology-related conferences. This year’s fund enables this project to be updated and more complete in terms of programming (e.g. make the site IE compatible) and site-design as well as contents.

Generation in Change

Grant Details

Amount: $3,900

Project Start Date: 06/01/06

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Chinese

Project Level:
Intermediate

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Tong Chen (tongchen@mit.edu)

14N-330
M.I.T.
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-0109

The website will consist of 100 video segments plus difficult words, phrases and grammar points culled from these segments. The material will allow our students to study the influences of social change and economic development on the values, morals, and daily life of Chinese students their age as well as the consequent changes to their philosophies of life and their educational experience. Additionally, the material will give our students the opportunity to study the experience of Chinese parents and grandparents regarding these topics before and after the open door policy when China shifted its attitude to the rest of the world as well as reveal the attitudes of the older generations towards the younger generation's changes. The website will be a rich resource, giving our students a variety of things to explore. Our students will engage video and other media to develop their interpretations and understanding of Chinese culture, modern society, economics, and family relations. Our students will be able to save the visual materials needed in folders for their own research, projects, papers, and presentations.

Looking for Belgium: Contemporary arts as a gate to Belgian culture and history

Grant Details

Amount: $6,267

Project Start Date: 05/31/06

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: French

Project Level:
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading
Writing

Institutions Involved:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Primary Contact:
Cathy Culot (cculot@MIT.EDU)

77 Massachusetts Avenue
14N-427
Cambridge , MA 02139
Phone: 617-253-3462

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Secondary Contact:
Kurt Fendt
fendt@mit.edu
Foreign Languages and Literatures 77 Massachusetts Avenue. Building 16-635B Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA 02139-4307

trometer@mit.edu
Ruth Trometer,Director Language Learning and Resource Center 16-657 MIT Cambridge MA 02139

This project will be repository of digital and scanned images, written documents, video fragments, songs and interviews that will introduce our students to Belgian culture and history through Belgian contemporary arts. Artists will be chosen within the visual arts (painting, sculpture, video art, architecture and photography), the ninth art or art of comic strips as well as those working in music, film, theatre, dance, literature and those preserving the traditions, gastronomy and popular culture in Belgium. The main scope of the repository will be artists who are currently active or who have created their work in the last decades of the 20th century. These contemporary artists will be the starting point for different chains of references to Belgian culture and artists. Indeed, this project will present contemporary materials as links to Belgian history, culture and artists of the past. It will give students access to a unique culture with different influences, mainly the French, the Flemish and the German communities living together in Belgium and each contributing to what Belgian culture represents. Therefore, artists from the three communities will be included in the repository. The materials will be organized within a traditional MetaMedia archive, which will include the different themes around which the classes will be structured, and each theme will feature the artists most relevant to the theme being studied. The selection of artists within each theme is not exhaustive. This will allow students to make their own selection of materials to be included under a theme and to assume the role of an online curator creating different links between artists.

Business Chinese Teaching Material Development

Grant Details

Amount: $2700.00

Project Start Date: 01/01/07

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: Chinese

Project Level:
Advanced

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Speaking
Listening
Reading

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Fangyuan Yuan (fangyuan@sas.upenn.edu)

715-716 Williams Hall
255 South 36th Street
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305

Video Clips on French Social Issues: A Tool for Practicing Listening Skills Outside of Class

Grant Details

Amount: $750.00

Project Start Date: 01/01/07

Status: In Progress (under development)

Project Type:
Campus Based

Languages: French

Project Level:
Intermediate

Project Skills:
Cultural Awareness
Listening

Institutions Involved:
University of Pennsylvania

Primary Contact:
Julie Cousin (jcousin@sas.upenn.edu)

521 Williams Hall
255 South 36th Street
Philadelphia , PA 19104-6305