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On August 4th, EDUCOM selected HyperChinese as a Distinguished
Humanities Software Award winner in the 1993 Higher Education
Software and Curriculum Awards Program.
Written by Jing-Heng Ma, Professor of Chinese, and Robert
Smitheram, a former Assistant Professor of Chinese, HyperChinese
is a HyperCard-based program for Chinese language instruction.
Its 14 modules introduce basic grammar to elementary and
intermediate level students who already know some Chinese.
The project was funded by a special gift from Mrs. Elizabeth
Tu Hoffman `76 and her husband Rowe Hoffman, along with funding
from the Helen Lin Fund, the Mellon Foundation for Language
Instruction, and Wellesley College. Ma and Smitheram began
the project in the fall of 1991 and finished the grammar
modules last summer. They are planning a new series of modules
to teach pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese, focusing on the
special needs of Cantonese speakers.
The program makes full use of HyperCard's multimedia capabilities,
including graphics, digitized sound, and animation. HyperChinese
also features an auto-record function which allows a student
to listen to an example sentence, record her own voice, and
then compare the two. The flexible and modular design allows
for self-direction and self-practice on the part of the student.
The HyperCard environment gives the student a rich language-learning
experience outside the classroom, allowing for more interactive
and conversational practice in class.
To hear an example of the digitized sound used in HyperChinese,
click the speaker icon below.
The material is primarily supplemental in nature. Modules
and units can be studied in any order, depending on the student's
needs. The scope of the material covered is not a complete
description of Chinese grammar, but rather a focused presentation
of the core grammar and the common areas of difficulty for
English-speaking students of Chinese. The material base of
the program does not derive from any specific textbook or
vocabulary list, but is supported by research conducted by
Professor Ma at the University of Michigan.
Each module is identified by a Chinese character chosen
to reflect the module's content as well as to enhance the
visual appeal of the program. The characters derive from
the brushes of well-known calligraphers. All Chinese is in
PinYin with English translations -- no Chinese characters
are used for instructional purposes.
Each unit within a module gives a structured explanation
of a grammatical topic and concludes with one or more drills
which test a student's command of the material. A student
can move back and forth through a unit, work successively
through several units, or jump from one module to another.
EDUCOM is a nonprofit consortium of higher education institutions
which facilitates the introduction, use, access to, and management
of information resources in teaching, learning, scholarship,
and research. Its annual Software Awards Program has three
goals:
- to reward those faculty members and developers whose
products and curriculum innovations exemplify the best
in instructional design;
- to identify exemplary software and
curriculum innovations as models for
other faculty members and software
developers; and
- to develop and publicize criteria
for quality educational software
and for curriculum innovations
that use information technology.
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