by David Gilbert, Music Librarian
Barry Lydgate, Professor of French, is helping design software
which will allow beginning students to interact with a videodisc
version of the widely used French language series French
in Action. This marriage of laserdisc and computer technology
allows students of foreign languages to learn and study interactively.
A 7-second QuickTime movie
of a scene from French in Action.
French in Action is produced and distributed by
The Annenberg/CPB Project, a name familiar to anyone who
has watched public television. In its present form, French
in Action consists of 52 half-hour video programs. Each
program contains an episode in an ongoing story, accompanied
by a pedagogical section covering points of grammar and vocabulary
and the idiomatic phrases used in the story. A student can
watch the story and teaching sections and review the material
using the controls available on a VCR. The medium and the
equipment of videotape limit the student to a strictly linear
access to the material, however, and do not provide ways
of speeding up or slowing down the rate the materials go
by.
Mireille
and Robert, the main characters of French in Action.
Lydgate was instrumental in creating French in Action in
1985. His project to expand the series began with the transfer
from videocassette to laserdisc, completed last spring. Laserdisc
technology allows any bit of visual or sound information
on the disc to be accessed quickly and manipulated in a number
of ways. The speed of playback can be changed without distorting
the pitch. Lydgate, along with colleagues and programmers
at Yale and Emory, is designing software which will allow
students to interact with both the stories and the pedagogical
sections. They will be able to move backward and forward
through the story or explanatory sections at their own pace
and at any time, repeating any word, phrase, or point on
the screen as often as necessary to comprehend the text.
They will be able to jump between any point in the story
to the relevant pedagogical section as well as between the
pedagogical section and the story almost immediately and
without damage to the recording medium. A transcription of
any text in the series will also be available on screen or
for printing.
Mireille
on the go...
Development of the software will begin this spring. Versions
will be available for both PC compatible machines and Macintosh,
and a CD-ROM version is planned. Both versions should be
available by the Fall of 1998. Since the software is an add-on
to an existing widely-used language instruction tool, current
texts and workbooks accompanying the series do not have to
be changed and can still be used. The new French in Interaction program
will be used in beginning and intermediate French language
courses at Wellesley.
Rien
n'est simple...
For more information, contact Barry Lydgate, Professor
of French, at x2439, or by email (blydgate@wellesley.edu).
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