GoChinese

Curriculum-focused online language learning platform

2011

Asia Pacific ICT Grand Award,Education & Training, 2006

Hong Kong ICT Grand Award,eLearning, 2006

Discussion topics

What is GoChinese

How is GoChinese being used around the world

Qualitative feedback and quantifiable improvement from GoChinese

What is GoChinese

Offering Teachers & Students …Offering Teachers & Students …

1.Resources that support:

- Your textbooks

- Your courses

- Your particular curriculum

2.Support for teacher-created

lessons and exercises

3.Tools for students to learn from

self-submitted content

4.Performance and usage feedback

1.Resources that support:

- Your textbooks

- Your courses

- Your particular curriculum

2.Support for teacher-created

lessons and exercises

3.Tools for students to learn from

self-submitted content

4.Performance and usage feedback

Online Learning Platform that …Online Learning Platform that …

… automatically generates the

voice output, Pinyin, English

definitions and both character

forms all Chinese text.

… automatically generates the

voice output, Pinyin, English

definitions and both character

forms all Chinese text.

The core of GoChinese

What does GoChinese look like?

Double-click or highlight

words to hear the voice

Point cursor to view its

definitions

Hanyu Pinyin displayed

alongside the Chinese

characters

Select among many other

learning features – from

Podcast downloads to

auto-graded exercises

Taking a closer look …

Using GoChinese to transform any text

into a multimedia-rich, actual language

learning resource

Let’s look at a demo in GoChinese …

Teacher and student-created resources placed alongside curriculum-based learning materials

8

Personalizes the learning experience, featuring instructor-assigned and any self-created materials

Integrates in-classroom and outside classroom work

Customization of learning materials for or from the institution

Supports instructor-created materials

Assesses, monitors and communicates with learners

Global pool of instructor-created resources

Engages all participants in the learning process

Flexible, collaborative publishing platform

No incremental costs for producing online resources

Copyright protections

Taking a closer look …

Let’s look at a demo again …

Unprecedented functionalities

Enriched lessons Supports the layout of typical lessons Voice, definitions, phonetics, annotations, Podcasts/MP3 downloads and other features Support graphics and video links

Online assessment Full range of auto-graded exercise types Voice can also be auto-generated at all parts of the exercise set Wide range of “homework” and “testing” features, including exercise pools and “re-takes”

Authoring and content management Lessons and exercise templates Editing and linguistic adjustment tools Ability to control the student groups accessing the content, timing, etc.

Feedback and reporting, for individual classes and students Usage reports Score records

What’s more? GoChinese’s linguistic strengths …

Challenge #1

By adding phonetic elements to all text: All words read aloud with linguistic accuracy Hanyu Pinyin phonetics auto-generated for all words Supports textbook-style presentation of characters and phonetics

Chinese is a non-alphabetic, non-phonetic language

Some characters have more than one sound:

Example: huìyì kuàijì

会议 会计meeting accounting

A Challenge Addressed by GoChinese

… addressing the challenges with learning Chinese

Challenge #2

By extracting words and looking-up definitions: All Chinese characters are automatically ‘grouped’ into words English definitions instantly displayed

Comprehension: Words are not explicitly delineated &

dictionary look-up is not easy

Example: guóhuà lǎoshī hé xiàozhǎng shì hǎo péngyou

国画 老师 和 校长 是 好 朋友 Měiguó huàjiā zài zhè suǒ xuéxiào zhǎngdà

美国 画家 在 这 所 学校 长大 GoChinese knows to group together the above

characters differently, to form different words.

A Challenge Addressed by GoChinese

Taking a closer look …

GoChinese’s usage and performance

feedback reports empowers teachers

and further motivates students

Students enjoy monitoring their performance

Teachers can monitor the performance of all students

And check the usage of students, class or entire school

How is GoChinese being used around the world

With first-of-its-kind learning opportunities, globally

In the UK, we are offering courses that also conduct assessment for government-recognized certifications.

This integrated learning experience

successfully motivating Our

Lady’s Convent School’s

non-academic track students.

At Avondale Grammar School in Singapore, primary students were able to engage in interactive exercises based on their textbook content. Email reports to parents.

Supporting many of the international schools in Mainland China. Dulwich College Suzhou using GoChinese actively to support homework assignments.

At Sparta Middle and High Schools in New Jersey, the teacher is using GoChinese to modify passages and dialogues presented in their textbook.

Over 30,000 logins at South Island School in Hong Kong to date. GoChinese providing textbook, GCSE and IB support and served as a valuable resource especially when textbooks were delayed.

Enthusiastic teachers and students

“The students are enjoying it and it’s amazing to see how I.T. motivates them. Most of all, it is very effective. For me, I like GoChinese's flexibility and it saves me a lot of admin work.  I don’t need to worry about the paper work, and they can be re-used over and over again, with some modifications.”

– Michelle Hsu-McWilliam, Teacher, Merchiston Castle School, UK

“I believe GoChinese is an excellent and helpful software. It helps us to better understand certain

meaning and sentence structures. GoChinese is a very good tool, because files can be downloaded

to an MP3 player, so it is possible to practice on the go. Overall, GoChinese helped me push

pass difficult words and structures. Thanks to such a great program I feel more confident in

learning Chinese, and I hope this software continues to run here.”

– Samuel Batista, Student, CUNY, New York

“It's great that you have the ability to look at every characters and pinyin plus the English

meaning and also hear the words all at the same time. It’s great that you get to learn

everything in detail. [I love] being able to check your scores and the competitions… it’s a

thrill to be at the top of the score board.”

– Joan Amo, student, Our Lady’s Convent School, UK

Featured usages

Classroom: Jazzing up the class

Language lab: Resources integrated with classroom activity

Outside school: Additional learning support; develop independent learning.

30%-50% of logins outside the classroom/lab.

Online homework. Reduces teachers workload. Part of student grade.

Collaborative resources, both among teachers and students.

Expanding courses with limited specialist teachers.

Hybrid / distance learning classes

Qualitative feedback & quantifiable improvements

Raising Scores on CASLS Pilot Exams

School: U.S. East coast private school

Exam: The Center for Applied Second Language Studies Reading Proficiency Exams – 2009 (at University of Oregon)

Top Table: Chinese 2 class Studied with textbooks Used GoChinese to learn from materials found on the

Internet that students ‘copied & paste’ into the platform

Bottom Table: Chinese 3 class Studied with textbooks only

Conclusion: Chinese 2 students achieved equal or higher reading scores than Chinese 3 students, who also had 2 more years of Chinese

Raising Scores on UK GCSE Exams

School: Secondary school in Hackney, London

Exam: Chinese GCSE (for 16 year olds)

64% of students scored the highest marks A/A+, higher scores than for any other subject (1)

Students learning Chinese had one less year of study; no native Chinese students