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00400 C00002 00002 TEACHING AND LEARNING CHINESE IN A COMPUTER ENVIRONMENT
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00100 TEACHING AND LEARNING CHINESE IN A COMPUTER ENVIRONMENT
00200
00300 SUSAN POH
00400 The Mitre Corporation
00500 Westgate Research Park
00600 McLean, Va.
00700
00800
00900 People in Western civilization encounter great difficulty when
01000 attempting to learn the Chinese language. The major difficulties
01100 seem to be due to the non-alphabetic, non-phonetic and
01200 pictorially-structured characters. Additionally, a better and a more
01300 efficient teaching and learning methodology for such type of
01400 language is also lacking. This paper describes an experimental
01500 system which applies computers and computer graphics to teach people
01600 to learn the Chinese ideogram in a systematic, simple, and effective
01700 manner.
01800
01900 This experimental Chinese teaching and learning system has been
02000 implemented using a special purpose system called LOGO. LOGO is
02100 LISP-based software, implemented on several PDP-10 computers on the
02200 ARPA network. It was designed to study whether the notion and
02300 formal reasoning of problem-solving skills can be taught. The
02400 software provides a set of commands to control a robot (called a
02500 "turtle" ), which moves around on the floor to display the results
02600 of the commands. A conceptual version of the robot (a display
02700 "turtle"), which is more flexible and gives immediate feedback to
02800 the student, has been implemented as a cursor that moves on a
02900 graphics display device. The basic set of LOGO commands can be used
03000 individually or can be grouped together to form procedures, which in
03100 turn can be incorporated in other procedures.
03200
03300 Chinese ideograms have a very complicated static image. However,
03400 they are composed of a finite number of strokes. Thus one can think
03500 of the basic strokes as letters in an alphabet and the stroke order
03600 as rules of spelling. Since the LOGO turtle can be commanded to
03700 move in any direction for a variable distance, it can be used to
03800 draw Chinese ideograms.
03900
04000
04100 First, a set of LOGO procedure was defined to draw the simple
04200 strokes. Then these procedures were used as primitive commands to
04300 construct Chinese ideograms, one stroke at time. Using the
04400 individual ideograms as a data base, courseware to teach the Chinese
04500 language was designed. Five demonstration lessons have been designed
04600 to illustrate this teaching methodology.
04700
04800
04900 To learn word orientation, the student can retrieve any Chinese
05000 character by typing the English equivalence on the input console.
05100 The Chinese character is then presented on the graphics display
05200 along with phonetic romanized pronounciation. Rules for constructing
05300 the character and the rules for Chinese sentence construction are
05400 taught along with examples. The first lesson shows the samples of
05500 strokes and radicals for Chinese ideograms; the second lesson
05600 presents a sample of English-Chinese equivalences; the third lesson
05700 explains the rules for constructing descriptive sentences; the
05800 fourth lesson gives rules for constructing functive sentences; and
05900 finally, the fifth lesson demonstrates simple question and answer
06000 types of sentences.
06100
06200
06300 With the addition of a graphic interactive device, and an audio
06400 device this system can be fully developed in the future as a
06500 completely functional CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction) system.
06600 It will provide on-line drill and practice in the art of Chinese
06700 calligraphy; it will present the exact pronounciation of the
06800 character; it will teach the students how to use the Chinese
06900 dictionary; and, it will generate courseware to teach the
07000 morphological system of Chinese orthography.
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