This project was developed in the context of a doctoral thesis at the Carnegie Mellon University. It is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The project is particularly interested in setting up the Pinyin Tutor for Chinese teachers that will use it as part of their curriculum. This allows collection of data that can be used to improve methods for teaching pinyin, which is a romanized spelling system of Mandarin Chinese. The Pinyin Tutor is designed to provide a pinyin tutorial for users and to test their pinyin acquisition skills through dictation. Users type in the correct pinyin spelling of the sounds they hear in recordings. Numbers 1-4 correspond to tones 1-4, and the number 5 is used for the neutral tone.
Type of Material:
Tutorial
Recommended Uses:
Learners of pinyin can use this learning object for self-improvement. Teachers can assign it to students as class work or homework, or integrate it into their lesson plans.
Technical Requirements:
Flash player
Identify Major Learning Goals:
This learning object can be used to improve one's listening and pinyin spelling skills. Users type in the pinyin spelling for the syllables and words in the dictation and receive feedback for correct and incorrect answers as well as analyses of the latter.
Target Student Population:
Mainly beginning learners of Mandarin Chinese. Students who already know Chinese but are unfamiliar with the pinyin system can also benefit from this tutorial.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
No prerequisites are necessary, but a general knowledge base of the pinyin system would be helpful.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
This object focuses on pinyin tutoring, and it is well organized with a lot of information about the pinyin system. The tutorial is accompanied by a pinyin chart with audios for all the pinyin sounds. It also includes instructions on pinyin rules.
Concerns:
This object is designed for teachers to use as part of their curriculum. They will need to register to access the full tutorial. The demo tutorial has very few questions. The abundance of information could be overwhelming for learners. They would need help from teachers to understand some concepts presented. More external links to relevant information and learning materials could be included.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
This learning object has a very narrow focus, so it can be integrated into a pinyin lesson or used as an assignment. Although users cannot access the full dictation part of the tutorial, they can still benefit from the pinyin spelling instructions and pinyin chart, as well as audios that accompany each syllable in the chart. Linguists who are familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can further benefit from the tables that show the correspondence between pinyin and IPA.
Concerns:
Users who do not have any Chinese background may be overwhelmed by the introduction of the entire pinyin system. It would be more useful, at least for individual learning, to divide the pinyin system into several groups. Each tutorial/test can focus on each group, and the final tutorial can be a comprehensive test of the entire pinyin system. In addition to dictation, there should be more types of tests to engage students in learning.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
This site has a simple but aesthetically pleasing design with easy navigation. Instructions are clear, and buttons, menus, and labels are distinct. The home page has three links to three major parts of the module: the pinyin tutor demo, general information about pinyin, and registration to use the Pinyin Tutor. Each part is essentially self-contained with all necessary information. The second part contains a variety of useful learning materials and relevant graphics.
Concerns:
There are a few pages that do not have a link back to the parent page. Also, there seems to be an inconsistency of page design for the pronunciation section of the second part (general information about pinyin).
Creative Commons:
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