Learn a foreign language by reading text

Explaining the Personal Learning Environment with an example use case

The ROLE Project enables a new experience of learning by developing an adaptive and personalized learning environment for learners. Learners will be able to individualize their learning environment. They can combine different kinds of learning services to enhance the way of learning. Learners can adapt tools and functionalities to their personal situation of learning. For explaining how this works in practice, we constructed an example around a young professional who uses this kind of learning for personal development of language skills. Let’s call our employee ‘Tim’. 

Tim is preparing for the London Book Fair

Tim is an employee at a German publisher which develops and sells different kinds of books. He works in the sales department. For representing his company in the international market he has to attend the Book Fair in London. As business communication here is in English, Tim needs to improve his English skills, especially in business English. He has been learning already for other purposes with his Personal Learning Environment (PLE) and now wants to use it to learn English. 

Tim opens a web browser window displaying his Personal Learning Environment. He adds new learning applications (called widgets) which he wants to use for learning Business English. He chooses the Language Resource Browser Widget and the Translation Widget. Furthermore he adds the Vocabulary Trainer Widget where he can build up the vocabulary that he wants to learn regularly and logs in. He arranges the widgets on the screen side by side: 

Now Tim starts using the Language Resource Browser by inserting the URL from a text about the book fair in London. He also starts reading the new text. But he doesn’t know the word  ‘negotiation’, so he marks it and selects it by pressing the ‘Get Term’- Button. Because Tim wants a translation of the term, he forwards it to the Translator Widget (it is automatically also forwarded to the Vocabulary Trainer). 

Tim considers the term ‘negotiation’ as important, so he wants to add it to a personal vocabulary list. He switches to the Vocabulary Widget and creates a new vocabulary list, named ‚bookfair’. Now he can add the selected term to his list.

In this way, Tim continues to read the next article about ‘Comic books which are used for education’. During reading he adds several terms to his list, also the term ‘exploitation gap’. But he doesn’t find the suggested translation of the term succeeded. So Tim types in a custom translation of the term in his list.

After some reading and entering of words, Tim has a good list of vocabulary items out of his area of expertise.

Tim also finds interesting videos about the Book Fair on YouTube, but he has difficulties to understand some expressions. So he decides to use the Language Browser Widget again, but this time the part for watching videos (“Media” tab).

 Tim watches the interview where he hears the term ‘contemporary’ he does not know, so he types the expression in the ‘New Term/sentence’-field and presses the Send-button. Finally the translation shows up in the Translator Widget.

Now Tim wants to train the newly learned words in his vocabulary list using the Vocabulary Trainer widget. The widget gives him an English word and prompts for his translation to German. Analyzing his answer, it indicates whether it is correct or wrong. One day, he is learning with his vocabulary trainer and recognizes that he has problems to remember the term ‘lack of access’ because he does not know the context anymore. Fortunately the vocabulary trainer has stored the link to the original text. 

Tim clicks on the source-function and the original text appears in a new tab. Reading the sentence and thinking of the context facilitates him to memorize the term. Another benefit is that Tim now knows in which situations he can use the term.

After a few weeks in which Tim has continuously worked with the Language Learning Widgets, he takes a look at the learning statistics in the vocabulary trainer. He sees the success rate of 100%, which makes him feel well prepared for his new job.

To learn more about this widget bundle use the navigation buttons at the top of page ("Description", "Screencast", ...)