About
This project is sponsored by Language Guide, a non-profit organization. It aims to develop three types of resources.
Pictorial Vocabulary Guides
The pictorial vocabulary guide contains image based pages (les plantes) as well as complementary pages with adjectives, verbs, and expressions (les taches ménagères). Place your cursor over an object or text to hear it pronounced aloud.
When using the pictorial guides it's best to participate in an active way. Guess the word - even say it aloud yourself - and let the voice you hear be your friendly tutor that either corrects or confirms your guess. There is another way to interact with the page. When quiz mode is activated, the voice will say a word. Try to click on the image for that word. If you are incorrect it is pronounced again, otherwise your "tutor" goes on to the next word. Quiz mode is a good way to practice audio comprehension. (les nombres) Not all pages have quiz mode enabled at this time.
If you ever wish to save a word for later review, click on its image. A popup menu with the word and its translation will appear along with an option "save to account". You can view your list of saved words by clicking on "my account" on bottom menu. If you ever have a doubt about exactly what an image refers to, clicking on the image is a good way to get clarification.
The English and French pictorial guides were recently updated. Language Guide is going to be recording new guides in the coming months. You can contribute by helping with translations, importing existing translations into the online pictorial wiki, contributing your voice, or assisting in the sound integration process. You can also suggest new words and phrases.
Interactive Readings
Interactive readings help develop comprehension skills and build vocabulary.
- Click on any word, the sound track will start up at that location
- Pause the reading, and the word that was being read is highlighted.
- Place your cursor over an underlined word, the definition will be displayed.
- Place your cursor over a underlined punctuation mark, and the translation for that sentence will appear.
Language Guide has developed an open source wiki for creating readings. In the near term we hope to have readings that explore French history, as well as readings from radio broadcasts in English.
Grammar Guides
Experimental introductory grammar guides have been developed for French, Spanish, and English. In the long-term, Language Guide plans on developing an open source tool that hooks into mediawiki to generate sound integrated pages. Sound integrated grammar guides could then be developed leveraging the capabilities of mediawiki.