Arabic Without Walls
Arabic Without Walls is an innovative, award-winning project developed with the National Middle East Language Resource Center and the University of California Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning that uses electronic activities to assist in the teaching and learning of introductory Arabic. It is used in Arabic courses at universities in California, at BYU, at BYU’s StarTalk summer language camp program as well as at various high schools around Utah County.

This already successful program is currently being re-designed for better maintenance, distribution, and delivery of learning resources, making it easier to track learner performance and improve program efficacy. Developing better ways of acquiring learner performance data is instrumental in helping teachers tailor instruction to students’ needs as well as in designing more effective materials in the future.


Teaching Arabic with Pictures
This project is the ongoing effort of a BYU research group to teach Arabic using sounds, images, and characters, a concept based on the work of Ivor A. Richards that is leading to concrete results in faculty research and publication as well as masters’ and doctoral projects for theses and dissertations.

It includes ten lessons moving from basic greetings to slightly more complex phrases to help learners discover Arabic for themselves without any L1 (native language) involvement.


Annotated Japanese Reader
Developed as part of research by Brian James, a graduate student in the Language Acquisition and Teaching Program, CyberHon builds on research done elsewhere and is used to test the effectiveness of different types of annotations — combinations of text, audio, image, and video annotations — that help learners understand new vocabulary.

Testing to determine students’ retention of new Japanese vocabulary items complemented seminal results obtained in other languages and suggests that “kanji may not be processed in the same way as the phonemic hiragana representations of words.”


LETSI, ADL, and SCORM
The ARCLITE Lab has worked for several years with the Federal government’s Advanced Distributed Learning initiative (ADL) and the International Federation for Learning, Education, & Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI), organizations that develop specifications for online learning, education, and training. SCORM, a reference model developed by ADL, specifies how to design instructional content and learning management systems so that all content is compatible with any learning management system.

Developments in this area are crucial to ARCLITE’s goals of finding ways to use technology to facilitate the learning process. Association with these organizations allows ARCLITE access to and a hand in the development of the latest technology and thinking that facilitate all aspects of online learning.

Regăsire
Students working in the ARCLITE Lab under a Mentoring Enviornment Grant in 2004 developed Regăsire, a movie designed to introduce Romanian language and culture to beginning students who will be working in orphanages in Romania. The captivating storyline and picturesque cinematography, filmed on location in Romania, is an example of the high quality work done by team members and is paired with lesson plans and other materials to teach Romanian in an effective, entertaining way.

Current work is ongoing with the initial soundtrack to obtain copyrights and produce more original, quality music—opening up opportunities to make Regăsire available in the future to Romanian programs at other institutions.


Arabic resource indexing
A project in which undergraduate students have cataloged and indexed a large variety of electronic Arabic materials, this effort is designed to improve the accessibility of materials created over the years. This project features a new online database to provide access for teachers as well as students to a variety of Arabic language-learning videos and other learning resources.

Databases currently include all video content from a 46-DVD set of Arabic 101 and 102 courses taped in a BYU studio during a previous Summer Term intensive Arabic program at BYU that was taught by Dr. Muhammad Eissa. Future features include an advanced search platform so learners can scan by topic to find the most relevant materials for their particular needs.


Swedish 202 Course Development
The purpose of this project is to revamp and enhance BYU’s Swedish 202 curriculum—later to be expanded to courses in Danish and Norwegian. The primary goal is to develop curricula and materials sufficient to meet the high general education guidelines and standards mandated by BYU. This will be done by combining language functions, notions, and cultural concepts in order to achieve expected learning outcomes and improve on the effectiveness of previous courses.

This effort will provide student instructors and part-time faculty the resources to teach high-quality language courses every semester and reduce what is normally a demanding workload.


Other contributions
• The Arabic Syllabus Project is on-going, an effort to create a more structured and effective syllabus for the teaching of Arabic 101 and 102. Work includes implementing new resources, activities, and ideas as well as a clearer organization for teachers to improve language learning and retention.
• Swahili 101 online, a fully interactive course developed under a Mentoring Environment Grant, helps beginning students gain the skills to competently interact in countries like Tanzania and Kenya.
• The lab leads the Customized Video Playback (CVP) group on campus, which is working to develop technologies and standard approaches for video asset description and playlists, as well as to develop instances of media players for better online media streaming and playback.
• The Yves Duteil CD is a hybrid CD that combines the functionality of CD-Audio with pertinent materials delivered via CD-ROM to bring music and lessons into the classroom. Related lesson plans are provided to aid French teachers as they work with students at novice and intermediate proficiency levels.
• Business French and Business Italian video materials provide learners real-world perspective on their language in the competitive global economy—and the exposure necessary to compete in today’s business world.
• The Angoff Rating Application provides a platform where linguists from around the world can rate various language assessment items that will be integrated into standardized language tests and other language applications.