| Assistive Technology |
| Assistive technology extends one's abilities. Although the term is most commonly employed in the context of overcoming disability, assistive technology has an important role to play in language learning. |
| Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in reading and writing languages that have complex scripts and orthography, and which lack word segmentation. These include most mainland Southeast Asian languages, like Thai, Burmese, Lao, Khmer, Shan, Karen, and Mon, as well as Arabic, Urdu, and many others used throughout South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. |
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Such language present significant hurdles for the language student.
Although these 'learning pains' have traditionally been considered to
be part and parcel of language study, increasing demands for
language expertise make such attitudes
expensive, old-fashioned luxuries.
Language teaching today requires the best possible methods for:
- rapid acquisition of new language skills, even if
traditional teaching materials are not readily available.
- extension of existing language abiities; in particular,
bringing reading and writing up to par with speaking ability.
- adaptation of related language skills, particularly via
cross-training between languages that are related, but
may use mutually unintelligible writing systems.
Tools that can assist reading and writing are obvious candidates
for development.
This demo page shows two prototypes:
the writer's helper uses predictive completion to
generate native orthography from either native orthography or
phonetic transcription.
the reader's helper automatically segments connected text
into individual words.
Both demonstration programs have been developed for Thai only.
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