The Faculty members of the Department of Asian Studies have developed a wide array of web-based language teaching materials. This section of the website is designed to demonstrate some of the projects. Many of these tools, developed by the staff of Cornell's Language Resource Center in cooperation with department staff, were designed with a user interface for teachers to be able to create and change web material without using HTML codes or programming languages. Funding support for projects has been provided through awards from The Freeman Foundation Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative, Department of Education National Resource Center support, The Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, Asian area programs, and the College of Arts & Sciences.

If you have a question about specific materials, contact the course instructor or contact Dick Feldman, Director of the Language Resource Center, or Media Development Manager and Webmaster, Dan Gaibel, regarding the web-based tools.

QuickTime must be installed on your computer to view any of our media-based projects.

Click on a screen image to view an example

Language Program Pages: These pages are designed to hold information of interest to prospective students, advisors and others on and off campus. These web pages have an online interface that teachers can use to enter information and links as well as update that information themselves. View the Update Interface teachers use to edit the pages.

Course Pages: Course pages are for prospective students and advisors as well as students registered in the course. The material under the "student info" tab can be password protected while the rest of the page is open to interested people not in the course. Similar to the Program Pages, the course pages offer teachers an easy-to-use interface. The LRC can customize a Course Page to the teacher's design. View the Update Interface for a course page.

Media Workbooks: As a complement to the growing online Media Library of the Language Resource Center, the media workbooks are designed to present audio or video along with text questions in the target language. Using any media in our collection or additional material supplied by the teacher, the Asian course workbooks are created online, similar to the Program and Course Pages. Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank and essay style questions can be easily written. A separate page presents the teacher with the results of each student's work. With short authentic videos easily available on the web, teachers have created some innovative exercises. Workbooks are online in Chinese, Japanese, Sinhala, Khmer, Indonesian, Bengali, Vietnamese and Korean. View the Update Interface, and the View Results page.

Animated tools: Using such tools as Macromedia Flash and Director, we welcome projects which make use of cutting edge web technology. When appropriate, web animation can be a stimulating pedagogical tool. The Burmese Script project was created by LRC Production Manager Andrew Page, with Burmese teacher San San Hnin Tun. Click on the letters to see how they are made and to hear the sound. In collaboration with Mark Turin of the Digital Himalaya project, an animation was also made demonstrating Tibetan script and sounds.

Web Audio Lab: In conjunction with Slava Paperno and with support from a Cornell Faculty Innovations in Technology grant, the LRC has developed Web Audio Lab. This powerful freestanding program allows teachers to design programmed media input to students, who then record their own voices. They can listen back to these recordings, compare their recordings to a model, revise them if necessary, then submit them to a server, where their teacher can efficiently review them at various levels of intensity, and make text or audio comments back to the student. The program is highly flexible, designed to make crucial language practice as efficient as possible for the teacher and the student. With support from Cornell, the Department of Asian Studies and the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, the Chinese, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin for Cantonese Speakers, Japanese, Bengali and Burmese language programs have adapted material in WAL, with more to come. The student program runs on a CD, for greatest efficiency, and students and teachers see the submissions on the web.

Online Scheduled Image Library: In the Introductory Asian Studies courses, visual images form an important part of students' experience of the new culture. In collaboration with Robin McNeal, the LRC developed a visual database tuned to his teaching needs in Asian 212, "Introduction to China." This program allows him to prepare lecture sets of annotated images and then to make these sets available for student review. Again, this is all accomplished with a teacher-friendly interface.

Vietnamese Video Production and Workbooks: With support from the Department of Asian Studies, the Freeman Foundation and the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, Thuy Tranviet, senior lecturer and head of the Vietnamese language program, has developed a large series of original video exercises. She did original filming in Vietnam in 2003 and 2004 of conversations, street scenes and authentic events. She has processed this footage, with technical assistance from the LRC into a very substantial series of Media Workbooks, linked comprehensively to the themes of her notional syllabus.

Digital Himalaya: With support from the Department of Asian Studies, the Freeman Foundation and the Digital Himalaya Project, Mark Turin has worked together with Shambhu Oja and the LRC to produce digital language resources and tools for online learning of Nepali. These materials include audio dialogs with transcripts and translations, a pronouncing 1100 word bilingual dictionary, supplementary videos, and grammar explanations.

Specialized Readings: This web page allows students to read Chinese text with no hassle of looking up unknown words in a dictionary or vocabulary list. It was prepared by Sahoko Ichikawa in cooperation with Qiuyun Teng. The page appears to be only text, but when the mouse moves over an unfamiliar word, the definition and pronunciation of the word pop up in a vocabulary window, both appropriate to the given context. In addition, each sentence is highlighted and read by a native speaker.

Japanese texts with on-line dictionary: This is a sample of Japanese reading materials with a text linked to an on-line dictionary that shows vocabulary and pronunciation of Kanji characters. An audio recording of the text by a native speaker, and printable versions of both the Kanji exercise sheet and the text are also provided.