Kedrova G.

Moscow State University, Philological Faculty, 119899 Moscow, Vorobjovy Gory, MGU, 1 bld. of Humanities, R. 983.

E-mail: kedr@philol.msu.ru

This paper presents preliminary evaluation of the results, achieved through investigation (comparative study) of Russian Language educational curricula designed for special kind of educational activities, namely, Distance Language Learning via Internet. Comparative study of Internet-based educational curricula in Russian Phonetics was based upon formal criteria and objective evidence concerning: (1) coincidence of navigational patterns embedded in a web-presentation of course material to main cognitive patterns of students, (2) rate of hypertext optimisation, (3) adjustability to different academic syllabuses and educational modes.

Keywords: advanced distance learning, Internet-based manuals, hypertext, navigational patterns, formal approach.

We are living now in the situation of profound changes in the archetype of Distance Learning. The “prehistoric”, before the Internet age, model in traditional learning process was based upon the following paradigm:

New (“historic”) Internet-based model (so called ADL or Advanced Distance Learning) is completely changing the general point of view. New pedagogic paradigm is as follows:

The chief problem in this situation is lack of knowledge and adequate definitions for crucial theoretical concepts and notions. It is necessary for us to:

• evolve a new method and precise basics of teaching methodology in the context of new informational environment;
• refine upon teaching methods and technology of creating Internet-based educational curricula;
• approve elaborated methods and Internet-based manuals.

Thus the challenge of new educational age that we are to meet is:

• wide-ranging studies of individual cognitive strategies (investigation of the Learner);
• elaboration of technology of Internet-based educational curricula (research and multiple pilot study of the Manual)
• training and retraining of educational personnel (re-education of the Teacher).

Thesis 1. A comparative study of structure and content of distant courses practised at different universities could be of substantial contribution to the solution of these problems as well as analysis of progress reports and independent testing of results.

Thesis 2. Comparative study of Internet-based educational curricula must be based upon formal criteria and objective evidence concerning:

(1) peculiarities of the underlying graph: the pages and hyperlinks of the educational Internet site may be viewed as nodes and edges in a directed graph.

(2) coincidence of navigational patterns embedded in a web-presentation of course material to main cognitive patterns of students,

(3) rate of hypertext optimisation,

(4) adjustability to different academic syllabuses and educational modes.

Comparative study of Internet-based educational curricula and teaching manuals in the area of Russian Language Training done by our group revealed that:

• indicators and formal attributes of basic cognitive strategies followed by learners in virtual learning environments could be established. The main strategies distinguished by experiments of De Vocht [1] are:
• depth-first,
• breadth-first,
• “random” navigation.

• formal attributes and semantic values of structural components of educational hypertext (hypertext nodes) could be also established.

Traditionally nodes of the hypergraph are classified according to in-coming and out-coming links’ ratio as: hubs vs. authorities. An authority page is one that contains a lot of information about the topic. A hub page is one that contains a large number of links to pages containing information about the topic — an example of a hub page is a resource list on some specific topic. [2] In our study we have found out that there are more functional (semantic) diversity of hypertextual nodes and links (as an example will be discussed a section of hypertext on Russian articulation). Some semantically relevant parameters correspond to the ratio of total linkage of a node, proportional value of incoming and outgoing links, and clustering of interrelated nodes according to their attraction to authority node. These parameters are closely co-ordinated with semantic values of node’s content and differs conceptual categories, operative (key) notions, terminological units, illustrative units and examples. This categorisation helped us to build a self-consistent knowledge representation of phonetic level of Russian language system.

The most appropriate core factor turned out to be the structurization of all linguistic data upon real differences in word semantics. Thus representative samples for Russian phonetics (and any human language alike) should be “minimal pairs” [3]. The selection of such items from the lexicon (80.000 Russian words) was executed by a special programme. [4] Every selected item was connected with its sound file (male and female’s pronunciation), acoustic representation of the sounding and its phonetic transcription. Every element of the transcription is linked up with computer animation of articulatory gestures and animated video of lips’ and jaw movements for labialized phonemes. [5] The whole corpus of illustrative educational data (vocabularies accompanying all parts of the course) was collected and digitised. These vocabularies are suggested to become a base for continuously renewing according to present state of a language educational material as well as a crude substance for drills and exercises.

Formal attributes and integral index of hypertexts, which belong to different functional styles (hypertext genres) could be calculated with special mathematical formulae. [6] They are:

• index of connectivity
• index of stratum

The prototype of the whole system of Web-based Russian Phonetics was integrated into the regular curricula at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State Lomonosov University. The URL of the web-site is: http://www.philol.msu.ru/rus/galya-1/index.htm

The course comprises six modules:

1. Introductory module: Russian articulation and speech perception with special accent on speech acoustics.
2. Segmental Phonetics:

1. Russian system of vowels.
2. Russian system of consonants.
3. Syllabic structure of Russian word.

3. Russian speech rhythmic (theoretical and practical idea of the Russian accentuation, patterns of vowel’s reduction, accentual paradigms).
4. Intonation patterns of Russian speech (basic types of communicative IP – Intonation Patterns).
5. Prosody (basic facilities of emotional and logic prominence in Russian).
6. Modern tendencies in Russian orthoepy.

The adaptation of this technology at he Philological Faculty of Moscow State University proved its high efficiency for enabling effective interactive learning as well as contextual training (drills) and on-line testing.

References.

[1] De Bra P. Hypermedia Structures and Systems. URL: http://wwwis.win.tue.nl:8001/2L690/.

[2] Kleinberg J. Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment, in: Proc. ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 1998, URL: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/auth.ps

[3] Trubetzkoy N.S. Grundzüge der Phonologie. Praga, 1939.

[4] Yegorov A., Kedrova G. Programma obrabotki kompjuternyh slovarej dla uchebnyh i issledovatelskih celej. Mater. Conf. “Teorija i praktika rechevyh issledovanij (ARSO-99). M., 1999.

[5] Kedrova G. Model of special linguistic data base for educational purposes: Russian Phonetics on the Web. CAL 2001 “Learning across the ages – looking back and looking forwards”. Elsevier, 2001.

[6] De Bra P. Using hypertext metrics to measure research output levels. Scientometrics, Vol. 47, nr.2, pp. 227-236, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.