Language Learning System in Denmark
In continuation of the article " Denmark: a country of common sense " I want to share how the study of the Danish language for foreigners is organized here.
The purpose of the article is to highlight the issue of organizing the educational process. Most of the training can be done online. This includes audio recordings of words, the main video of the lesson (with a cutting-edge plot line), the ability to send the teacher oral and written essays and get feedback from him in the form of a screencast.
At the beginning - a small introductory, then we will touch on the technical part.
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Visitors are given 3 years to begin learning the language at the expense of the state, i.e. free of charge. Despite this, I wondered if it was worth spending a few hours a week on it - after all, only 5.7 million people speak it.
In the end, I singled out for myself the following advantages:
There are also disadvantages:
You can choose a convenient school by location in a special brochure for foreigners, then through an email you can arrange an interview with the school, according to the results of which you will be credited if there are free places.
In my case, there were empty seats, but I filled up the interview.
In StudieSkolen you are given a simple sentence like “A horse carrying a brushwood is slowly rising uphill,” in English only. The peculiarity of the sentence is that it contains all parts of speech - a noun, verb, adverb, pronoun, etc. You need to call them, also in English.
Although I adored such tasks at school, but here I fell asleep on the fact that I did not remember the names of the parts of speech in English. My aunt politely explained to me that this knowledge is very necessary when the teacher explains the material. Come another time.
By hook or by crook I arranged for another task. I was given the text in three or four sentences already in Danish, my aunt read it out loud to me a couple of times and asked me to read it myself, mercilessly pointing out my mistakes. As if reveling in my humiliation, then she also asked me to translate that, to my surprise, I did it - there were many Anglicisms.
So that you understand the complexity of this task: in the Danish language the letter “d” is not only often read as our “l”, but at the same time you need to stick your tongue out well from the mouth. Add to this 5-7 different sounds ranging from “e” to “i” and another 3-4 for “a”. In order to correctly say the sound “R”, I have to “prepare” my throat in advance, making it seem like I'm going to hark. Well, the letter "z" reads like our "with."
Examples that tear my brain:
Danish truth is difficult. Neighbors Norwegians even shot Hochma on this topic:
In general, they took me with a creak.
Groups are divided by frequency of lessons - it happens 1, 2 or 4 times a week. In a group of 8-10 people.
At the first lesson, we were given logins and passwords for special accounts to watch training materials, do homework and communicate with each other.
Loginov gave two. The first is from the Moodle system; This is an open-source e-learning platform with a rather primitive interface, but good functionality on board. The second is from a home-made system containing interactive Danish to go materials.
At the lesson we go through some section of the module - we watch another series of videos or listen to the dialogue, then we try to speak in pairs.
After the lesson, while we are going home, the teacher copy-paste the lesson plan in the forum on Moodle - and we all get homework. It usually includes about 10 interactive exercises, plus small oral and written essays.
Now let's take a closer look at it.
The class has wifi, computers, speakers.
When required, the teacher through the projector displays the image directly on the board, so that over the image you can safely draw on the white board.
Figure 1 - the teacher explains to us the topic "Time"
Through a wireless keyboard, he can control what is being projected, flipping pages, and so on.
If a web page with interactive elements is displayed on the screen, for example, the list expanding arrows, it can physically click a special marker on the blackboard — the projector will understand and send OnClick to the computer.
In general, the technical equipment here is in order.
Previously, it was like everywhere else - a paper tutorial + a CD with video-audio, as well as a small library. All this has not gone away, but 3 years ago a group of three teachers decided to apply more advanced technologies. So a project called “Danish to go” appeared. In addition, for organizational purposes set the platform Moodle.
Figure 2 - the structure of the training system
Moodle is needed for teacher and student dialogue. This includes a list of tasks for work at home, a forum, oral and written essays and receiving feedback on them.
A written composition is simply the text sent by the form, and a Java applet is used to record the voice. What was surprising, both teachers (30+ years old) confidently told in which browsers it works better (and in which versions of IE) and how to launch an alternative Flash player.
Figure 3 - screenshot of the voice recording interface
Now the fun part. You sent your homework. During the week you will receive a response from the teacher in the form of a screencast. I asked to show him how he does it: on his Mac he opens the essay, launches Jing, highlights the desired area on the screen with the rectangle, clicks Record and starts reading the essay aloud, highlighting some places with the mouse and commenting on them.
How the learner benefits from this:
When the teacher presses "Stop", the configured Jing uploads the video file to FTP, and puts the public link on the clipboard - all that remains is to send it to the student. The whole process takes about the same amount of time as a regular written check.
Also I would like to separately note the general benevolent attitude. For example, in the end, I began to allow my son to make a sound introduction to my audio-compositions: he loudly and clearly announced the topic of the lesson. The teacher reacted to it adequately - he laughed and said “thank you, amused”.
Here is a screencast about how my first homework was checked (the teacher reads my text in Danish, and comments, of course, in English): the original SWF file or the version I converted to YouTube (alas, with the logo of the free converter software) .
Figure 4 - Danish to go site interface
At the moment, only the first module is ready, that is, the very beginning of the training. The second module in the work.
So, teachers had a rough idea of ​​what they want. They suggested an idea to the school. It should be noted that the school is private, and the state pays it for each student and for each successfully passed exam. Considering that many students work and travel, it is beneficial for the school to make materials as mobile as possible and students do not drop out of school just because of logistics issues, so this proposal was welcomed. The teachers were able to do this project during working hours.
Here is how my teacher and co-author of the project Esben Ludixen commented:
The school has signed contracts with UNC web studio for the implementation of the website, as well as with the LabelFilm film studio for the production of high-quality video. As for the video, the school provided a breakdown by topic (so that there were no complicated turns already in the first lessons), and the film studio strung it all into a meaningful plot. In addition, it was decided to link the issues with a common storyline: 2 friends sit in a restaurant (the theme “Food order”), two girls order furniture (the theme “Shopping”), then they get acquainted (the theme “Presentation”), and so on. It is said that girls-students are eagerly awaiting new episodes to find out who married whom. Professional actors are involved in the video.
The first video was made a little differently from everyone else: at the beginning, the same beginners are shown: they are stupid, ask again, laugh nervously, but try to speak. This is done to remove shyness from those who are just beginning to master the complex Danish language. Well, at the end of the first video begins "series".
In the site interface, it looks like this; Students can follow the text next to the video.
Figure 5 - Video and Text
The tasks are quite different: enter the missing words or select from the list, form the text by dragging individual words or whole phrases, listen to the recording and answer questions. When you click on the “Read more” link, links to reference material on topics appear, for example, “Figures” or “Professions”.
Here's what it looks like.
Figure 6 - making sentences of words
Figure 7 - composing text from phrases
At the top left, the “Play” button is visible, it launches an audio recording of what is written and drawn below.
Figure 8 - Listening Audio with Tracking by Text
For recording audio conversations, teachers used 20-30 colleagues and acquaintances. Esben says:
The first lesson is a free textbook, compiled from Danish to go. I asked if the site was folded so that you can immediately make a printed version - alas, no, you have to maintain the relevance of two different versions.
At the end of the article, I note that with all the convenience of the system and the professionalism of its execution, the Danish language remains difficult to learn, and instead of doing my homework, I write this article ...
UPDATE: useful article in Russian " Learning the Danish language " - people of different nationalities tell what it was like to learn.
UPDATE 2: after 1-2 modules, the basic phrases become clear, you can shop at the store and the like. Personally, I left the courses after that in order to focus on my educational project - because it is necessary to invest serious time and effort to learn the language.
The purpose of the article is to highlight the issue of organizing the educational process. Most of the training can be done online. This includes audio recordings of words, the main video of the lesson (with a cutting-edge plot line), the ability to send the teacher oral and written essays and get feedback from him in the form of a screencast.
At the beginning - a small introductory, then we will touch on the technical part.
')
Why learn Danish?
Visitors are given 3 years to begin learning the language at the expense of the state, i.e. free of charge. Despite this, I wondered if it was worth spending a few hours a week on it - after all, only 5.7 million people speak it.
In the end, I singled out for myself the following advantages:
- Although Danes speak English fluently, they really appreciate if you try to communicate with them in your native language. I would also like to understand the inscriptions on the street, letters from the bank, etc.,
- for obtaining a residence permit is required to pass an examination for language proficiency and knowledge of the culture of the country. I do not plan to live here, but I decided not to close this “window to Europe”,
- knowledge of Danish greatly simplifies the understanding of other languages ​​of the Scandinavian group,
- it was just interesting what people say when they think you don’t understand them,
- what I didn’t think about until I started doing it - new acquaintances. It is easier to make friends with foreign classmates than with Danes: in the courses you get a cohesive international team with a common interest.
There are also disadvantages:
- spent time,
- dialects - although the main Denmark is the size of one and a half Crimea, they often recall the story of how the inhabitants of Copenhagen cannot understand the inhabitants of Jutland (another part of the country near Germany). Some Danish territories, such as Greenlandia and the Faroe Islands, have their own languages,
- difficulty level: high. Many new unusual sounds, the whole mouth is used at all. There is a joke that the Danes are talking to hot potatoes in their mouths.
Format
You can choose a convenient school by location in a special brochure for foreigners, then through an email you can arrange an interview with the school, according to the results of which you will be credited if there are free places.
In my case, there were empty seats, but I filled up the interview.
How to fill up an interview
In StudieSkolen you are given a simple sentence like “A horse carrying a brushwood is slowly rising uphill,” in English only. The peculiarity of the sentence is that it contains all parts of speech - a noun, verb, adverb, pronoun, etc. You need to call them, also in English.
Although I adored such tasks at school, but here I fell asleep on the fact that I did not remember the names of the parts of speech in English. My aunt politely explained to me that this knowledge is very necessary when the teacher explains the material. Come another time.
By hook or by crook I arranged for another task. I was given the text in three or four sentences already in Danish, my aunt read it out loud to me a couple of times and asked me to read it myself, mercilessly pointing out my mistakes. As if reveling in my humiliation, then she also asked me to translate that, to my surprise, I did it - there were many Anglicisms.
So that you understand the complexity of this task: in the Danish language the letter “d” is not only often read as our “l”, but at the same time you need to stick your tongue out well from the mouth. Add to this 5-7 different sounds ranging from “e” to “i” and another 3-4 for “a”. In order to correctly say the sound “R”, I have to “prepare” my throat in advance, making it seem like I'm going to hark. Well, the letter "z" reads like our "with."
Examples that tear my brain:
| Danish word | What is it all about? | Sound |
|---|---|---|
| Strøget | Main pedestrian street of Copenhagen | "Stroel" (in the end it is necessary to stick out the tongue). All Russians, including Google Maps, are simply called Stroget. |
| Madrid, chocolade | Words you think you know how to say | “Madril”, “Chocolol” (on the “p” it is necessary to make a hacking sound, and at the end on the letter “l” we usually stick out the tongue). |
| selvfølgelig, lejlighed | “Of course” and “apartment” respectively | “Sifuli” and “lilihil” (we don’t forget to stick out the tongue). Very beautiful words, but to spell them is unreal. |
| Zend | framework | "syn". I did not understand my Danish colleague what kind of new framework such was, until he wrote it on paper. |
Danish truth is difficult. Neighbors Norwegians even shot Hochma on this topic:
In general, they took me with a creak.
How are classes
Groups are divided by frequency of lessons - it happens 1, 2 or 4 times a week. In a group of 8-10 people.
At the first lesson, we were given logins and passwords for special accounts to watch training materials, do homework and communicate with each other.
Loginov gave two. The first is from the Moodle system; This is an open-source e-learning platform with a rather primitive interface, but good functionality on board. The second is from a home-made system containing interactive Danish to go materials.
At the lesson we go through some section of the module - we watch another series of videos or listen to the dialogue, then we try to speak in pairs.
After the lesson, while we are going home, the teacher copy-paste the lesson plan in the forum on Moodle - and we all get homework. It usually includes about 10 interactive exercises, plus small oral and written essays.
Now let's take a closer look at it.
Structure of the training system
Equipment
The class has wifi, computers, speakers.
When required, the teacher through the projector displays the image directly on the board, so that over the image you can safely draw on the white board.
Figure 1 - the teacher explains to us the topic "Time"
Through a wireless keyboard, he can control what is being projected, flipping pages, and so on.
If a web page with interactive elements is displayed on the screen, for example, the list expanding arrows, it can physically click a special marker on the blackboard — the projector will understand and send OnClick to the computer.
In general, the technical equipment here is in order.
How things are arranged
Previously, it was like everywhere else - a paper tutorial + a CD with video-audio, as well as a small library. All this has not gone away, but 3 years ago a group of three teachers decided to apply more advanced technologies. So a project called “Danish to go” appeared. In addition, for organizational purposes set the platform Moodle.
Figure 2 - the structure of the training system
Moodle. Writings and feedback from the teacher
Moodle is needed for teacher and student dialogue. This includes a list of tasks for work at home, a forum, oral and written essays and receiving feedback on them.
A written composition is simply the text sent by the form, and a Java applet is used to record the voice. What was surprising, both teachers (30+ years old) confidently told in which browsers it works better (and in which versions of IE) and how to launch an alternative Flash player.
Figure 3 - screenshot of the voice recording interface
Now the fun part. You sent your homework. During the week you will receive a response from the teacher in the form of a screencast. I asked to show him how he does it: on his Mac he opens the essay, launches Jing, highlights the desired area on the screen with the rectangle, clicks Record and starts reading the essay aloud, highlighting some places with the mouse and commenting on them.
How the learner benefits from this:
- the student hears the sound of what he wrote,
- receives feedback not only about errors, but also about the roughness of the text. Remember when they returned to your school checked essays - mistakes, assessment and maximum postscript “Try your best!”. And then a thorough oral debriefing,
- You can watch the video as you like, for example, to work out the desired pronunciation.
When the teacher presses "Stop", the configured Jing uploads the video file to FTP, and puts the public link on the clipboard - all that remains is to send it to the student. The whole process takes about the same amount of time as a regular written check.
Also I would like to separately note the general benevolent attitude. For example, in the end, I began to allow my son to make a sound introduction to my audio-compositions: he loudly and clearly announced the topic of the lesson. The teacher reacted to it adequately - he laughed and said “thank you, amused”.
Here is a screencast about how my first homework was checked (the teacher reads my text in Danish, and comments, of course, in English): the original SWF file or the version I converted to YouTube (alas, with the logo of the free converter software) .
Danish to go. Interactive materials
Figure 4 - Danish to go site interface
At the moment, only the first module is ready, that is, the very beginning of the training. The second module in the work.
So, teachers had a rough idea of ​​what they want. They suggested an idea to the school. It should be noted that the school is private, and the state pays it for each student and for each successfully passed exam. Considering that many students work and travel, it is beneficial for the school to make materials as mobile as possible and students do not drop out of school just because of logistics issues, so this proposal was welcomed. The teachers were able to do this project during working hours.
Here is how my teacher and co-author of the project Esben Ludixen commented:
Our school has such a tendency when teachers themselves prepare materials for their work. So the idea of ​​making “blended learning” (a mixture of online materials and traditional classroom learning) has long been in the air.
The school has signed contracts with UNC web studio for the implementation of the website, as well as with the LabelFilm film studio for the production of high-quality video. As for the video, the school provided a breakdown by topic (so that there were no complicated turns already in the first lessons), and the film studio strung it all into a meaningful plot. In addition, it was decided to link the issues with a common storyline: 2 friends sit in a restaurant (the theme “Food order”), two girls order furniture (the theme “Shopping”), then they get acquainted (the theme “Presentation”), and so on. It is said that girls-students are eagerly awaiting new episodes to find out who married whom. Professional actors are involved in the video.
The first video was made a little differently from everyone else: at the beginning, the same beginners are shown: they are stupid, ask again, laugh nervously, but try to speak. This is done to remove shyness from those who are just beginning to master the complex Danish language. Well, at the end of the first video begins "series".
In the site interface, it looks like this; Students can follow the text next to the video.
Figure 5 - Video and Text
The tasks are quite different: enter the missing words or select from the list, form the text by dragging individual words or whole phrases, listen to the recording and answer questions. When you click on the “Read more” link, links to reference material on topics appear, for example, “Figures” or “Professions”.
Here's what it looks like.
Figure 6 - making sentences of words
Figure 7 - composing text from phrases
At the top left, the “Play” button is visible, it launches an audio recording of what is written and drawn below.
Figure 8 - Listening Audio with Tracking by Text
For recording audio conversations, teachers used 20-30 colleagues and acquaintances. Esben says:
The idea is to have as many different voices as possible. When you hear Danish speech with only a Copenhagen accent, only one speaker of only one age, in real life Danish can be shocking.
Paper materials
The first lesson is a free textbook, compiled from Danish to go. I asked if the site was folded so that you can immediately make a printed version - alas, no, you have to maintain the relevance of two different versions.
At the end of the article, I note that with all the convenience of the system and the professionalism of its execution, the Danish language remains difficult to learn, and instead of doing my homework, I write this article ...
UPDATE: useful article in Russian " Learning the Danish language " - people of different nationalities tell what it was like to learn.
UPDATE 2: after 1-2 modules, the basic phrases become clear, you can shop at the store and the like. Personally, I left the courses after that in order to focus on my educational project - because it is necessary to invest serious time and effort to learn the language.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181690/
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