Teaching Material for the Intonation of Questions in English (English)
This presentation comprises a brief introduction to the task produced by a robot that uses a charismatic speaking style, as well as the visualizations of three questions in English. Our study has shown (Alm, Fischer & Niebuhr in preparation) that having a robot introduce the task in a charismatic speaking style makes students produce the fewest errors in the speech production task. The intonation visualizations rest on the notation developed and tested in Fischer et al. (submitted).
Manual for Making Teaching Materials for Intonation (or for Self-Studies in Intonation) (English)
In this teaching material we explain how you can make teaching materials for intonation with the visualization technique that we have developed in this project. The manual does not require any previous knowledge of working with either intonation or the computer program PRAAT:
In Part 1, we explain about intonation, why it is important to learn and introduce how to work with the freeware computer program PRAAT; for those of us who are not (yet) expert listeners to the pitch movements of the voice, it is a very good idea to get some visualization help form the computer.
In Part 2, we use the example of English list intonation to explain how to turn your auditive impression and the visual PRAAT analysis into the visual intonation representation that we have developed.
In Part 3, we use the example of Danish question intonation to explain how to turn your auditive impression and visual PRAAT analyses into the visual intonation representation that we have developed.
Recommendations for the Teaching of Second Language Intonation (English)
In this short paper, Nathalie Schümchen condenses the insights from her PhD thesis on how different notation systems for prosody in general and intonation in particular can be improved, based on an in depth analysis of the difficulties learners had with these notations. Furthermore, she suggests a set of activities in order to raise learners’ awareness and to practice the second language intonation.
General Recommendations for Using Visualization as a Class Activity (Danish)
This handout provides a few guidelines on how visualization can be used as a classroom activity.
English Adverbials vs. Adjectives (English)
This teaching material comprises first one page introducing grammatical terminology and then an explanation of adjectives vs. adverbials in English, the same explanation presented in two visually very different ways.
Adverbial Positions in English (English)
This teaching material comprises three visually very different explanation sheets for adverbial positions in the English clause.
Activity to Teach Semantic Relationships in Action (Danish)
This teaching material consists of an explanation and the game instructions for the participants in an activity to play in class that practices the understanding of semantic relationships such as synonymy, hyponymy, antonymy etc.
Explanation of the activity
Instructions for the participants
Cards
Treasure Hunt Activity to Practice Central Linguistic Concepts and Technical Terminology (Danish)
This teaching material consists of a set of materials for teachers to download and try out for various linguistic tasks and concepts, such as Danish sentence grammar or different morphological word formation strategies, including an introduction for the set-up of the treasure hunt.
Introduction to the treasure hunt (Danish)
Template for the exercise map (Danish)
Template for the envelopes (Danish)
The Treasure Hunt Activities (Danish)
Charisma
Learning to speak charismatically is not trivial, but Oliver Niebuhr explains how to master this tricky task at ease in a German video tutorial. Nathalie Schümchen contributed all illustrations.
Teaching German modal particles - Small words with an important function
This teaching material aims at explaining the function of an elusive but frequently used group of German words, namely so-called modal particles. These small words give an utterance different shadings of meaning, for example, "Das hat ja geklappt!" (appr. That worked, as you and I know) - "Das hat doch geklappt!" (appr. That worked, after all) - "Das hat aber geklappt!" (appr. But that worked). The exact contribution of modal particles is very difficult to translate into other languages and their readings seem to depend to a large extent on the contexts in which they occur. However, their meanings can in fact be taught; we use illustrations and examples from authentic situations to explain the basic function of modal particles in a step-by-step manner. We also added some exercises that illustrate how to use modal particles successfully.
Language used in the material: German. Level: Middle to advanced learners.
The teaching material can be download here.
The examples for the sorting task can be downloaded here.