NTU unveils online My Chinese tutor service

[quote]
NTU unveils My Chinese tutor service

ONLINE LEARNING: The Internet-based software is designed to help National Taiwan University become a world center for learning Chinese, its developer said

National Taiwan University (NTU) yesterday unveiled a Chinese-teaching software to capitalize on the Mandarin-learning “craze” worldwide.

Combining voice-analyzing technology and Chinese teaching expertise, the Internet-based software will help the university become “a world center for learning Chinese,” said NTU electrical engineering professor Lee Lin-shan (李琳山), who oversaw the technological aspects of the software’s design.

“It certainly won’t replace teachers,” Lee said, referring to the “My Chinese Tutor” software, which the university and a local software company, L Labs Inc, jointly created at the cost of US$2 million over
two years.

“But,” Lee joked, “unlike teachers in the flesh, My Chinese Tutor will never become impatient or angry, and it won’t go on vacations.”

Hosting a press conference on the software, NTU president Lee Si-chen (李嗣涔) said the program, which users can access free of charge until September, “improves on pedagogical platforms for Chinese Mandarin” – a language that “30 million people worldwide currently study,” he said.

The software’s “uniqueness,” designers said, is its ability to “diagnose pronunciation,” or instantly record and analyze users’ voices, as a means to help them effectively emulate native speakers.

“That’s something that no other teaching program out there can do,” said Lee Lin-shan, who has researched voice-related technologies for two decades…

The software, available at http://chinese.ntu.edu.tw/, “can supplement any teaching material [for beginners],” said Lee Lin-shan, while demonstrating the program’s user-friendly interface, voice analysis features and 3-D animation that teaches users how to shape their mouths to enunciate words…
After a free trial period, users can purchase My Chinese Tutor services for NT$1,000 a month.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2007/06/14/2003365178[/quote]

Looks interesting…anyone used it?

Nice to see that, for a program aimed at least partly at beginning learners of Chinese, it has no instructions in English, or indeed any language other than Chinese. Stroke of genius, that.

Also, the download is only available for Windows. I’m not installing Parallels for the Mac just so I can run this. :snooty:

[quote=“Taffy”]Nice to see that, for a program aimed at least partly at beginning learners of Chinese, it has no instructions in English, or indeed any language other than Chinese. Stroke of genius, that.

[/quote]

i was equally unimpressed with that.

I was hoping to have a go at this one. I’m going to be charitable about the lack of English/Other-language-than- Chinese instruction and simply say, that sometimes the Taiwanese baffle me.

[quote=“xtrain”][quote=“Taffy”]Nice to see that, for a program aimed at least partly at beginning learners of Chinese, it has no instructions in English, or indeed any language other than Chinese. Stroke of genius, that.

[/quote]

I was equally unimpressed with that.[/quote]

The English site is now live…


http://chinese.ntu.edu.tw/

It also says you have to use IE…well f*ck that! Make it work with all browsers, or at least firefox.

Let me throw some more gasoline on the fire: You have to fill out what’s essentially a survey to set up an account. Bleh…

Furthermore, you have to accept 3 different lengthy agreements before you can start learning, you’ll find out that the free trial period apparently ends this month, you’ll have to intervene to prevent the software from installing outside the “program files” path, then you can go watch a movie while the program downloads some fonts and when you’re finally using it, you’ll want to go back to the agreements to check if they contain a warning like Akiyoshi’s illusion pages (“this program contains some works of Taiwanese “interface designers”, which might make sensitive observers dizzy or sick”) :wink:
however, the program’s speech analysis capabilities are really very impressive!


Click on the thumbnail for a screenshot. My favourite feature is the red line on the diagrams at the bottom indicating the pitch: it lets you see how native speakers (and you) actually apply the tones. Other than that, you can also analyse your pronunciation, timing and emphasis. These are the (most) useful features, there are more, though (I haven’t clicked on all the buttons and animated icons yet).