Working On A New Thai Typing Tutor

[jamiesensei]

Hi all,

Ouch just wrote a long post and then lost it since I had problems uploading an attached image.

Am also working on a Flash web page for helping with my Thai learning. I have created a typing tutor. It :

• plays a word / phrase / in the first example a vowel sound
  
• you enter the word (you must have a Thai keyboard and Thai font support on your com)
  
• it times your typing speed.
  
• then the next random sound is picked.
  

See the attached image. Try out the first activity here : jamiep.org/mod/spelling/view.php?id=200 (don't seem to have permission to post a proper link, sorry).

Next I plan to make an activity practicing some simple vocabulary. Going to use vocab and phrases from the first Thai for Beginners lesson.

If anyone else wants to set up an activity then just provide me with a zip of mp3s with a separate mp3 for each word or phrase. And provide a list of the file names (minus the .mp3) with the correct spelling for each file like this :

a,อะ
  aa,อา
  i,อิ
  ii,อี
  u,อุ
  u-,อึ
  uu,อู
  u-u-,อือ
  air_s,แอะ
  air_l,แอ
  o,โอะ
  oo,โอ
  or_l,ออ
  or_s,เอาะ
  uh_l,เออ
  uh_s,เออะ
  e,เอะ
  ee,เอ

You can also specify a meaning for the word after the Thai spelling like this :

sawatdee,สวัสดี,hello

Jamie

Edited May 5, 2009 by jamiesensei

[Baannok]

Wow, I can't tell you how much I look forward to this because it's exactly what I want. I wanted to create something like this too but my knowledge of Flash is simply too limited. Good luck and get it done already

[Gaccha]

This looks like it is going to be good. I have around 4,000 audio files of individual words but they are not collated to anything written down (and are in Japanese transliteration word order), so unless you already know the spelling (i.e. your Thai is red hot), or have an uncanny grasp of Japanese, this might not be so useful...

Also, can you adapt it to make it into a sentence practice typing tutor-- a la 'Mavis Beacon' style? At the moment, the options are dire.

[Rikker]

I know someone working on a web-based typing tutor (for any keyboard, but Thai is one of the ones being tested). I've seen the early results and it looks promising. It should do some cool things. The basics, like prompting the next character in the sentence on the on-screen keyboard, but also things like analyzing the text you give it to determine difficulty (by counting the frequency of characters in the text, as compared to their location on the keyboard).

I'll post about it when I know more...

[jamiesensei]

Found the list of most common words posted elsewhere in this forum by Rikker :

Grover, the best I can do is I have a list of the 1000 most common words according to four sources of language corpora. I've attached a spreadsheet that I converted to HTML.

Thanks Rikker! Will base activities on that, starting with the top 100 words. Will get someone to record mp3s of the words for me as soon as possible.

Will also be working out an algorithm based on the frequencies of the words and which words the students get right or wrong in order to adjust the frequencies the words appear.

[jamiesensei]

My typing/listening/spelling practice activity is developing well. You can now save your scores and see a graph of your average times / number of words correct so far and a graph showing everyone's top 100 scores and times plotted on a graph.

Hope to get recordings of the most used 100 Thai words to make the first really useful activity on Monday or Tuesday. Right now the Thai vowels typing activity is fun and excellent listening practice.

[AjarnChan]

My typing/listening/spelling practice activity is developing well. You can now save your scores and see a graph of your average times / number of words correct so far and a graph showing everyone's top 100 scores and times plotted on a graph.

Hope to get recordings of the most used 100 Thai words to make the first really useful activity on Monday or Tuesday. Right now the Thai vowels typing activity is fun and excellent listening practice.

Thanks for all your effort Jamie, looks really useful

[jamiesensei]

I have around 4,000 audio files of individual words but they are not collated to anything written down.

Hi Gaccha,

Sounds interesting. These 4,000 words are they from some course or something? I guess having someone go through them and spell the words would be easier than making 4,000 mp3 recordings. The question is do we want to set up activities around these sets of words. How are the 4000 words selected?

I like the idea of using the 1,000 most commonly used Thai words as in the list Rikker posted. I also think it is a good idea to have more than one voice reading each word. I am going to have a male and female voice at least for the top 1,000 words.

If you or any user provides me with a zip of mp3 files and the spellings of each word in the format as in my first post I will happily set up an activity using those mp3s, as per your specification (although I will only use mp3s that the person owns the copyright too or are copyright free). I have coded the activity so that given :

• a zip of mp3s with all the mp3s in one directory, with filenames using the roman alphabet please
  
• and the correct spelling of each word in a text file as above.
  

Then it will only take a couple of minutes to set up a new 'spelling activity'.

Thanks,

Jamie

[kriswillems]

Hi Jamie,

You typing tutor looks really nice.

I have 2 remarks:

- when I use the mouse pointer to click on Check or Next or Play Again the input focus moves away from the text input window. So, I've to use the mouse again to click on the text input window before I can start typing. Could you automatically put the input focus on the text input window when a user clicks on a button?

- the time already starts running even before the word is being pronounced, so the result also depends on the length of the words and the speed of the speaker.

[DavidHouston]

Hi Jamie,

You typing tutor looks really nice.

I have 2 remarks:

- when I use the mouse pointer to click on Check or Next or Play Again the input focus moves away from the text input window. So, I've to use the mouse again to click on the text input window before I can start typing. Could you automatically put the input focus on the text input window when a user clicks on a button?

- the time already starts running even before the word is being pronounced, so the result also depends on the length of the words and the speed of the speaker.

As for the first issue, I found that hitting Enter twice, gets you to where you want, without using the mouse or the pad. I think that Jamie is doing a really great job and I am looking forward to the finished product.

[jamiesensei]

Hi Jamie,

You typing tutor looks really nice.

I have 2 remarks:

- when I use the mouse pointer to click on Check or Next or Play Again the input focus moves away from the text input window. So, I've to use the mouse again to click on the text input window before I can start typing. Could you automatically put the input focus on the text input window when a user clicks on a button?

- the time already starts running even before the word is being pronounced, so the result also depends on the length of the words and the speed of the speaker.

As for the first issue, I found that hitting Enter twice, gets you to where you want, without using the mouse or the pad. I think that Jamie is doing a really great job and I am looking forward to the finished product.

Thanks for your remarks David and Kris. You are right on both points Kris. I should make the keyboard focus go back to the text box after pressing a button. I didn't think of doing that. Actually I set it up so that if the Flash movie has focus then hitting return activates the button 'Check Spelling' and then hitting it again activates 'Next' as David pointed out.

You are right also about the starting of the timer after the word has been read. That would be better of course.

Right now I'm improving the graphing of results a little to make the graphs a bit more helpful.

[jamiesensei]

Actually I set it up so that if the Flash movie has focus then hitting return activates the button 'Check Spelling' and then hitting it again activates 'Next' as David pointed out.

There is actually a tool tip on the Next / Check Spelling button that tells you the enter keys activates the button. But still this might not be immediately obvious. Trying to make an activity that needs as little explanation as possible but maybe a short text explaining how to use the activity would be useful.

By the way I found this interesting post on the 'Leitner' system of adjusting the frequency of words / flashcards depending on whether you get the word / flash card right or wrong. Am thinking about some kind of algorithm to adjust the frequency of occurrence of words for the spelling test depending on whether you find a word easy or difficult. The activity should also take into account the frequency of occurance of the words in Thai where available. Thanks to Rikker's post above we know the frequency of occurance of the top 1000 Thai words. Any thoughts anyone?

[jamiesensei]

I posted a new listening/spelling/typing activity on my web site. This one practices the most common 101 Thai words. Hope it is useful to others. Am pretty sure it is going to be a great step forward towards literacy for me! :-)

Edited May 13, 2009 by jamiesensei

[meadish_sweetball]

It seems to work fine, very clear voiceovers too although you might want to do ทาง once again, it is a bit difficult to hear what it should be, I think it's the first consonant that isn't as clear as it should.

Also, I agree with what Kris posted, it would be best if one didn't have to use the mouse to get the focus back to the text field after each time.

- You may also want to consider adding double options for homophones:

Examples:

ราช and ราด

น่า and หน้า

As it is now, only the first one of each pair yields a correct score.

EDIT: After some more testing I just found out you have both น่า and หน้า in the database. There is no way of telling these two apart based on their sound, they are exact homophones with different spelling. You should probably allow both answers as correct, and add something like (or น่า, they sound the same) / (or หน้า, they sound the same) in parentheses afterwards.

- Also, some words have been given an extra space at the end which means they will be flagged as incorrect if they dont contain that space, for example เสียง and ชาติ.

It's a great tool and I am sure it will be appreciated by many!

[jamiesensei]

It seems to work fine, very clear voiceovers too although you might want to do ทาง once again, it is a bit difficult to hear what it should be, I think it's the first consonant that isn't as clear as it should.

Also, I agree with what Kris posted, it would be best if one didn't have to use the mouse to get the focus back to the text field after each time.

- You may also want to consider adding double options for homophones:

Examples:

ราช and ราด

น่า and หน้า

As it is now, only the first one of each pair yields a correct score.

EDIT: After some more testing I just found out you have both น่า and หน้า in the database. There is no way of telling these two apart based on their sound, they are exact homophones with different spelling. You should probably allow both answers as correct, and add something like (or น่า, they sound the same) / (or หน้า, they sound the same) in parentheses afterwards.

- Also, some words have been given an extra space at the end which means they will be flagged as incorrect if they dont contain that space, for example เสียง and ชาติ.

It's a great tool and I am sure it will be appreciated by many!

Thanks for your suggestions. I agree about the keyboard focus. And thanks for pointing out the homophones!

[DavidHouston]

ทาง to me sounded like ชาง

[jamiesensei]

Also, some words have been given an extra space at the end which means they will be flagged as incorrect if they dont contain that space, for example เสียง and ชาติ.

I fixed the extra spaces problem.

Any more words that are not very clear?

[Baannok]

Jamie: Please, please, please tell me there is a way to download this. I don't have a permanent internet connection and want to use this offline. Also, can you make this completely keyboard based? I touch type so I'd prefer not to use the mouse at all. Perhaps map the listen again button to a key that is not used (1/! for example).

[jamiesensei]

Jamie: Please, please, please tell me there is a way to download this. I don't have a permanent internet connection and want to use this offline.

Hi, Sorry I don't think I will be making this into a downloadable app, it depends on communicating with the server to get mp3s and to save scores.

Also, can you make this completely keyboard based? I touch type so I'd prefer not to use the mouse at all. Perhaps map the listen again button to a key that is not used (1/! for example).

Focus in the app can be changed by using the tab key. You can tab through all the controls.

Jamie

[jamiesensei]

Notice I have made a new activity using the top 10 most used words in Thai on my site http://jamiep.org I found that 100 words was too much to start with. I have quickly mastered the spelling of the top 10 words though.

I'm thinking what I would also like to do is to make a similar activity for recognizing tones which I have terrible trouble with. I want to make something where each word appears on your screen and then you drag it to the correct 'drop area' where there are 5 drop areas for each of the different tones.

Am busy catching up on work right now though.

[kriswillems]

Jamie,

Your ideas are really great! Is there any chance you'll publish your programs with a GPL license (or maybe in the future)? Did you see the Thai alphabet soundboard?

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Alphabe...rd-t261839.html

It would be nice if both tools could be put on the same web-site.

Flash is really a nice tool to make all kinds of quizzes, exercises and puzzles about Thai language.

[jamiesensei]

Your ideas are really great! Is there any chance you'll publish your programs with a GPL license (or maybe in the future)?

I am considering whether to release this module under a GPL license, at the moment I am thinking I probably will. This is actually a Moodle 'activity module'. jamiep.org is a Moodle web site. And if you log into jamiep.org as a teacher you can set up a 'spelling activity' by uploading the mp3 files and filling in an html form with configuration info. See attached screen shot. This activity can be used for any language, on my web site you can see I have set up one with English phrases also, just as a demo.

Email me or pm me if you want a copy of the sound files.

Did you see the Thai alphabet soundboard?

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Alphabe...rd-t261839.html

It would be nice if both tools could be put on the same web-site.

Yes, that would be great. Baannok what do you think? Can I put your sound board on my web site??

Flash is really a nice tool to make all kinds of quizzes, exercises and puzzles about Thai language.

Agreed!

Edited May 15, 2009 by jamiesensei

[kriswillems]

Hi Jamie, I didn't realise this flash application was completely integrated into moodle. I thought it was an independent flash application. I already thought it was nice, but now I am even more impressed!

I hope that you'll someday decide to put a GPL license on the (Thai Language) contents and possibly the source code of your flash applications. That way your work could become a framework to create one of the most modern and useful Thai-language websites.

If there's any way I can help you with your work, please let me know.

[Baannok]

Yes, that would be great. Baannok what do you think? Can I put your sound board on my web site??

Sure, go ahead. I wish I could get started on the vowel soundboard but I've just been too busy lately. Feel free to download the swf and html to upload on your website.

What a shame I can't use your app offline! I'd like to practice in the privacy of my room or wherever I travel where there is no internet connection

[Gaccha]

How is this getting on Jamie? Any chance it will reach 1,000 words?

Cheers

[jamiesensei]

I continue to work on my Thai typing tutor in between other jobs. Am finding I am picking up spelling very rapidly using it. Have added a male voice, so now the words are randomly read by either a male or female voice. Will keep expanding it. Would love to let the user select what they want to learn from groups of words and possibly introduce some spaced repetition of words based on which ones you get right and how long it takes you to respond.

[SoftWater]

Also, can you adapt it to make it into a sentence practice typing tutor-- a la 'Mavis Beacon' style? At the moment, the options are dire.

The answer to this - and those that want to use Jamie's sw offline - is to get the free ANKI software that Kokesaat mentioned in another post (OK, i'll go get the link in a second).

It can do all the things Jamies sw does and a bit more, and you can use it either online or local on your own com. You don't need to know any programming, but you have to build your own flashcards - ie. type the question and answer in correctly. You can set ANKI up so that you can either type in the answer, (direct typing, not mouse poiting) or just do a 'guess and show'. You can add audio, and you can do sentences or single words.

OK, i'll go find the link....

(BTW, i'm not knocking jamie's work here - sounds a great program, tho' my old mac won't support the new flash driver so I can't try it out)

Edited August 17, 2009 by SoftWater

[SoftWater]

(read the post immediately above to follow what this is about:-) Here's the link to the ANKI page

I've just started using this recently after Kokesaat posted about it; I think the key is to build a number of small decks for particular purposes and drill till you've achieved the objective of the deck. Despite years of learning thai and having achieved some level of proficiency, for some reason I could never remember the months. I cracked this little nut in about 2 days of using Anki.

I haven't experimented with adding audio yet, because I have to figure out how to chop up the individual sentences from the mp3 files I have, but would be a major boon for anyone wanting to improve their listening.

(Don't suppose any of you techie guys know an easy way to do this? I guess you're going to tell me to load them into an mp3 editor and do it manually...OK, if I can find such a thing as a free mp3 editor for an old mac runnning 10.3.9 OS....)

Incidentally, the great thing about ANKI is we can share files ('decks') easily, either directly by email or through the anki online page.

Edited August 17, 2009 by SoftWater

[jamiesensei]

Hi Softwater,

I came across anki the other day coincidentally. It looks like a useful bit of software! I was looking to see if there was a plug in or a setting to support actually typing the word in and then the computer checking the typing but I could not see anything like this. If I could find a program that did this for me then I could use that instead of rolling my own.

One solution for getting a set of mp3s to practice with is to hire or otherwise persuade a Thai friend with a computer to do it for you. That way you should be able to find someone who can cut up the audio files for you using something like audacity and also will be able to share the files secure in the knowledge you are not breaching copyright.

Jamie

[SoftWater]

Hi Softwater,

I came across anki the other day coincidentally. It looks like a useful bit of software! I was looking to see if there was a plug in or a setting to support actually typing the word in and then the computer checking the typing but I could not see anything like this. If I could find a program that did this for me then I could use that instead of rolling my own.

One solution for getting a set of mp3s to practice with is to hire or otherwise persuade a Thai friend with a computer to do it for you. That way you should be able to find someone who can cut up the audio files for you using something like audacity and also will be able to share the files secure in the knowledge you are not breaching copyright.

Jamie

Hi Jamie, yeah you can get Anki to check your typing for you - that's exactly what i've done with it. It took me a bit of fiddling to figure out where the option is, but its there if you look around! I'm on my way home now, but I'll try to document the procedure for everyone and post it either tonight or tomorrow as it seems to be what we're all interested in!

For those that haven't used this sw yet, the idea is it gives you the 'front' of a flash card, and you type what should be on the 'back'. When you hit return it checks what you typed against what's on the 'back' of the card. It runs an algorithm to decide when you should see the same card again based on the time it takes you to answer and a preference you choose (soon, later, never...etc). Like I said, i haven't tried using audio with it, but the principle should be that it plays the audio at the same time as showing you the 'front' of the card. If you don't want any clues, you can edit the front of the card to be blank, or you can have the card show you either what is said in english or thai. Up to the individual.

Of course, you have to make all the cards yourself, (in itelf a good learning process), but as I said, once made, decks can easily be shared. There's no programming involved, you just have to create decks from templates by typing in the English and Thai first. One minor problem as Kokesaat and I found out, is that TV doesn't seem to allow anki files to be uploaded on PM, so if we want to share looks like we have to do it thru regular email addresses.

Jamie, thanks for the tip about mp3s. Good idea!

Edited August 17, 2009 by SoftWater