Language Arts Stack

[Marielle Lange]

Hi Mark,

Cool.... it may even help me improve my English.

As you mention you are hoping to make some money out of it (i.e.,  
have it used *outside* your classroom).

It may help have some boxed text stating "start typing some text" as  
on first exposure, what you have to do is not obvious (I read the  
readme file only after trying). A questionmark in the corner of the  
application could do the trick as well. (Your readme file suggests  
that others have prompted you on this... it would be a pity to have  
users trash your application only because they don't understand how  
to use it... er hum, constructivism -- or constructionism as Papert  
prefers to call it -- is about progressive knowledge building... like  
legos, you have instructions that tell you how to build simple  
components; then you can use these simple components to build more  
complex ones, following the same rules... the configuration of legos  
make it easy to understand what the rules are or how the elements  
combine).

Is the fact that each sentence must be fully typed a deliberate  
decision? I am lazy and the purpose is to learn to combine sentences,  
not to type... some kids may be not very good typists and require a  
lot of time to do typing, only watching their fingers. Did you  
consider having a double click on a word copy it at the end of the  
typed sentence?

It is not obvious either what rules you use to evaluate a good  
sentence (after all, that's what you are trying to teach). It is  
possible to get a perfect score by only using A; B? That would be a  
pity given that what you can do is very supple.
"Our friend Andy helped make this program. He is our son's roommate"
can become
"Our friend Andy, our son's roommate, helped make this program"

It's a pity that as soon as you type a ".", the sentence disappears.  
Why not give the possibility to experiment longer with a each  
sentence. Rather than give a score for each combination, why not give  
a score for the number of different correct combinations you can make  
with a single sentence. If the purpose is to learn variety and  
sophistication, this seems to be the best way to encourage it.

Also, the red letters tells me that something is wrong, but it gives  
me no cue whatsoever about what is wrong. I can start over and quit,  
but I can not skip a sentence or get access to some tutorial that  
gives me the theory behind sentence combining (or some tricks to  
solve the task at hand). WORSE. The last screen tells me that I had  
only 62.8% accuracy? How come, all my sentences were correct (though  
I did mistypings and experimented to test the program). How do your  
program compute that? This appears to me as completely arbitrary  
(i.e., that causes a lot of frustration, doubt in my capacities, and  
many other negative emotions). Sophistication: 1960 what does it  
mean? Sense: 1760. What does it mean? Best, really, is to give  
feedback after *each* sentence and give the user the possibility to  
correct to try to achieve an even better score. If you successfully  
expressed criterion as program functions, that means you have an  
heuristic. Rather than have the person guess what your heuristic may  
be, best is to make it available to the user when they get stuck or  
when viewing their score (after all, the purpose is not to sanction  
bad writing, but to encourage better habits).

As I said, your application is very cool. I am only encouraging you  
to introduce a few changes that may help it have an even greater  
impact (it deserves it).

Marielle

Paper on constructivism (Piaget) vs constructionism (Papert):
<http://learning.media.mit.edu/content/ publications/EA.Piaget%20_% 
20Papert.pdf>



>     Here are links to my latest (and, I think, greatest)  
> educational stack, Combinations.  The first is a readme file with  
> an explanation and some directions.  The second is a zip file  
> containing both the Mac and the Win distribution files.  Toss out  
> whichever one you don't need.
>
> <http://aulasdigitales.net/MG_ComboReadMe.zip> (8 kb)
> <http://aulasdigitales.net/MG_ComboLocked.zip> (2.4 megs)
>
>     I have chosen to lock it so you can't see the code because I  
> hope to sell it once it has enough data.  If you are interested in  
> how I scripted it, drop me an email off list.
>     This version of Combinations is not fully stocked with data  
> yet, but it has enough to run.  You'll find that if you play the  
> same level over and over, you'll see the same sentences again.
>     Thanks again to Alejandro Tejada for helping me with the  
> logistics of posting these.
>
>         Mark Greenberg
>         High School Teacher
>         markgreenberg at cox.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> education-revolution mailing list
> education-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/education-revolution
>
>
>

Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguistics, Lecturer in Psychology and  
Informatics
University of Edinburgh, UK

Homepage:  http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mlange/
Lexicall project: http://lexicall.org
Revolution-education project: http://revolution.lexicall.org