Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Athens, 2000 Workshop Proceedings: Language Resources and Tools for Educational Applications Integrating Language Tools into a Computer Assisted 2 nd Language Learning: Remarks on the Methods of Teaching Greek in the Primary Schools of the Turkish-speaking Minority of Thrace Maria Tzevelekou ILSP. Department of Pre-School Education, University of Athens Leof. Posidonos 12, 17561 P, Faliro maria_t@ilsp.gr Abstract The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to give a brief description of a multi-media system especially designed for teaching Greek, as a 2 nd language in the primary schools of the Turkish speaking minority in Thrace. Secondly, to give a brief outline of the second phase of the project which includes the construction of a bilingual multi-media dictionary. The development of the dictionary is considered in parallel with the incorporation of language tools having a certain generative capacity 1. Introduction The acquisition of Greek as a second language by the children of the Turkish speaking minority should be viewed as a multi-dimensional issue requiring the combination of different factors. These factors fall into two general categories: social factors and linguistic factors. In the present paper we will focus on a certain part of language teaching issues combined with the construction of a multi-media environment. Emphasis is given either to the use or to the integration of certain processing tools, such as phonetic transcription, morphological analyser, search in organized corpora, analysis and generation of certain basic structures, spelling checking and text-to-speech synthesis. Under certain conditions these tools can provide the means to deal effectively with the language problem of this particular group of disadvantaged children. Generally speaking, minority children are exposed to opportunities to hear, learn, and use the 2 nd language 36 in various degrees. With respect to exposure we can easily see that the Turkish speaking community lives in a relative isolation. Any possibility of crossfertilization between the two cultures such as for instance the promotion of a coordinate bilingualism 1 is obstructed by social factors. The access to education of children having Turkish as a native language is marked by this situation, which clearly inhibits children's exposure to 2 nd language. In this connection certain facts should be noted: - Pre-school education is non-existent - Children enter bilingual minority schools at the age of five and remain there till the end of the primary education, i.e. till the age of twelve. Minority school s curriculum is specified as follows: half of the courses are taught in Turkish and the other half in Greek. - Although children s exposure to Greek varies from location to location lesser in villages, more developed in cities- the overall classroom picture is that of children having no previous knowledge of Greek. 1 Cf. Rubin (1968)
- There is no dramatic improvement during primary education of the ability of using Greek language - especially in villages. This is due mainly to the absence of a systematic method and of tools for teaching Greek as a second language and secondly to the amount of schooling which is much less than in monolingual schools. Linguistic competence in educational practice cannot be separated from noncognitive factors such as the intensity of motivation to invest in 2 nd language learning. From an instrumental point of view confidence on the perspective of linguistic achievement is essential to the learning process. Reliability of the educational system enhances children's motivation to learn a second language. In the case of minority schools the pedagogical methods adopted require from children a great amount of effort without leading to a satisfying result. Poor results have important impact both in children's motivation to learn Greek and in teachers' motivation to teach Greek. The absence of proper pedagogical material and the lack of professional specialization in second language teaching create a situation where investing in L2 seems pointless. information with combinatorial capacity. This type of information can be drawn from NLP tools. 3. Methods of Teaching Greek as a Second Language The learning of a second language clearly involves some degree of recategorisation. By using distributional methods we are able, in the lexical level, to determine how and in what degree languages possess the same lexical structure, the degree to which words in the two languages which usually translate each other have the same meaning. Or, in the field of grammar we can see the degree to which grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, case and gender are equivalent in different languages. When teaching Greek as a second language to children having Turkish as a native language we should always bear in mind that a wide range of recategorisation is required. The structural differences between the two languages explain, to a large extent, the number and the type of difficulties encountered. 2. Computer Aided Education One of the main arguments against using computers in minority schools of Thrace was the incongruity of introduction of an advanced device in a context where schools are deprived of any common device, such as central heating, telephone etc. The next argument was that computer promotes individuation, inhibits socialisation and also puts aside the valuable pedagogical relation between teacher and student. Furthermore it creates a virtual reality replacing the actual reality which is richer in stimuli, more interesting and, at the bottom line, it is the reality children have to face and cope with. Our experience shows that benefits from a sociological, psychological and cognitive point of view exceed possible drawbacks. Multimedia interactive educational environments use ostentive techniques and relate learning with playing. Besides this obvious fact they delimit a zone where conflicts are neutralized. This zone allows children to work calmly, without pressures from the social context. Thus they can work at their own rhythm receiving immediate feedback without academic penalty. And last but not least they can play with the data. Playing with the linguistic data requires a stabilized linguistic infrastructure containing a large amount of tacit 36 Turkish is an agglutinate language while Greek in an inflectional language. Relations, that in Greek are expressed in the syntactic level, in Turkish have a morphological realisation, e.g. relative clauses in Greek are equivalent to participles in Turkish. In Turkish, morphemes hold a one-to-one relation to meaning. Greek is a fusional language. Morphemes, especially grammatical morphemes, are polysemous. The distribution of grammatical categories is different in the two languages, e.g. Greek nouns have an inherent gender while gender is lacking from Turkish; definiteness depends on selectional restrictions such as 'animate' in Turkish while in Greek it is an independent category. At the phonetic level a number of phonemes, such as /θ/ and /δ/, contained in the Greek system do not appear in the Turkish phonological system. 4. Construction of a Basic System So far a multimedia learning system has already been produced comprising the basic linguistic structures and a bilingual lexicon of 4000 entries. The linguistic content of the program has been based, to a great extent, on field research aiming to investigate the actual use of Greek language by the students of minority schools. One of the outcomes of this
research was the establishment of a typology of linguistic deviations. These deviations or errors can easily be explained by reference to the notion of interference of native language to 2 nd language learning process. Special attention was given to remedy these particular deviations. Modern methods follow a communicative approach to language learning. This line of thought is considered as an alternative to pedagogic grammars, which imply an out of date and undesirable method of teaching. It should be noted nevertheless that, in the matter of systematic presentation of grammar, a highly inflected language, like Greek, cannot be equated with a configurational language, like English. Another shortcoming of the communicative method has to do with its actual content. Children are not much interested in dialogs on how to buy a ticket in the bus station, how to ask for information, how to communicate in the fruit market, and so on 2. In order to draw children s attention and at the same time help them conceive the idea that words are systematically modified in various ways according to their function in a particular context, we sought the collaboration of the experienced children s book author E. Trivizas. The result of the joint effort is a story of quest consisting of twenty episodes 3. A knight, in order to decipher the messages of his beloved princess, has to gain a certain number of letters and words. In his quest he visits the rooms of an imaginary castle. In each room he encounters strange creatures and undergoes various adventures. Finally letters and words come to his possession after he has undergone certain ordeals, which, in this case, are grammar, phonetic and vocabulary exercises. Each episode is based on certain specific, predetermined by a syllabus, phenomena of Greek language. For instance, a certain episode is designed in order to present the various declension paradigms of neuter nouns, i.e. it contains instances illustrating each paradigm. Each episode is also articulated, on the phonetic level, on minimal pairs of phonetically neighboring phonemes, like for instance /θ/ and /t/. In brief, scenario structure gains children s attention and at the same time enables us to present gradually 2 Cf Hymes (1971) 3 The educational program has two parts: A knight in the castle of letters and A knight in the castle of words. It has been designed and developed by M. Tzevelekou, S. Paschalis, G. Papageorgakopoulos, N. Konstadakis and L. Fragopoulou. 37 Greek grammar, to illustrate the structure of a certain phenomenon and to focus on specific phonetic issues. The latter is achieved by using poetic techniques. The term poetic here should be interpreted in the strict technical sense, i.e. as the projection of paradigmatic axis to syntagmatic axis 4. The emphasis on the poetic function appeals to imagination and facilitates memorization. The system comprises five modules: - Text of the episode illustrated by graphics - Translation in the support language, Turkish in this case - Exercises - Grammar - A Bilingual multimedia dictionary, containing examples of use, grammatical and lexical information, and allowing various ways of search All five modules are interrelated in various ways enabling the child to navigate through the different components and to display the information available in ways that suit her/him best. 4.1. Use of Annotated Corpus In preparing the linguistic material for each episode certain tools had been used in order to find lexical items that satisfy the criteria put forward. For this purpose we used a sample of annotated corpus available at ILSP. The structure of this corpus enables us to use combined criteria of search. For instance the usual components of the search for nouns would be: X item characterized by the following attributes <part of speech=noun, gender=g, case=c, number=n, declension class=d, and containing the following phonemes, p1, p2, relevant to show the opposition put forward. The list of items was used by the author for the composition of each episode. 4.2. Testing Exercises Grammar exercises emphasize inflectional patterns and agreement constraints. For instance at a certain point of the story the naughty hedgehogs, as a punishment for their disobedience, have to recite a number of amusing sentences where a particular noun has different functions, e.g. subject, object, noun modifier etc. The form of the noun changes according to case and number. Thus, children 4 Cf. Jakobson (1960)
acquire knowledge of systematic patterns used in context without being faced directly with an inflectional paradigm in an unfriendly layout. Essentially, from the point of view of structure, exercises are similar to the exercises traditionally found in workbooks. Familiar pedagogical techniques such as filling in the blanks, matching (written, visual and acoustic), multiple choice, and true or false are used. It is worth noticing at this point that the user has to work with predetermined displayed items and to find the correct combination. He is not allowed to compose input by typing an answer. 5 This severe constraint is due to the absence of language tool infrastructure that provides information that can serve to identify, to adjust or to correct free or semi-free input. 5. Free Input and Use of Language Tools In the next phase of the program for the minority schools of Thrace a multimedia bilingual lexicon of 6000 words is envisaged. The aim of this project is the construction of an advanced interactive system. At this point of development free input issue is of paramount importance. The questions that arise are the following: a. How can we check user s input? b. Can the input be totally unconstrained? It is clear that the answer to those questions depends on the ability of the system to identify lexical items and grammatical forms, to expand information, to proceed to a partial, indeterminate matching and finally to adjust input to grammaticality regulations. These procedures rely on the integration of a linguistic infrastructure that becomes available when needed and simulates a subpart of native s speaker tacit knowledge. In other words this mechanism should have a certain generative capacity. When teaching Greek a number of linguistic phenomena can be effectively shown and explained by implementing and using certain tools 5.1. Morphological Analysis As mentioned above Greek has a rich morphological system reflecting all grammatical categories such as case, tense, voice, gender etc. Basic words are modified mainly by a system of different endings attached to the stem of the word. A precise knowledge of the full range of forms is an essential part of the proficient use of the language. The acquisition of this system of different but related forms is one of the most difficult tasks. - Each inflected category is modified according to various declensional patterns. A wide range of allomorphic variation is displayed within each category. - Inflectional endings are amalgam morphemes. They are related to more than one grammatical category. - Allomorphic variation in the stem, resulting from the phonological combination between stem and ending, is observed in almost all inflected categories. - Discontinuous morphemes (such as auxiliary verbs and augment) and stress movement are essential parts of the inflectional system. 6 The integration of a morphological analyser, i.e. a system which splits a word into morphemes and provides a structure indicating a relation to a root form stored in the lexicon, enhance system capability to handle free input 7. - If the user inquires about a specific word form, for instance a verb in passive voice, plural number, past tense, perfective aspect etc, the system can restore the basic form in which this particular word is stored in the lexicon. - The system can provide a list with the grammatical features characterizing a particular form - The system can generate inflectional forms of specific lexical items according to certain characteristics given by the user. - The system can restrict certain productive mechanism, such as the formation of passive voice, by ruling out illicit constructions. In addition to inflectional morphology a morphological analyser can handle certain specific derivational processes which are particularly productive in Greek: 5 There is one exception to this constraint: the case of numerals, where a simple generative device is incorporated into the system. 38 6 Cf. Holton, Mackridge, Philippaki-Warburton (1997) 7 Cf. Morphological Lexicon (1995)
- The formation of diminutives - Degrees in adjectives 5.2. Grapheme to Phoneme Transcription Greek uses a historical orthography. This means that pronunciation does not correspond to spelling. Users of language whether native speakers or foreigners, children or adults, should make a special effort in order to learn correct spelling. Incorrect spelling of a word as an input to a computer system would prevent matching and would stop or delay any further activity. One possible solution to the problem would be a phonetic transcription of the word that can be matched with the corresponding phonetic transcription provided by a morphological analyser. With this procedure the correct form of the word can be restored. In cases of ambiguity all possible solutions are displayed in the screen. It is clear that this device combined with a morphological analyser can function as a spelling checker. 5.3. Syntactic Component A syntactic module can handle simple syntactic phenomena such as - agreement within noun phrases - Verb subject agreement It should be noted in this respect that most of the mistakes observed during field work are deviations to agreement constraints 8. The integration of such a device in a language learning process should be carefully designed and tested. 6. Conclusion The integration of language tools to a multimedia educational system may lead to the construction of an environment that simulates human interaction and enhances initiatives of the learner to use the language without being intimidated by the presence of native speaker. 7. References Holton, D, P. Mackridge & I. Philippaki-Warburton, 1997, Greek: a Comprehensive Grammar of Modern Language, Routledge Hymes, H.D., 1971, On Communicative Competence, University of Pennsylvania Press. Jakobson, R., 1960, Linguistics and Poetics in Sebeok, A. T., 1960, Style in Language, MIT press. Kapsabeli, K., N. Konstadakis & M. Tzevelekou, 1998), Native Language Interference in Learning Greek as a 2 nd Language: an Error Analysis, ILSP, Internal Document. Morphological Lexicon, 1995, ILSP, Working Papers. Rubin, J., 1968, Acquisition and Proficiency in J. B. Pride and J. Holmes, 1968, Sociolinguistics, Penguin Books. 5.4. Text-to-Speech Generation The integration of a text to speech device in a language learning system is a controversial issue. Advantages seem to be less than disadvantages. On the one hand it provides a pronunciation of a given word as a consonant and vowel cluster. On the other hand it does not take into account certain variations deriving from phonological phenomena across morphemes and word boundaries. It fails also to incorporate stress use within phonological words (i.e. phrasal units consisting of a major category and monosyllabic or disyllabic unstressed element) and utterance intonational patterns. 8 Cf Kapsabeli, Konstadakis, Tzevelekou (1998) 39