Bilingual Viewer – Generating Bilingual Content to Aid Language Learning

Conference: The European Conference on Language Learning (ECLL2022)
Title: Bilingual Viewer – Generating Bilingual Content to Aid Language Learning
Stream: Educational Technologies
Presentation Type: Poster Presentation
Authors:
Michael Ertl, CI Precision, United Kingdom

Abstract:

Bilingual Content (BC) in this abstract refers to articles or books in which each sentence appears with the original followed by a good enough translation. The second language should be rendered in such a way that it may be easily ignored or read if needed.
There are commercially available books that approximate to this format, but it is somewhat niche. Finding a BC newspaper is near impossible.
This paper talks about the free software package BilingualViewer.com (BV) written by the presenter that enables any book or newspaper article to be converted into BC format. Over a year the tool was used and refined with many features added and eventually succeeded in its primary mission to enable the presenter to pass the French citizenship test, but it also facilitated ongoing enjoyment of a Le Monde subscription.
Here are some of the key points that are argued as being important for adult language learning:
- To have translations available in the field of vision obviates the need for constant dictionary lookups and puts the reader in charge of the level of support needed.
- User sourced content is more interesting to the student than anything tutor prepared.
- On a tablet the "Speak" option allows being read to. On an eReader the International Phonetic Alphabet can be brought up on a word.
- Kindle based reading avoids both distraction and eye strain and helps develop deep reading routines.
- Article and literature selection and reading do not 'feel' like homework.



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