Please post your feedback on the A1 and A2 material on arapatsa.org in the replies. Once the issue/improvement you suggested has been done, we’ll strikethrough it in the item list on top of your post.
Here’s how we rate issues/improvement items in our To Do List:
Improvement suggestions - Little joy. For next release. - Moderate joy. Next on the priority list. - Immense joy. Spark right now!
Issues/problems - Little pain. For next release. - Moderate pain. Next on the priority list. - Intense pain. Relieve right now!
feedbacks are examples for all the lessons on Arapatsa… like spelling mistakes, not good or enough images to illustrates the sentences or dialogues…
And one other big feedback is for the list of 10 vocab that are in every lesson…
The sentences examples that come with the vocab words are not useful for the students to understand the word.
It’s related with the speech community concept.
the example should more practical and useful than the definition (while still clearly demonstrate a part of the meaning)
so if the vocab is “mom”, there’s an example “i have a mom” which reveals nothing about the meaning, other that a mother is something which someone can call “theirs.” then there’s “woman who gives birth to a child” which is a definition and not useful or practical. finally, theres the useful, practical sentence “i live with my mom and dad” which reveals some of the meaning, while still being a useful sentence for the topic of the chapter… i do also like idea of simplified definitions tho, something like “woman with child” - not the most practical and useful sentence, but also not totally impractical or useless…
Others feedback for Arapatsa: students feel that the flashcards should be earlier in the lesson because it’s thanks to the images that they really can understand
And I don’t know if it’s technically possible but they would like the know the right answers of the activities speciality after they tried 2 times and they still have mistakes
I would have the question of how are the 10 words being chosen? As I work on the feedback for some of the flashcards, I’m noticing that we are falling into the trap of just choosing a bunch of vocab words that are related to the topic (they are category words). But this is not the same as choosing the level words.
That’s problematic for two reasons. 1) Grouping words according to their semantic relatedness is a hindrance to learning rather than a help (Tinkham, 1993; Waring, 1997; Folse, 2004; Finkbeiner & Nicol, 2003; Erten & Tekin, 2008); 2) Frequency is more important.
“རིང་པོ་” is the only word out of these 10 that appears on the A1 frequency list!!! I can see making an argument for a few of the other words, and maybe the A1 list could better reflect the topics of the material. But the fact is, many of these are incidental words — not level-defining ones.
If we are going to choose 10 words that are representative of a lesson, I would say that at least half of them need to be A1 frequency-level words. For example, words that come in both this lesson, and the frequency list, include:
དུག་སློག
ཏོག་ཙམ (pronounced as “ཏི་སི་” in ཕལ་སྐད་, imp’t for developers recording audio to use common pronunciations)
དཔེ
སྔོན་པོ་
གྱོན
So while I agree that the definitions need improvement, maybe we should edit the lists to make sure they have the most useful words first?
The audio besides being a little too long and so on… we still beginners… both Andre and I could listen to answer number 3, and maybe even the second… It is very challenging during this phase to have such similar sounds or maybe it is actually there… Not sure…
Maybe if you have wrong answers that are a little bit more evident, it could be helpful… and the students would feel more confident…
The lesson is meant to have a pic-nic and buy food for that…
What that image has to do with that… It is very confusing for the students…
I guess to put the image of a pic,nic would be soooo helpful…
In the following dialogue, the image is not related as well…
And there is something very confusing in relation to the blue trousers…
First he says he doesn’t have, and by the end he actually has it…
I am just sending this to try to give some examples of what can be helpful for us…
We are trying to learn just with that information without a teacher at that point, and even if there was a teacher would still be challenging…
So, again we have to try to figure out things based mainly in the dictionary, even in case of simple things like this, where you could actually see a picnic… This is very misleading…
Plus the dictionary doesn’t have many things that are mainly colloquial… so the confusion increases…
Please. let me know if this is helpful,
or if you guys are already doble checking the lessons, and there is no need for this kind of input…
- Little joy. For next release.
- Little pain. For next release.
ཡིག་ནོར་གང་མང་འདུག
