Functionality and Information Systems
Abstract:
As opposed to tools a number of information systems have been developed and used in language learning. Again there is the question of whether students actually can handle the information generated from CL applications.
As mentioned in the chapter on
» Categorization the use of information systems is even more unidirectional than that of the previous examples.
The only "interaction" is from the system to the learner.
Therefore this subchapter means programs such as electronic dictionaries or grammars.
The
Chemnitz Internet Grammar is a "simple" example with only little CL technology. However a corpus for exploration by the learner is included maybe counting as advanced compared to other online grammars.
Advantages of a WWW-based grammar are - on the one hand - access from everywhere and on the other hand the integration of advanced feature such as "free-text-search" and hyperlinks leading directly to related information. These cannot be found in printed textbooks.
A electronic dictionary has the same advantages as the grammar.
Look-up can be done from anywhere and it can be faster than in a paper dictionary.
Some features could include retrieval from inflected forms and the retrieval of corpus-items along with the basic dictionary-information.
Additionally multimedia features can accompany the presentation of information.
Some word-processor have a thesaurus included, which can also function as an information system.
A thesaurus usually only makes sense, if the learner has already some knowledge:
When using alternative constructions one has to know the different connotations the various forms have.
An example is the visualization of
WordNet at
Visual Thesaurus. Note that so far WordNet has only be created manually in order to exclude as many errors as possible.
Glosser includes a dictionary lookup over inflected forms with links to a corpus and a morphological analyser.
To sum up one can see many issues about functionality, which can be improved with the help of CL.
All of this should of course be done with the learner in mind.
Methods of CL can not only advance the possibilities of tutoring systems but also of tools and information systems to discover a language and thus teach and train a language.