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The Aspect in Russian MediaBook: Material Designs and Learner Styles. Laura A. Janda University of North Carolina janda@unc.edu www.unc.edu/~lajanda. Overview. Purpose of the project Target audiences Collaborators Funding Demonstration Beta-Testing Future plans. Encoding TIME.
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The Aspect in Russian MediaBook: Material Designs and Learner Styles Laura A. Janda University of North Carolina janda@unc.edu www.unc.edu/~lajanda
Overview • Purpose of the project • Target audiences • Collaborators • Funding • Demonstration • Beta-Testing • Future plans
Encoding TIME “Jeg gir stort sett faen i rom, men jeg har problemer med tid”. --Erlend Loe
Purpose of the Project • To facilitate learning how perfective and imperfective aspect encode time in Russian • Challenges: • Aspect in Russian is typologically unusual: it is distinguished in all forms and tenses and imperfective is the unmarked member • A metaphorical model highlights parallels between the properties of matter in space and the properties of events in time, but doesn’t work in book format
Purpose of the Project, cont’d. • Objective: • To provide a virtual space for students to conduct experiments and connect what they know about the physical properties of matter to the temporal properties of events
Target Audiences • Students in traditional Russian courses • Alumni of military and government programs who are required to maintain their Russian • Instructors • Independent learners
Collaborators • Institute for Science Learning at UNC- Chapel Hill (http://isl.unc.edu) • Designer, programmers, educational materials specialist • Slavic and East European Language Resource Center (http://www.seelrc.org) • Workshops, professional network, student assistants
Funding • National Science Foundation Educational Materials Development Grant 2004 $75K • Creation of about 1/10 of total project, plus creation of templates for total project
Demonstration • http://isl.unc.edu/russian/ainr • Introduction • Chapter 2: Matter Matters • Module 1: Properties of Matter • Shape • Convertibility
Beta-Testing • March 2005 beta-testing with more than 300 students at 19 institutions: • 15 colleges/universities (includes control groups) • 2 high schools • West Point and US Naval Academy • Pre-test, use of materials, post-test, survey, focus group, back-end data collection
Future Plans • Analyze data from beta-testing phase • Apply for National Science Foundation National Dissemination grant ($0.5M June 2005) • Complete full project