Project Narrative ......................................................................................................................... 2
I. Need for the Project ............................................................................................................ 2
A. Project Overview ............................................................................................................ 2
i. Course Outline ............................................................................................................ 3
ii. Comprehension Strategies and Translation Theory ................................................... 3
iii. Sources of Materials ................................................................................................... 4
iv. Student Activities and Assignments ........................................................................... 5
v. Software Tools............................................................................................................ 7
vi. Web-based Version .................................................................................................... 9
B. Need for these Courses ................................................................................................. 10
II.
Usefulness of Product to Others ..................................................................................... 14
III. Account of Related Materials ......................................................................................... 16
IV. Likelihood of Achieving Results.................................................................................... 16
V.
Expected Contribution to Other Programs ..................................................................... 17
VI. Plan of Operation ........................................................................................................... 19
A. Response to GEPA Section 427 .................................................................................. 19
B. Project Timeline ........................................................................................................... 19
VII. Quality of Personnel ...................................................................................................... 22
VIII. Budget and Cost Effectiveness ...................................................................................... 25
IX. Evaluation Plan .............................................................................................................. 26
X.
Adequacy of Resources .................................................................................................. 27
XI. Description of Final Format ........................................................................................... 27
XII. Provisions for Pre-testing and Revision ......................................................................... 29
XIII. Priorities.......................................................................................................................... 30
1
Project Narrative
I.
Need for the Project
In order to fully address the need for this project, a somewhat detailed description of
its nature and scope is necessary. Part B of this section will explicitly address the need for
this project.
A. Project Overview
In response to the national need for experts in the languages of Southeast Asia (and in
particular those with a significant Islamic population) our language faculty will, beginning in
Fall 2003, design, implement, and present a set of advanced translation courses (with special
emphasis on the receptive language skills and strategies of reading and listening as well as
translation theory) for Thai, Indonesian, and Tagalog. A central component of these courses
will be training and practice in the use of various linguistic software tools to aid in the
understanding and translation of second-language (L2) materials.
The Center for Southeast Asia Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) has been a
Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) for the past six years. The classroom-based version
of the courses, which will initially be taught at NIU to advanced students, will be
implemented as part of our NRC activity for the next 3-year cycle. This IRS Program
proposal seeks to adapt and re-implement the courses to be developed in the NRC context as a
set of Web-based courses, with custom content and software appropriate for courses on the
Web. These courses will be available to students and teachers nationwide. The Web courses
will be hosted at NIU by SEAsite (www.seasite.niu.edu), a Web-based resource for Southeast
Asian languages and cultures which has been under development for almost six years with
support from the IRS Program (among others).
2
Unlike previous SEAsite materials which were designed as resources to be integrated
with diverse existing courses, this new set of courses will be fully developed and specified,
complete with teacher’s guides and suggestions for use, course syllabi and detailed outlines,
materials for study, exercises, software tools, and so on.
This section will explain the overall planned course structure in more detail. Although
this project will develop three Web-based courses, one for each of Thai, Indonesian, and
Tagalog, the three will be implemented with similar structure.
i.
Course Outline
Each course will have the following structure in broad outline:
ii.

Reading comprehension strategies, tools, and activities

Listening comprehension strategies, tools, and activities

Translation Theory

Effective online means of finding relevant materials for study

Translation techniques, tools, and exercises
Comprehension Strategies and Translation Theory
Results from language learning research over the last two decades have led to a variety
of techniques or cognitive strategies that can be used by learners when attempting to
understand new L2 language (for example, Chamot and O’Malley, 1994; Morra de la Pena,
2001; Cohen, 1998). Researchers frequently recommend that those preparing instructional
materials should structure and present them with explicit strategy suggestions based on the
results of this research. However, new materials “found in the wild” will not be so structured.
Therefore these courses will begin with an introduction to this research and with materials
structured according to recommendations from research, but will gradually fade this help and
3
support over the duration of the courses. Beginning the courses in this way will serve several
purposes: it will allow students to review and refresh their language skills; it will review or
introduce useful cognitive strategies; and it will serve as an informal introduction to
translation activities.
The next section of the courses will survey and summarize ideas, theories, and
techniques of translation per se, including various possible forms of the final translation
product, ranging from gisting (finding the “gist” of a passage) and summarizing to producing
an accurate and polished translation. Students will look at portions of translations of works
(posted on the respective language site) by noted translators and critique them for style,
accuracy, and approach. In some cases, the professional translators themselves may have
written an article on the subject of translation, and this can be one of the outside readings.
Following these introductory topics, the courses will move to the tools, techniques,
and practice of the translation process. These are described below.
iii.
Sources of Materials
At the advanced level, it is appropriate to use materials without special regard to
difficulty (although determining difficulty is a legitimate task). Rather, issues of the
importance of the content, relevance, and general interest should be paramount. We will seek
authentic materials – texts, audio, and video – from each country. Newspaper articles and
editorials, government documents, religious sermons, and short stories will be appropriate
reading materials. Audio materials can now be gathered live from the internet. Radio news
broadcasts and live call-in programs (available from each of the three countries) can provide
interesting and highly motivating listening materials that can be re-purposed for listening
comprehension practice and for translation exercises. The call-in talk shows, in particular,
4
provide instances of language in many registers and dialects (including slang terms) and
provide excellent practice in understanding and translating unrehearsed, spontaneous speech.
Obtaining authentic video is more difficult, but short snippets of movies can be used under the
“fair use” doctrine.
The Center for Southeast Asian Studies (and our faculty associates) at NIU maintain
close links to institutions and individuals in S.E. Asia, and we will be able to count on their
assistance in many cases to obtain authentic materials. Our project’s Thai consultant will also
obtain authentic materials from Thailand.
Over the course of the project, we will obtain and structure multiple sets of
interchangeable Content Modules. A Content Module is a set of related readings (and audio
or video materials) relating to a specific genre, theme, or subject matter, together with
associated questions, exercises, and activities for students. Thus users of the Web-based
course will have an array of materials to choose from, allowing the course to be customized to
the interests of a class or even of individual students. The first set will focus, in part, on
materials related to Islam and the Islamic populations in the three countries; for example, a
bilingual Thai-Arabic copy of the Thai constitution recently published for use in Muslimspeaking southern Thailand; regional newspapers from Muslim areas of the Philippines; or
Web pages describing Islamic political parties in Indonesia.
A total of three to five such
Content Modules is planned.
iv.
Student Activities and Assignments
Specific student activities and assignments will be provided as an integral part of each
course. These will include:
5

Orientation to and explanations of the various comprehension strategies
suggested for student use. These may be done orally in class or as
separate documents for students to read on the Web.

Reading and listening comprehension exercises with questions keyed to
the content. Web-based online presentations will suggest appropriate
strategies and exercises will allow students to immediately self-test their
comprehension.

Study of translation theory and samples of professional translations via
reading of selected materials. References to the readings and questions
for self-study will be provided on the Web site for individual students.

Collaborative activities, such as an online discussion forum for group
translation projects. For example, each student can be asked to prepare
and post a translation, and then the class group can discuss the variations
(at their convenience over the course of a few days, via the Web) to
arrive at a consensus on a best final version.

Techniques of searching (on-line and offline) for materials relevant to an
individual’s interests and discipline, with explanations and examples.
Specific sources of such materials for a variety of disciplines for each
language will be listed. Students will be expected to find materials for
translation using these sources and techniques.

Demonstrations and use of a variety of current software tools (see the
next section). Exercises designed to build and test students’ facility in
using these tools will be provided at appropriate points in each course.
6

A required final translation project for each student. A number of
specific target materials will be provided, or students could be allowed to
choose their own with the instructor’s concurrence.
v.
Software Tools
The computer can be a powerful agent in the investigation of language materials. The
current state of the art limits computer-based tools to text analysis (except for speech
recognition for English). Many tools exist to aid in the analysis of Latin-based languages; far
fewer are available for “exotic” script-based languages such as Thai. The situation is
improving, however, as the slow spread of Unicode support (a standard means for encoding
documents in any of the world’s languages) proceeds. Recent versions of Microsoft Windows
include full Unicode support (input, encoding, and rendering) at the operating system level for
many languages including Thai. For practical purposes (as of this writing), this functionality
is primarily available within Microsoft’s own software such as Word and Internet Explorer.
We will explore and evaluate the use of text analysis software as an aid to translation,
and introduce appropriate tools in the courses. It may be the case that the selection of tools
will be different for Latin and non-Latin-based languages. However, the following categories
of software will be explored:

Word Frequency Programs – these programs count the frequency of each
word in a document or corpus of documents. Once word frequency lists
have been compiled they can be used to evaluate materials, and to
suggest proficiency levels and set related goals. That is, a teacher or
student could download (or Copy/Paste) text from an internet source or
from a printed source (OCR/optical scanning), process it with the word
7
frequency software and use the resulting frequency list as a tool for
evaluating the text (relevance and difficulty of vocabulary content), as an
acquisition monitor (establishing starting and ending points of
vocabulary acquisition), as a proficiency measure (level of vocabulary
achievement – both passive and active) or as the basis for compiling a
personal mini-dictionary (for example, see Donley and Reppen, 2001;
Zahar, 2001).

Concordance Programs – these programs show each word in a document
or corpus in each of the contexts in which it occurs in the text (i.e.
surrounded by some of the text before and after the word’s occurrence)
so that students can see the various ways in which a word is used. KWIC
Concordances (key words in context) are especially useful to the
dedicated learner and teacher in providing tailor-made data sets on how
words are used in actual language samples. Online concordances provide
a kind of collocation dictionary that is critical to anyone wanting to
achieve a truly high level of proficiency (for example, see Cobb, 1997;
Nation, 2002; St. John, 2001).

Semi-automated Interlinear Translation Programs – these programs allow
students to type in and modify a series of progressive translations, from
word-by-word literal translations to smooth, idiomatic English.

On-line Dictionaries – SEAsite already includes Web-based Indonesian
and Tagalog interactive dictionaries, each with well over 5000 words. As
part of this project, they will be expanded, based, in part, on the word
8
frequency lists developed for each course. We also have a Thai
dictionary with over 8000 entries, created as part of an IRS-sponsored
project in the early 1990s. We will convert it to a Unicode-based
relational database and provide a Web-based interface to it.

Vocabulary Acquisition tools – a person’s vocabulary is (even for
advanced learners) probably the single most important factor in that
person’s language facility. These courses, while focusing primarily on
comprehension and translation, will encourage students to continue a
daily effort to expand their vocabulary. Clearly the software-generated
word frequency lists can be helpful in identifying high frequency words
that should be mastered early. On-line exercises and assignments will
cordially encourage them to continue in their vocabulary acquisition
efforts. They will be asked to keep a journal to track words they have
looked up and learned. We will devise suggestions or on-line methods to
help them monitor the extent and the permanence of new vocabulary.
vi.
Web-based Version
The primary goal of this project is to implement – on the Web – the classroom-based
courses to be developed at NIU. The same faculty members who develop the “live” courses
will spend part of each summer implementing the courses for the Web. This will be done
with great care, so that teachers and students have a concrete idea of how the course is
sequenced, what materials are used, which exercises are to be done at each point in the course,
and so on. Much of this effort will be organizational (providing teaching plans, course
outlines, tables of contents, links, and so on) but although some of it will have been put in
9
place for the classroom-based courses, special accommodations will need to be made for the
Web version. The task of organizing these materials in a clear and useful way must not be
minimized; difficult issues will no doubt emerge as this is being done. For example, what can
we assume about other users’ ability and willingness to obtain a Unicode font? If we use
some stand-alone software tools (as seems likely), how can we assure that remote users can
obtain them? What alternatives can we suggest? What if they have other similar tools –
should our instructions be generic or specific to one particular program or another?
Another major task is to develop a set of interactive and evaluative exercises for the
Web-based versions of the courses. We will make use of several already-developed exercise
types (including multiple choice, matching, word drag-and-drop, and picture drag-and-drop)
to enable students to answer questions, to test their understanding, and to practice new
vocabulary. Solutions to exercises, suggested translations, and other aids will be posted so
students can self-check their own efforts.
As these courses become available, it is quite possible that students and instructors at
other institutions could join in some of the Web-based activities (in particular the on-line
collaborative activities). This would increase the number of participants and proportionally
enrich the courses through their increased interaction. We will invite our colleagues to join
the courses in this sense as soon as possible.
B. Need for these Courses
These Southeast Asian languages suffer from a paucity of modern instructional
materials of the quality and rich content usually found for the commonly taught European and
major Asian languages. This is especially true of advanced level materials. As far as we can
determine, no courses similar to the ones we propose here are currently taught at U.S.
10
universities, nor are there any such courses on the Web. Thus, if people with advanced
abilities in these languages, especially in translation, are desirable and in the national interest,
the courses we propose here will be invaluable. Their availability on the Web will make them
accessible to the largest possible audience.
The target languages for this project, Thai, Indonesian, and Tagalog, are among the
most important languages of Southeast Asia, spoken by hundreds of millions of people. Each
of the three countries is important to the United States.
Thailand has one of the fastest growing economies of the region. Standard Thai is
spoken by over 60 million people in Thailand and used as a lingua franca in Laos, Northern
Vietnam, and the Shan States of Burma. Thailand's rapid economic growth (except for the
economic crisis in the late 90s) has in large part resulted from the large amount of trade
between Thailand, neighboring countries, and the United States. Because of the political
stability of the country, it has become increasingly important as a center for banking and
international organizations. With regard to the emphasis on Islamic materials in the first
Content Module, the southern areas of Thailand near Malaysia have a significant Muslim
population.
Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and while the post-Suharto
era has been one of considerable turmoil, it is presently making progress toward democracy
under very difficult conditions. The events in East Timor a few years ago, post-9/11
suspicions of terrorist training camps based in Indonesia, and most recently the apparent
confirmation of these suspicions resulting from the terrorist bombing in Bali, all underscore
the growing importance and visibility of this emerging nation. Indonesian is spoken by most
of the nearly 200 million citizens of Indonesia. It is closely related to Malaysian (the two
11
governments cooperate on language and spelling standardization) and the two languages are
mutually comprehensible. It is the most widely taught Southeast Asian language in the U.S.
The Philippines is Southeast Asia’s oldest democracy and historically has had great
strategic and political importance to the United States. In recent years, mandatory education
and the media have elevated Tagalog/Filipino to the status of a true national language for the
65 million Filipinos in the Philippines. Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups operating in
the southern islands of the country are a security concern to the U.S.
These courses will directly serve the needs of two somewhat distinct audiences
interested in these languages and countries. One audience consists of students who are
pursuing academic degrees in fields such as political science, literature, linguistics,
anthropology, and even public health and geography. These students will want to use
translation skills in pursuing their academic interests in various ways – achieving a deeper
understanding of a culture, conducting analyses of the ways a particular language element is
used, producing faithful translations of L2 literature into English to make that literature
available to a wider audience, or researching current events and politics in a country.
The second audience consists of students who have a more direct and focused interest
in the skills, techniques, and processes of translation per se, where the end goal is the
translation itself. The resulting translation then would be used by third parties. Two
examples of these third parties are businesses engaged in international commerce and foreign
service staff. Increasingly, it is advisable to know the language of the country in which the
business and diplomacy are conducted, as a courtesy at least, and also to achieve a
competitive advantage. A third example is the set of U.S. government agencies that are
12
increasingly engaged in an attempt to understand events and the flood of communications in a
variety of the world’s languages, including those of Southeast Asia.
Both of these audiences require many of the same skill sets. Although courses in
translation techniques are not a new concept, such courses at an advanced level for these
languages, available over the World Wide Web, do not exist (also see Section III Account of
Related Materials).
While non-language-specific translation courses may be of some limited use, the three
courses proposed here will address specific issues related to each language. Thai, for
example, is particularly difficult because the language is written with no spaces between
words in a sentence. The Thai course will include techniques to help students overcome this
problem – both in terms of their own understanding and in terms of the software tools that can
aid in the analysis and translation process. Indonesian and Tagalog both incorporate an
elaborate verb affix system. To accurately translate complex texts in these languages, a
precise understanding of these verb variants is required. (This degree of precision is often
less important and less emphasized in beginning and intermediate courses where texts are
simpler in structure.) In addition, the use of standard linguistic analysis tools (such as
concordance programs) is more complex since a naïve interpretation of concordance output
will miss many occurrences of these words. The Tagalog and Indonesian courses will
highlight issues such as these.
Finally, the emphasis on making modern linguistic software tools available to a broad
audience and on including instruction and practice with them in an advanced translation
course, is unique to this project. Clearly, the use of such software can enhance the
understanding of texts and may also speed the process of translation. These tools should be in
13
the repertoire of language students in the 21st century. Again, there is no such course, either
classroom-based or Web-based, presently available to a general audience.
In summary, there is a significant need for this project based on

the importance of the languages and countries addressed by these courses,

the importance of expert translators to the national interest,

the lack of similar courses for these languages in any form in the U.S.,

the unique emphasis on the use of modern software tools to be used in
achieving understanding and in the translation process, and on

II.
the universal accessibility the course will have in its Web-based version.
Usefulness of Product to Others
The Web-based translation courses described above will be suitable for use at any
traditional post-secondary institution (or government language schools such as the Defense
Language Institute or the Foreign Service Institute) where advanced students in these
languages desire to learn and practice translation skills, either as part of an existing course, as
independent study under direction of a faculty member, or as a self-study course. Even where
these institutions have advanced courses in these languages, these Web-based advanced
translation courses will provide a unique emphasis and set of skills, tools, exercises, and
content unavailable elsewhere. Instructors of existing courses who wish to make use of the
Web-based version of these courses can choose whether to use some or all of the Web content
and resources in their own course.
In addition to the usefulness of this project to the traditional audiences described
above, there is another, less well-defined audience for Web-based materials. These people are
harder to identify and categorize since they use the materials anonymously over the internet.
14
SEAsite (our Southeast Asia language and culture Web site) has a voluntary survey form that
users are invited to fill in and submit. These surveys indicate a large variety of users, from
high school students looking for term paper information to U.S. government workers overseas
who use SEAsite to maintain and upgrade their language skills in the local language.
Although it is impossible to gather detailed information about who uses SEAsite beyond the
information they provide in the surveys and occasional emails, we can at least count our users.
In a recent week in September 2002, for example, we found the following from analysis of
our Web server logs:
Language
Indonesian
Thai
Tagalog
Average Unique
Visitors per day
738
626
1465
Average Pages
Accessed per day
5390
5796
7397
So every day there are roughly 1000 different people (or more precisely, people using
about 1000 different computers) requesting material (Web pages, etc.) from SEAsite for each
of these languages. People request around 6000 pages each day (not including images and
audio files), again, for each language. The Web logs also indicate that approximately 75% of
the requests come from computers in the U.S. (and we know from the surveys that some of
the non-U.S. requests come from Americans overseas). For each day, the number of NIU
students was a very small percentage (in most cases, less than 5%), showing that SEAsite is,
indeed, heavily used nationally.
The conclusion that we draw from this is that SEAsite is used by far more people than
the number of students of these languages enrolled in traditional language courses in the U.S.
Presumably the audience for an advanced language course will be smaller than the audience
for SEAsite as a whole, but we can generalize from the current SEAsite usage patterns that
15
our non-traditional audience is likely to be far larger than we might suspect from simply
counting potential users in traditional language learning settings. All of these non-traditional
U.S. based learners potentially add to the pool of language experts in this country.
III.
Account of Related Materials
To our knowledge, there are no formal advanced courses in translation for these three
languages currently taught in the U.S. in academic institutions. Moreover, a Web search for
keywords such as “advanced translation course” and “Indonesian” etc. returns only a few
relevant results for university courses in Australia. Similar results for Thai and Tagalog
indicate that such courses are at best extremely rare and therefore available to (at most) a very
restricted audience. Certainly many linguistics courses on general translation principles and
techniques do exist, but the unique nature of the courses proposed here (with respect to the
level, the languages presented, and the emphasis on software tools) puts this project in a
substantially different class.
IV.
Likelihood of Achieving Results
The project co-directors have an unbroken record of success in developing computer-
based learning materials for Southeast Asian Languages dating back to the mid-80s.
Beginning with an Apple II-based system for the National Security Agency, through reimplementations for DOS and Windows, an innovative CD-ROM based multimedia
dictionary for Thai and Indonesian, and most recently the SEAsite project, all these projects
met their stated goals.
Furthermore, the language instructors for the project have extensive experience in
teaching advanced students (Hartmann and P. Henry each have more than 20 years
experience). P. Henry has published translations of Indonesian literature (see Henry 2001 and
16
forthcoming). Hartmann has been working for over 20 years on computer-based aids for
students to help them to a better understanding of Thai. Both Hartmann and P. Henry have
doctoral degrees in Linguistics. The computer-related activities – those of obtaining,
evaluating, and in some cases, creating software tools – will be competently handled by the
two computer science co-directors. G. Henry is currently devoting his sabbatical leave to
evaluating the state of the art in standards-based text encoding and processing (Unicode) and
so will be in a position to proceed on the selection and development of software tools and
Web techniques for Thai.
Finally, the project itself is clearly conceived and well-designed (see Section I Project
Overview and Section VI Plan of Operation). There are no major technical problems to be
overcome in either implementing the classroom courses or the Web-based versions.
In summary, the project personnel have a record of success in developing computerrelated projects for Southeast Asian languages, they have the pedagogical and theoretical
background to develop advanced translation courses, and the project itself is well-designed
and can be implemented with the resources and time requested.
V.
Expected Contribution to Other Programs
Although the Web searches alluded to earlier (in Section III Account of Related
Materials) did not find advanced translation courses for these languages at U.S. universities, it
did find a significant number of more general advanced courses in Thai, Indonesian, and
Tagalog. The materials and techniques in these Web-based courses could be used as
resources in those courses to the degree desired by individual instructors and students. In
addition, where seminar, independent studies, or advanced topics courses are offered at such
17
institutions, these Web courses could be used largely unaltered, since they will be structured
with a variety of materials and exercises and will include a detailed guide for teachers.
Other institutions may offer beginning and intermediate courses but not have the
resources to present courses at an advanced level. Again, these Web-based courses could fill
this gap for students interested in continuing their studies in a particular language.
In addition, certain results of using the software tools in these courses will be
published on the Web site for others to use. For example, by the end of the project, a set of
word frequency lists for various disciplines and subject matter areas will be a part of the Web
site. These lists, for each language (and in some cases, broken down by content area), will be
available as a public resource. Also, several software tools, accessible from the Web, will
also be available without restriction. These would include the online dictionaries, word
frequency generators, and other tools to be developed during the project.
In order to maximize the usefulness of these courses, people will need to know about
them. To this end, in the third year of the project, we will prepare and mail a flyer describing
the courses to appropriate institutions and individuals. (Our Center for Southeast Asian
Studies can prepare such a list from its mailing list.) In addition, the links to the courses will
be featured on the SEAsite homepage, ensuring that thousands of people – self-selected with
demonstrated interests in Southeast Asia and its languages – will see information about it and
have direct access to it. Finally, the project co-directors will present papers at academic
conferences such as the Association for Asian Studies and the Council of Teachers of
Southeast Asian Languages.
18
VI.
Plan of Operation
A. Response to GEPA Section 427
This project will be non-discriminatory in terms of access to the materials it creates.
Access to these courses in their classroom-based versions will be subject only to the rules and
regulations of NIU, which conforms to all accessibility regulations and is non-discriminatory
as a matter of overall policy. The Web-based version of the courses will be open and free to
anyone with access to the Internet. Since most materials on the Web will be either text or
audio, the common accessibility features of modern computing systems will be available to
users. These include features such as magnified screens, text-to-speech, and alternate input
devices and techniques. Of course, text-to-speech for foreign languages may not work as well
for foreign languages as for English (and, currently, not at all for Thai). We will make every
attempt to design materials that are easy to see and navigate to ensure that use of the Web
materials is as easy as possible for all user.
B. Project Timeline
Activities during each time period are categorized as Classroom Course Development
and Web Course Development so that the parallel development of the two course types can be
seen clearly. Only those activities described under Web Course Development are supported
by IRS Project funds.
Year 1 – Academic Year
Classroom Course Development
Develop course outline and syllabus; research and determine comprehension strategies to
use; survey software text analysis tools; start gathering Content Module 1 text and audio
materials.
19
Web Course Development
Research current Unicode support in modern operating systems and software tools;
experiment writing Web-based Unicode compliant software modules for Thai.
Year 1 – Summer
Classroom Course Development
Finalize choice of Content Module I materials, including audio; research and structure
translation theory materials; write student exercises and assignments for classroom based
course (comprehension and translation); test software tools, install in NIU computer labs.
Web-based Course Development
Implement first draft of Web-based materials in parallel with classroom course outline;
develop Web-based interactive exercises to accompany course content; write student
instructions in use of Web-based and standalone software tools; begin writing conversion
software for Thai Windows dictionary for Web use; convert digitized audio materials for
use on Web site (streaming audio: mp3 or RealAudio).
Year 2 – Academic Year
Classroom Course Development
Teach the language courses at NIU for the first time; continue work on supporting
software; begin to gather Content Module 2 materials; conduct end-of-course surveys.
Web-based Course Development
Continue work on Thai dictionary conversion and interactive Web dictionary interface.
20
Year 2 – Summer
Classroom Course Development
Revise classroom-based version of the courses based on year 1 feedback; finalize choice
of Content Module 2 materials with customized exercises; begin to organize the word
frequency lists developed collaboratively by instructors and students.
Web-based Course Development
Revise Web-based version of the courses based on year 1 feedback; continue work on
Unicode software tools; complete implementation of Web-based Thai Dictionary; add
discussion forum software to Web course site; begin adding words to the three
dictionaries, based on Content Module 1 and 2 vocabularies; conduct first external
evaluation.
Year 3 – Academic Year
Classroom Course Development
Teach the (revised) three language courses at NIU for the second time, using Content
Module 2; begin to gather Content Module 3 and 4 materials; continue construction of
word frequency lists.
Web-based Course Development
Monitor “remote” use of Web-based courses by several recruited students at other
universities; continue adding words to the three dictionaries, based on Content Module 3
and 4 vocabularies.
Year 3 – Summer
Classroom Course Development
Final revision of classroom-based courses.
21
Web-based Course Development
Final revision of Web-based version of the courses; continue adding words to the three
dictionaries, based on Content Module 3 and 4 vocabularies; conduct second external
evaluation; write Teacher’s Guide for Web-based courses; prepare publicity materials and
disseminate to U.S. universities and government language schools; post project-final word
frequency lists.
Ongoing Activities Years 1 – 3
Train faculty and graduate assistants in use of Web authoring software; train faculty and
graduate assistants in use of course software tools; maintain project workstations and
servers; install and configure software; monitor security.
VII. Quality of Personnel
This proposal is made by a group of four key faculty members who have worked
together on projects involving computer-aided instruction for Thai and Indonesian for over 15
years. Each of them is a project co-director for the current SEAsite project. Please see
attached vitae for professional qualifications and history.
Dr. George Henry, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Northern Illinois
University; M.S. Computer Science; Ed.D. Instructional Technology. Dr. G. Henry designed
and implemented three generations of the FLIS (Foreign Language Instruction Station) system
under grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the Luce Foundation, and the National
Security Agency. For the last six years he has been Project Director for SEAsite, a Webbased resource for the languages and cultures of Southeast Asia. He has been associated with
computer-related projects involving Southeast Asian Languages since 1981, including a
concordance program for precisely romanized Thai texts. He is the author of several papers
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on issues of Thai script in CALL programs and (with R. Zerwekh) the use of the Internet in
language instruction.
Dr. Robert Zerwekh, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Northern Illinois
University; M.S. Computer Science, Ph.D. Philosophy. Dr. Zerwekh served as programmer
and software engineer on the FLIS project since 1989 and with SEAsite since its inception in
1997. He serves multiple roles: application programmer, database expert, and Web server
security monitor. His research interests include the use of neural networks in modeling
student behavior while taking computer-based language lessons as well as techniques and
issues of implementation and presentation of dynamic Web content. He is the primary author
of the MBIDict CD-ROM multimedia dictionary.
Dr. Patricia Henry, Associate Professor of Foreign Language and Literature
(Indonesian), Northern Illinois University; Ph.D. Linguistics. Dr. P. Henry was the
Indonesian coordinator for the FLIS project, the supervisor of the MBIDict CD-ROM
multimedia Indonesian dictionary project, and is the director of Indonesian SEAsite content.
She served as the Director of the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute from 1986 to
1987 and as the in-country director of the Consortium of Teachers of Indonesian summer
program in Indonesia in 1989.
Dr. John Hartmann, Professor of Foreign Language and Literature (Thai), Northern
Illinois University; Ph.D. Linguistics. Dr. Hartmann was the Thai coordinator for the FLIS
project, the supervisor of the MBIDict CD-ROM multimedia Thai dictionary project, and is
the director of Thai SEAsite content. Dr. Hartmann is nationally known as an authority on the
Thai language and the teaching of Thai. He served as the language director of the Southeast
Asian Studies Summer Institute from 1986 to 1987. In 1994, he conducted a week-long
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workshop for CALL on the teaching of Thai for government language teachers, and a summer
workshop for teachers of Thai at the University of Hawai'i. In 2001 he presented a paper at
the Association of Asian Studies as part of a panel on teaching SEA scripts.
Ms. Rhodalyne Gallo-Crail will be the fifth faculty member from Northern Illinois
University to participate in the project. She has been our Tagalog instructor for the past six
years, and has been the Tagalog SEAsite director. Ms. Gallo-Crail has a Master's Degree in
Applied Linguistics from Ohio University and has eight years experience teaching English as
a Second Language overseas with a Department of State Overseas Refugee Training Program
for Southeast East Asian Refugees at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in the
Philippines. Her research interests include foreign/second language literacy, pedagogical
grammar and language learning strategies.
Finally, we plan to employ two consultants to help with the complexities of the Thai
language. Ms. Jenjit Gasigitamrong will serve as a consultant on Thai language and Thaicapable software tools. Ms. Gasigitamrong, who will receive her doctorate in Literacy
Education with concentration in reading next year from Northern Illinois University, will
return home to a position at Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand. She was instructor of
advanced Thai courses at SEASSI in 2001 and 2002, and has worked as a graduate assistant
for SEAsite since 1998. With Dr. Hartmann, she has specialized in methods of using software
to analyze materials in Thai script. She will advise us on appropriate software tools for the
Thai course and on methods to adapt them for use with Thai script, as well as collect authentic
materials for study and translation.
Mr. Chris Pirazzi, a computer programmer with expertise in internationalization issues
and Thai in particular, will convert the current Thai dictionary content to Unicode.
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This project will be non-discriminatory in its employment practices. The Indonesian
project co-director, the Tagalog language teacher, and the Thai consultant are members of a
protected class. In previous projects, because of the nature of the expertise required in
creating content for Thai, Tagalog, and Indonesian, we have always hired Asian and Asian
American minority graduate students in the role of materials implementation, and we expect
this practice to continue in this project.
VIII. Budget and Cost Effectiveness
The proposed budget for this project is relatively modest. In part, this is because this
project will not be concerned with developing the classroom-based courses per se, but rather
with implementing it for the Web, and with providing interactive exercises and software
resources and tools. In addition, we already have most of the hardware equipment necessary
to accomplish the software and Web-based components of development. To help with several
equipment issues, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has pledged funds to purchase
three new workstations and a new server. (The main SEAsite server, in particular, has been
running continuously for more than five years.) Finally, student fees for our Language
Learning Center will pay for most of the software tools to be used by students in the courses.
Therefore the majority of the funds needed for this project are for people. Each of the
project co-directors requests about a month of summer salary (each year) so that they can
focus on the project, relieved of the need for summer teaching income. The language codirectors will design and direct the Web re-implementation of the courses. The two computer
science faculty will provide supporting expertise, Web authoring training, and custom
software development. Of course, all will be working on the project during the academic year
as well, as a part of their university-sponsored research time.
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We also request funds to help support graduate research assistants in the summers of
the grant. The summer support for graduate assistants will allow them to assist the codirectors to create exercises and author the Web content that presents the courses to the world.
Further details can be found in the Budget and Budget Justification appendices.
Again, given the scope and sophistication of the work proposed, we feel these costs
are modest.
IX.
Evaluation Plan
Since these courses will be developed first in a classroom-based mode with students at
NIU, we will be able to identify what works and what doesn’t (with our students) on a weekly
basis. To aid in this effort, we will ask that they keep a log of their activities with comments
and reactions, to be submitted at frequent intervals. It will be made clear that these will not be
used in determining their grades.
One non-NIU student (for each language) will be identified (by contacting colleagues
at other institutions) and recruited to serve during the third year as a “remote” student
evaluator. In this way we will obtain feedback about possible problems encountered in the
remote environment.
Finally, at the end of the second and third year, an external evaluator will visit NIU
and assess the courses from the remote (Web-based) perspective. The evaluation will involve
assessment of all course materials, including course content, syllabus, software, and Webbased activities. Interviews with students will be an important part of this evaluation, and if
timing constraints prevent live interviews, communications via email will be conducted at the
mutual convenience of the evaluator and students. Each year the evaluator will be an expert
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in at least one of the languages used in the project. (See also Section XII – Provisions for Pretesting and Revision)
X.
Adequacy of Resources
The SEAsite project at NIU has adequate hardware and software resources to support
this project. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has pledged $8000 for several new
workstations and a new Web server for this project. Although some of the equipment will be
six years old, we anticipate no significant hardware problems since we have more
workstations than we require for this project. The budget requests funds for a limited amount
of software and for normal maintenance needs.
The key project personnel (See Section VII Quality of Personnel) will devote a
significant portion of their university-sponsored research time to the project over the course of
the three years. In addition, this proposal requests summer salary support for each of them to
devote a total of about three months full-time work to the project. Based on past experience
in projects of this type dating back to the mid-1980s, this amount of time is adequate for the
project.
Other human resources should present no problem. In the past, we have been able to
find qualified graduate students – especially for these languages – for courseware
development activities, because of the significant international student population at NIU.
XI.
Description of Final Format
The final product of this project will be a set of three stand-alone Web-based courses,
hosted at www.seasite.niu.edu. The content of the Web site for each course will include at a
minimum:
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
Course Outline including topics addressed, and sequence and duration of topics
for a 15-week course

Teacher’s Guide with suggestions on how to teach the course as a classroombased course as well as a Web-based course

Three to five Content Modules with texts and audio relating to specific
discourse styles and themes

Translation and comprehension exercises corresponding to each of the Content
Modules

Exercises designed to develop skill in using the course software

Online software resources such as the dictionaries (some developed by this
project, others available on the Web from other sources)

Reviews and instructions for use of the recommended stand-alone software
packages used in the course

Suggested readings in comprehension strategies and translation theory

Project-final postings of word frequency lists for each language
This set of resources will be available free and without other restrictions to anyone.
Users will be encouraged to submit a survey in which they indicate their background,
purpose, and special interests in the course to help us plan future development.
The project directors are committed to maintaining these online courses (as they have
maintained SEAsite) beyond the end of the 3-year project. Our intention is to support and
maintain all of SEAsite, including these courses, for the foreseeable future.
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XII. Provisions for Pre-testing and Revision
As described above (Section VI Plan of Operation and XI Evaluation Plan), the
courses will be taught in their classroom-based mode twice during the project period.
Students in the courses will provide feedback during and following each course presentation;
this feedback will be incorporated in the Web re-implementations as well as subsequent
presentations of the classroom courses. During the third year of the project, the Web-based
courses will be made publicly available. We will seek several students outside NIU (via our
contacts in the SEA teaching community) to test the Web-based courses remotely to provide
reactions and feedback about using the courses in this mode. Funds have been budgeted in
the third year of the project to pay a honorarium to these students.
In addition, we have budgeted for external evaluators to visit NIU after the second and
third year of the project. In the past, our evaluators have visited at the end of projects, making
it difficult to implement their recommendations. For this project, we will schedule two
evaluations, one in the middle and one near the end of the project. Moreover, we will
schedule these visits during spring or early summer of each year so that the evaluators’
recommendations can be addressed during the summer (when both faculty and graduate
assistants will be devoted to project development and revision and not to teaching duties).
This schedule will permit (potentially major) revisions to be made to the classroombased courses during the summer after both the second and third years of the project. The
Web-based courses, first presented publicly in the third year of the project, will benefit from
the revisions of the classroom courses made after the second year. Specific feedback about
the Web-based courses will be incorporated during the final summer of the project.
To summarize, then, we will have feedback and comments from our own students as
we design and implement the classroom-based versions of the courses, from several off-
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campus students who will take the Web-based courses, as well as comments from two
external evaluators after the second and third years of the project. All of this information will
inform revision efforts scheduled at the end of the second and third years of the project.
XIII. Priorities
The IRSP program invitational priorities for 2003 are specifically for the development
of specialized materials for the teaching of “the languages of the Islamic nations of the Middle
East and Central Asia” and “the languages of South Asia”. This project features three
languages of Southeast Asia. Each corresponding country has a significant Islamic population.
As mentioned previously, Indonesia has the world’s largest Islamic population; the
Philippines has a significant Islamic population, and areas in the south of Thailand are also
largely Islamic. Terrorist activities in Indonesia and the Philippines present significant
security issues to the U.S. and the world. So while this proposal does not meet the strict letter
of the invitational priorities, it may be seen to meet their spirit to a large degree, as well as to
meet the absolute priority.
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