PTLC2005 David Brett Teaching Phonetics Using Flash:1
Creating Interactive Material for Teaching
Phonetics Using Macromedia Flash MX
David Brett
University of Sassari, Italy
1 Introduction
The present paper will discuss the application of the Macromedia Flash program to
the teaching of phonetics and pronunciation from a ‘grass-roots’ perspective. The
slant will be not some much from the point of view of large projects with substantial
funding, hence the possibility of engaging qualified help, but will instead deal
principally with what a single instructor, with even limited technical ability, can
achieve. Over the last two decades there has been a notable and widespread
tendency in IT to lower the levels of difficulty with which numerous operations can be
conducted. This has rendered the computer a tool which all, rather than a select few,
can use and exploit. It could be argued, however, that this revolution is as yet
incomplete in the sector of the creation of interactive, multimedia materials for
language teaching/phonetics. Many operations (e.g. the insertion of sound in web
pages; the creation of several types of interactive exercises) remain within the citadel
of the technician, a situation which cannot be justified by technical reasons and is not
in keeping with the general trend of events.
2 What is Flash?
Flash is a program developed by Macromedia, one of the largest companies in the
sector of multimedia and software for the web. The latest version of the program is
Macromedia Flash MX 2004, that is part of a package called Macromedia Studio MX
2004 that includes the well-known web editor Dreamweaver. The source files for the
program are in the .fla format from which ‘movies’ can be published in several
formats, the most common of which is .swf that is read by the Flash Player. Flash is
an ideal program for the creation of interactive multimedia material for the web – the
following are some of its features of most relevance to the field of
phonetics/pronunciation training: high levels of interactivity; it can be used to create
animations; its support and control of audio in the .mp3 format; as well as supporting
Unicode, fonts can be embedded; content can be stored in external .txt or XML files
(as can audio in .mp3 and images in .jpg)
In general, Flash allows the creation of material that allows greater interaction with
media than JavaScript and with far smaller file sizes than are needed for Java-based
material. Accessibility is also a major issue: Macromedia, the developer of the
software, claim that the Flash Player needed to visualise Flash content is installed on
98% of computers with access to the internet. Therefore, material created with Flash
can reach a very wide audience and the cases in which the user must download the
player (a simple and swift operation in any case) are rare. However, a rather worrying
recent development concerns a series of Flash blocking devices, which range from a
feature of the Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 2 to the draconian FlashBlock add-on
for Mozilla. These are the result of an excessive use of Flash advertisements which
often leads to web pages being disproportionately large in comparison to the ‘real’
content of the pages.
3 Sound on the web
Sound is clearly of fundamental importance to any work in the field of phonetics and
new technologies offer seamless integration of sound and text that constitutes an
PTLC2005 David Brett Teaching Phonetics Using Flash:2
enormous improvement on the traditional book and cassette scenario. However, it is
important that we address the issue of how sound can be best presented in web
pages. The consideration that traditional ways of inserting audio in web pages (links
to media files and plug-ins) are not optimum solutions is matter has been discussed
in detail elsewhere (Brett, in press [a]) and the following is a brief résumé how Flash
can constitute a significant improvement.
3.1 Using Flash to insert audio into web pages
Flash has excellent handling of audio (in the .mp3 format only), and given its
extremely high distribution constitutes an optimum solution to the problem of the
insertion of audio in web pages. Mp3 players can be custom-built in Flash to cater to
individual requirements regarding size, graphics and functionality. The latter refers to
several aspects including hot-keys for easy navigation of files and preloaders, a
feature that informs the user by way of graphics and/or text of the progress of
download of the media file. A program called soundItOut that permits recording,
encoding in .mp3 and successive compilation of HTML pages with Flash sound
buttons, all from one interface, is currently being developed by the author and is to be
released shortly.
4 Applications created with Flash
Examples of the material discussed below can be viewed online at:
http://davidbrett.uniss.it/PTLC2005/index.html
4.1 The Phonemic Typewriter
The phonemic typewriter is a user-friendly solution for the creation of texts with
phonetic symbols in a WYSIWYG modality, i.e. an interface that allows the direct
insertion of symbols into a textbox. Several such applications have already been
created using JavaScript; in particular, an example created by Pete MacKichan
(<http://users.otenet.gr/~petermac/call/pron/type.html>) is worthy of note, as not only
does the virtual keyboard contain DELETE, SPACE and RESET buttons, offering
greater functionality than the other examples, it also foresees the conversion of the
symbols into the code needed to display the output in HTML, as well as the
possibility of copying the symbols into a text document. For example, the schwa
requires the following code: &#601;. A slight disadvantage is that the application
does not create also the corresponding formatting tags.
The author has created a virtual keyboard in Flash for the creation of texts with IPA
symbols for transcribing Standard British English (a version with the complete set of
IPA symbols is currently under development). Users can toggle between using the
hard keyboard for standard text and the virtual one for the insertion of symbols. The
text box is large (11 lines) in comparison to other examples and hence is also
suitable for longer passages. On completion, text can be copied to the clipboard, as
can the complete code for a HTML page including head, body and formatting tags.
4.2 Drag vowels on the quadrilateral
Drag vowels on the quadrilateral is a small application, to be used online, for the
creation of diagrams of vowel quadrilaterals as illustrated by the Handbook of the IPA
(1999). It is composed of an empty quadrilateral surrounded by vowel symbols and
dots that can be dragged into position. There are also single arrows for the illustration
of diphthongs and arrows that can be bent to represent triphthongs. On completion
the diagram can be copied to the clipboard by exploiting the ALT+PRINT keyboard
sequence that captures the window that is currently active. The diagram can then be
pasted directly into a Word document, or into a graphics program and saved in a
suitable format. This works best with the Internet Explorer browser, which allows the
creation of a borderless window (using JavaScript in a parent page).
PTLC2005 David Brett Teaching Phonetics Using Flash:3
5 Authoring Flash exercises
Flash is by no means an easy program to use - being a powerful and extremely
versatile tool the interface is far from simple. Furthermore, even the most
straightforward of exercises entail the editing of code which can be quite daunting for
non-experts. However, an extremely useful function is the possibility to load external
content – text (in the .txt or XML formats), images (.jpg), audio (.mp3) and video (.avi)
can all be stored externally and loaded at runtime. This means that to create a new
exercise in an appropriately scripted Flash movie, the author need merely substitute
the media files and edit the text variables. This latter task can be carried out even
with the humble NotePad application, and permits not only the modification of the text
components of an exercise, but also the translation of the whole interface of the
program, e.g. the text on the ‘Check’ button can be translated to the language the
exercise is in. XML has been proposed as the optimum format for storing text
variables for interactive exercises (Ward, 2002;Cushion, 2004) and has been widely
used with JavaScript and DHTML-based exercises (Tamburini, 2004). To sum up,
storing data and media externally means that quite complex exercise types can be
authored with great use and without have to wade through blocks of script that if
accidentally altered, will compromise the functioning of the whole exercise.
6 Flash exercises for phonetics/pronunciation training
The following is an outline of some of the types of exercises of particular relevance to
the fields of phonetics/pronunciation training that can be created in this way.
6.1 Odd one out
An odd one out exercise is very simply a series of items all but one of which have
common characteristics. The user selects the non-conforming text item by clicking on
it, whereby a small animation runs simulating a pen that circles the word or phrase.
This decision is made on the basis of a sound object that may be listened to by
clicking on a ‘play’ button to the left of the exercise. This can be used to practice the
discrimination of vowel sounds, stress and intonation patterns. When the ‘Check’
button is pressed the choices are corrected using ticks and crosses; a ‘?’ button also
appears to the right of each group from which further feedback can be obtained.
‘Reset’ and ‘Key’ buttons are also present.
6.2 Drag’n’drop grouping exercises
Drag’n’drop grouping exercises are composed of three boxes into which a number
(e.g. 15) of text or sound objects with shared characteristics are to be dragged. If the
objects to be dragged are sound buttons, a transcription of the sound file can be
visualised by way of a ‘See text’ button. The content of these exercises can be
similar to that of the Odd one out exercise type. ‘Reset’ and ‘Key’ buttons are also on
the interface.
This exercise type is a considerable improvement on multiple choice formats (dropdown menus/radio buttons) as at the end of the exercise the user has ‘physically’
moved the elements with common characteristics together. Not only does this
facilitate comparison and contrast, the end result of this type of interaction is far more
tangible and in keeping with the way in which we group and distinguish objects in the
real world (Brett, in press [b]).
6.3 Phonemic transcription
In this exercise type a variation of the Phonemic Typewriter outlined above acts as
an input device for phonemic transcription exercises. The user is presented with ten
words or short phrases to be transcribed by clicking on the keys of the virtual
typewriter. The word can also be listened to by clicking on a ‘play’ button. The user
PTLC2005 David Brett Teaching Phonetics Using Flash:4
has two possibilities of transcribing the word correctly. Subsequently the correct
answer is shown
6.4 Pitch curves
This exercise type is a virtual reproduction of a set piece in the text-based material
dealing with intonation. The user is presented with a phrase that can be listened to by
clicking on a ‘play’ button. Then he/she must drag some red lines (one for each
syllable) up or down to represent the pitch curve of the phrase. If the difference in
height between the two ends of each line exceeds a certain amount, the line
becomes a curve. Lines can also be dragged from the middle to indicate rise-fall or
fall-rise patterns. When the ‘Check’ button is pressed, the correct pattern is displayed
in green, with which comparison can be made with the user’s choice.
As can be imagined, the authoring process for this exercise type is slightly more
complex than in the preceding examples, since a large number of co-ordinates need
to be inserted in order to define the solution (for a phrase with five syllables a
minimum of ten figures). While this is by no means impossible, it is quite painstaking,
and hence an application has been developed with which the author defines the
solution by dragging the lines (in an identical way to that of the exercise itself). The
program then saves the data automatically in the XML format.
7 Userability issues
The exercise types outlined above have been tried extensively in both in-class and
online scenarios involving a variety of users ranging from schoolchildren, to university
students and adult learners. While these experiences have highlighted a series of
shortcomings and bugs that have since been seen to, optimisation remains an
ongoing process. One salient issue is certainly that of how to best illustrate what the
user is expected to do in an exercise. Given the fact that an online user usually does
not have an instructor to turn to, this aspect of userability is crucial, especially in
exercise types that are substantially different from traditionally button-pushing tasks,
such as multiple choice and true/false exercises.
Once again the almost unlimited possibilities of Flash may come to the rescue. Being
a program that is essentially for the creation of animations, dynamic examples can be
programmed to run at the start of each exercise, or in the first exercise in a series of
similar types, providing a foolproof illustration of the requirements of the task. This
aspect is currently being addressed for the exercise types discussed above.
Bibliography
Brett D. (in press [a]), Why is the web such a silent place? Didactic and technical
issues relating to the use of sound in CALL materials. Proceedings of the 8th CercleS
Conference. Bratislava, September 2004
Brett D. (in press [b]).
Drag'n'drop Exercises and 2nd language learning.
Proceedings of the 3rd AICLU Conference. Trieste, June 2003
Cushion, S. (2004). Increasing accessibility by pooling digital resources. ReCALL,
16: 41-50
Handbook of the International Phonetics Association (1999), Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Tamburini, F (2004), Dynamic generation of web-based multimedia language
learning materials through on line templates, Proceedings of the 7th CercleS
Conference. Paris, September 2002
Ward, M. (2002). Reusable XML technologies and the development of language
learning materials. ReCALL, 14: 285-294