This podcasting project is an initiative that has been partially funded by a Learning Enhancement Grant during the Summer 2007 term from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer, in cooperation with Patrick Pluscht and Julie Navar at the Center for Distributed Learning.
Lawrence
Williams - lawrence.williams@unt.edu
Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages & Literatures (French)
Director of Curriculum & Assessment
Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures
This project has three components that will be created on a monthly basis:
1) A podcast (in the form of an audio recording) of an interview with a French-speaking person. In most cases, only a segment of the interview will be prepared as the podcast since some of the interviews are rather lengthy. The average podcast will be 5-10 minutes in length.
2) An orthographic transcription of the interview segment prepared as a podcast. This type of transcription is simply a text file with the words used by the interviewer and the interviewee. No punctuation is used. Upper-case letters are only used for the orthographic transcription of proper nouns. Words that are not pronounced in full are orthographically transcribed as if the entire word had been pronounced, except in the case of a false start where it took several times for the person to pronounce the entire word. For example, if the word il is used and the letter 'l' is deleted, the entire word will still be orthographically transcribed. However, if only part of a word is repeated a few times and the entire word is finally pronounced, the false start will be indicated with an orthographic transcription of the pronounced part of the word ending with a hyphen to indicate an incomplete realization of the word (e.g., Av- Av- Avignon or T- T- TGV).
3) A phonetic transcription of the interview segment prepared as a podcast. This transcription will represent the actual speech of the interviewer and the interviewees as accurately and closely as possible. The document will have numbered lines that will correspond to the numbered lines in the orthographic transcription. Due to the limitations of the Lucidia Sans Unicode font, certain substitutions have been made for the symbols traditionally used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent French nasal vowels. A list of phonetic symbols and ASCII codes used to produce them is available in PDF format.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1) When will new podcasts and transcriptions be posted?
The program officially launched on November 1, 2007, and the following schedule has been implemented:
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A new podcast will become available on the first day of every month.
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Transcriptions will be posted on line around the 15th of each month. This will give students and teachers some time to use the audio files before "the answers" are made available to everyone.
2) What should I do with this podcast?
It depends on what you want to learn. Maybe you're not even interested in learning, and you just want to listen. Whatever your reason for subscribing to this podcast, you might get some ideas from this list of possible tasks (PDF format) [available soon].
3) How do I subscribe?
In order to subscribe to the podcast, please follow these on-line instructions.
4) After I have subscribed to the podcast, do I have to subscribe each month?
No. You only need to subscribe to the podcast one time. If you use iTunes, for example, to capture podcasts, your computer will download each new podcast automatically as it becomes available. Whenever you open the software you use to capture podcasts, the software will check the server to see if a new podcast has been created and posted.
5) How much does all this cost?
Nothing.
6) How good is the quality of the audio files?
The quality should be somewhere between good and excellent. I am currently trying different microphones and recording devices in order to know which ones produce the best audio files once the conversion to mp3 format has been done. You might have to turn up the volume for the first few podcasts since I am also trying different input levels during the recording process.
7) How can I get iTunes?
You can download this free software directly from the Apple/Macintosh site.
8) Where can I find more information about podcasting in general or French-language podcasts?
If you would like to learn more about podcasts and podcasting, please consult any of the following resources:
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The report "French Podcasting" (PDF format), published in the National Bulletin of the American Association of Teachers of French.
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The brochure published by EduCause (PDF format).
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Podcasting for Foreign-Language Education, a Globe-Gate CALL Resource
|
Podcast Number |
Orthographic Transcription |
Phonetic Transcription |
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Podcast 1, November 2007 |
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Podcast 2, December 2007 |
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| Podcast 3, January 2008 | pod03ot.pdf | pod03pt.pdf |
| Podcast 4, February 2008 | pod04ot.pdf | pod04pt.pdf |
| Podcast 5, March 2008 | pod05ot.pdf | pod05pt.pdf |
| Podcast 6, April 2008 | pod06ot.pdf | pod06pt.pdf |
| Podcast 7, May 2008 | pod07ot.pdf | pod07pt.pdf |
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This page is updated regularly. Additional transcripts will be available soon. I will be "on hiatus" during the summer months. Podcasting will resume in September 2008. |
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Note: If you subscribe to the podcast (instructions available in #3 above), your iTunes (or other) software will download the most recent posting. If you want to access previous postings (also known as episodes), you can click on the link in #3 above, which will take you to the podcast site where the audio files are stored.
Please send questions or comments to Lawrence Williams: lawrence.williams@unt.edu