Overview

• Module 3 enhancements
• Transition Module 3/4 for German (Switzerland) released
• Module 4 enhancements

What's new

Module 3 enhancements

In Phone Recognition tasks, the phone recording is used now. It resembles more closely the actual phone in the word. The Phone Recognition and Phone-Grapheme Assignment tasks now show a viseme for the spoken phone. There is an explicit exercise (Vowel Length) for training to distinguish short vowels from long ones in spoken words. This exercise is added at the end of the module and accompanied by a learning card.

Transition Module 3/4 for German (Switzerland) released

The Evaluation and the Phone Recognition tasks now show a viseme for the spoken phone.

Module 4 enhancements 

The biggest change to Module 4 is that the behavior with respect to the vowel “i” in German has been changed. So far, both short “i” (IPA: /i/) and long “i” (IPA: /iː/) vowels were regularly written as i. From now on, the short “i” is still regularly written as i, but the long “i” is regularly written as ie. This reflects more closely how the long “i” vowel is written in the German language: in most cases it is written as ie.

To prepare students for this, we introduced the same Vowel Length exercise added to Module 3 as an additional exercise in Module 4. That way, students who skip Module 3 will practice vowel length, and students who already mastered the exercise in Module 3 have a chance to revise it to refresh their knowledge. This exercise is accompanied by a learning card.

Following the Vowel Length exercise, there is an exercise which trains distinguishing a short “i” from a long “i” in a spoken word, and writing it as i or, respectively, ie. This exercise is accompanied by a learning card.