Group foreign language teaching system and method

• US 7,869,988 B2
• Filed: 11/03/2006
• Issued: 01/11/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/03/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Stride, Inc.
• Original Assignee: K12 Incorporated
• Inventors: Wood, Michael C., Dariyanani, Jonathan Ram
• Primary Examiner(s): Sked; Matthew J
• Application Number:
  US11/592,682
• Publication Number:
  US 20080109207A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,530 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 704/8
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/06 Foreign languages with audible presentation of material to be studied G09B5/04

Abstract

A method and system for teaching a foreign language to a user who has knowledge of a base language is disclosed. The method and system may include delivering a video presentation simultaneously to a plurality of users. The method and system may also include simultaneously delivering a plurality of mixed known language-foreign language audio and/or text streams to the plurality of users, each of the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language audio and/or text streams corresponding to the video presentation.

Claims

1. A processor-readable medium storing code representing instructions configured to cause a processor to perform a process, the code comprising code to:

deliver a video presentation simultaneously to a plurality of users;

produce a plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams, the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams including a first mixed known language-foreign language stream having a first grammar syntax and a second mixed known language-foreign language stream having a second grammar syntax; and

deliver simultaneously the first mixed known language-foreign language stream to a first user from the plurality of users and the second mixed known language-foreign language stream to a second user from the plurality of users, the first user having a proficiency different than a proficiency of the second user, each of the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams corresponding to the video presentation.

2. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first mixed known language-foreign language stream includes at least one of an audio stream or a text stream.

3. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the first mixed known language-foreign language stream includes an audio portion having a first proportion of foreign language words and a text portion having a second proportion of foreign language words.

4. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams include mixed known language-foreign language streams with respectively varying proportions of foreign language words.

5. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the video presentation is delivered in a movie theatre.

6. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, the code further comprising code representing instructions configured to cause the processor to:

receive an input associated with a target foreign language from the first user from the plurality of users,

the code representing instructions to cause the processor to produce the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams includes code to produce the first mixed known language-foreign language stream from the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams to include the target foreign language based at least in part on the input from the first user.

7. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, the code further comprising code representing instructions configured to cause a processor to:

receive an input associated with a desired difficulty level for a target foreign language from the first user from the plurality of users,

the code representing instructions to cause the processor to produce the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams includes code to produce the first mixed known language-foreign language stream from the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams having a desired difficulty level based at least in part on the input from the first user.

8. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, the code further comprising code representing instructions configured to cause a processor to:

receive an input associated with a desired difficulty level for a foreign language,

the code representing instructions to cause the processor to produce the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams includes code to select the first mixed known language-foreign language stream having an amount of the foreign language from a database containing the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams based at least in part on the input.

9. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the code representing instructions to cause the processor to deliver the video presentation includes code to deliver the video presentation to each user from the plurality of users via an individual video presentation device.

10. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, the code further comprising code representing instructions configured to cause the processor to:

deliver an audio stream associated with the video presentation, the audio stream being in a target foreign language.

11. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, the code further comprising code representing instructions configured to cause the processor to:

deliver an audio stream associated with the video presentation, the audio stream being in a known language.

12. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein:

the first mixed known language-foreign language stream from the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams includes a first mixed known language-foreign language subtitle corresponding to the video presentation; and

the second mixed known language-foreign language stream from the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams includes a second mixed known language-foreign language subtitle corresponding to the video presentation, the second mixed known language-foreign language subtitle different from the first mixed known language-foreign language subtitle.

13. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein:

the first grammar syntax is a grammar syntax associated with a known language; and

the second grammar syntax is a grammar syntax associated with a foreign language.

14. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein:

the first grammar syntax includes at least one of a verb position associated with a known language, a noun-adjective relationship associated with the known language or an interrogatory format associated with the known language; and

the second grammar syntax includes at least one of a verb position associated with a foreign language, a noun-adjective relationship associated with the foreign language or an interrogatory format associated with the foreign language.

15. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein:

the first mixed known language-foreign language stream includes an audio stream having a plurality of known language words and a plurality of foreign language words,

the code representing instructions configured to cause the processor to deliver the first mixed known language-foreign language stream includes code configured to adjust at least one of a pitch or an intonation associated with the plurality of foreign language words.

16. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the code representing instructions configured to cause the processor to produce a plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams includes code to dynamically produce the first known language-foreign language stream based on individualized proficiency data associated with the first user.

17. The processor-readable medium of claim 1, wherein:

the code representing instructions to cause the processor to deliver the video presentation includes code to deliver the video presentation to the first user via a first video screen and the second user via a second video screen; and

the code representing instructions configured to cause the processor to deliver simultaneously the first mixed known language-foreign language stream to a first user from the plurality of users and the second mixed known language-foreign language stream to a second user from the plurality of users includes code to deliver a text portion of the first mixed known language-foreign language stream to the first video screen and a text portion of the second mixed known language-foreign language stream to the second video screen.

18. A system, comprising:

an entertainment module configured to deliver a video presentation to a display device to simultaneously display the video presentation to a plurality of users, the entertainment module configured to deliver a plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams to a plurality of output devices configured to simultaneously deliver the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams to the plurality of users,

the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams including a first mixed known language-foreign language stream having a grammar syntax associated with a known language and a second mixed known language-foreign language stream having a grammar syntax associated with a foreign language, each of the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams corresponding to the video presentation,

the entertainment module configured to selectively deliver one of the first mixed known language-foreign language stream or the second mixed known language-foreign language stream to an output device from the plurality of output devices associated with a user based, at least in part, on a proficiency level of the user associated with the foreign language.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the first mixed known language-foreign language stream and the second mixed known language-foreign language stream each include an audio stream; and

the output device from the plurality of output devices is configured to present the audio stream to the user.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the first mixed known language-foreign language stream and the second mixed known language-foreign language stream each include a text stream; and

the output device from the plurality of output devices is configured to present the text stream to the user.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the entertainment module is configured to receive an input from the user associated with a desired difficulty level for a mixed known language-foreign language stream to be delivered to the output device,

the entertainment module configured to selectively deliver one of the first mixed known language-foreign language stream or the second mixed known language-foreign language stream to the output device from the plurality of output devices based, at least in part, on the input.

22. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the entertainment module is configured to receive an input from the user associated with a target foreign language,

the entertainment module configured to selectively deliver a mixed known language-foreign language stream from the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams including words from the target foreign language based on the input.

23. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the entertainment module is configured to retrieve the video presentation from a content database configured to store a plurality of video presentations.

24. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the entertainment module is configured to retrieve at least the first mixed known language-foreign language stream or the second mixed known language-foreign language stream from a content database configured to store the plurality of mixed known language-foreign language streams corresponding to the video presentation.

25. The system of claim 18, wherein the entertainment module is configured to produce dynamically the first known language-foreign language stream based on individualized proficiency data associated with the first user, the second known language-foreign language stream being one of a plurality of predefined known language-foreign language streams.

26. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the first mixed known language-foreign language stream includes an audio stream having a plurality of known language words and a plurality of foreign language words; and

the entertainment module is configured to adjust at least one of a pitch or an intonation associated with the plurality of foreign language words.

27. The system of claim 18, wherein:

the grammar syntax of the known language includes at least one of a verb position associated with the known language, a noun-adjective relationship associated with the known language or an interrogatory format associated with the known language; and

the grammar syntax of the foreign language includes at least one of a verb position associated with the foreign language, a noun-adjective relationship associated with the foreign language or an interrogatory format associated with the foreign language.

28. A processor-readable medium storing code representing instructions configured to cause a processor to perform a process, the code comprising code to:

deliver simultaneously a video presentation to a first video screen associated with a first user and a second video screen associated with a second user;

select a first mixed known language-foreign language stream associated with the first user based, at least in part, on a proficiency level of the first user associated with a foreign language, the first mixed known language-foreign language stream having a first grammar syntax;

select a second mixed known language-foreign language stream associated with the second user based, at least in part, on a proficiency level of the second user associated with the foreign language, the second mixed known language-foreign language stream having a second grammar syntax different than the first grammar syntax; and

deliver simultaneously a text portion of the first mixed known language-foreign language stream to the first video screen and a text portion of the second mixed known language-foreign language stream to the second video screen.

29. The processor-readable medium of claim 28, wherein:

the first grammar syntax includes at least one of a verb position associated with a known language, a noun-adjective relationship associated with the known language or an interrogatory format associated with the known language; and

the second grammar syntax includes at least one of a verb position associated with the foreign language, a noun-adjective relationship associated with the foreign language or an interrogatory format associated with the foreign language.