ALI Akan
"African languages through the
internet"
An introduction to Akan language
and linguistics through new electronic technologies
Thomas
Bearth
Introduction
The purpose of this presentation is
- to report on an ongoing Swiss experience applying new
information and communication technologies (ICT) and online
distance learning (ODL) to the teaching of African languages within
a European university network;
- to describe the contents and implementation of the program;
- to outline its significance in terms of its strategic, didactic
and practical implications.
The report focuses on ALI Akan, an ICT-ODL program which
provides an introduction to Akan, a major national language of
Ghana.
The ALI Akan (ALI = African languages on the internet)
introductory program was developed by the Akan working group of the African
Languages and Linguistics "Nebenfach" curriculum at the Department
of General Linguistics of the University of Zurich in 1999-2000,
with a view of ensuring continuity of the Akan teaching program
which was threatened by financial cuts effecting the African
language and linguistics curriculum.
The ALI Akan ICT project was consequently adopted and
coordinated by the European Socrates/Erasmus-network on African
Languages and Linguistics. It was implemented and tested by the
Zürich working group in cooperation with the Institute of
African Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
Enrolement in the ALI Akan Socrates Intensive Programs (IP's) in
1999 and 2000 amounted to a total of 35 students from 10 European
universities, 19 of whom took the final exams.
While a majority of students were motivated by a primary
interest in African languages or language comparison, a smaller
number were mainly interested in acquiring language competence as a
background to research in cultural anthropology or other
non-linguistic disciplines. A few students had previous exposure to
Akan through fieldwork in West Africa.
Program organisation, contents and technology
The ALI Akan IP was implemented on a trial basis in 1999, and -
following the positive outcome of the pilot course, and the
interest triggered by it - in an improved version in 2000. The IP
comprises three parts:
- Residential part at Humboldt University in Berlin (10
days).
- Teleteaching part (ODL) at home university (4½
months).
- Final exams at home university.
Credits: 8 points ETCS
(European Credit Transfer System).
Credits are granted on the basis of successful participation in
all three parts.
The Residential part
The Residential part comprises:
- a practical introduction to Akan phonetics monitored by a native
expert, emphasizing features which differ markedly from European
habits of articulation and auditory perception, notably the
differentiation of meaning by tonal distinctions, vowel harmony,
and labio-palatal consonants;
- a practical introduction to culturally relevant aspects of
everyday communication;
- preview and classroom discussion of key modules of Akan grammar
presented on the CD-ROM to be studied in detail during the ODL
phase, for instance serial verbal constructions;
- a step-by-step guided introduction to the recognition and use of
various features and modules of the ALI Akan database which is put
at the disposal of the participants on CD-ROM at the end of the
Residential part for continuing the program on their own at their
home universities. Special emphasis is put on optimizing learning
effects by making use of navigation techniques, and on data
exchange and interaction over the internet.
The didactic concept of ALI Akan is shaped by the limitations of
the technology which can be expected to be easily available to
students at the participating institutions during the ODL phase.
Prerequisites were specified as follows: Windows 95 PC or later
(with soundcard) or equivalent Macintosh equipment. Browser: Explorer 4.0 or Netscape
4.0. Internet access is of course mandatory.
Description of course contents and structures
The course contents are made available to students on a
CD-ROM.
The current version of the ALI Akan CD-ROM (version 42) is made
up of roughly 2500 files the majority of which are html-formatted
text files and sound files in wav-format, as well as numerous
hyperlinks enabling the user to navigate between modules conveying
different but related types of instructional materials, or
providing the same materials for different didactic purposes.
All language materials are provided in semi-phonological
transcription, which includes full specification of tone and
nasalisation. Beyond
tone and vowel harmony, phonetic detail is included only to the
extent required by the current teaching focus.
Almost all data is paired with audio-files which can be
activated through hyperlinks. English translations of exercises,
dialogues and reading materials as well as Akan translations of
English exercises are provided throughout.
Included on the CD-ROM is a parcel of "resources" containing
Speech Analyzer (a program for sound analysis available as freeware
from S.I.L.), install facilities, learner-designed fonts for
handling Akan vowel and tonal distinctions (based on the West
African 7 Script developed at the University of Zürich), vocabulary training
software (currently Choice, copyright J. Unnewehr, Heidelberg), a
text pad for automatic conversion of the special script for e-mail
communication in Akan (H. Hirzel), as well as keyboarding
instructions.
The ALI Akan introductory course is made up of 11 Units. Each
unit in turn comprises
- one or more passages of dialogue reflecting common everyday
situations and daily experiences in the context of Akan
society;
- exercises (of various types: role play, fill-in, translation,
replacement, etc., in some cases with interactive control
function);
- notes on pronunciation;
- notes on grammar;
- vocabulary.
In addition, special interest sections convey texts on
themes of special cultural interest, including proverbs,
descriptive and narrative materials.
Notes on pronunciation and Notes on grammar
are designed in such a way as to accommodate different
learning styles. Key areas such as tone and vowel harmony
are treated both informally (chats) and in a systematic expository
fashion.
Issues of specific interest to linguists are dealt with in
occasional optional research modules designed to stimulate
reflection and personal investigation. Students mainly interested
in the acquisition of communication skills may skip these
sections.
The following Annexes are included on the CD-ROM:
- Table of contents
- Searchable Vocabularies English-Akan and Akan-English (approx.
1400 entries) alphabetised according to (a) prefix- and (b)
stem-initials
- Check list of vocabulary required for final exam
- Special vocabularies (body parts, kinship terms, time)
- Charts for reference (vowels, consonants, pronouns, verb tone,
etc.)
- Word form Index
- Maps
- Bibliographical references
- Internet links with Ghanaian institutions and resources to Akan
language and culture,
- Image files and documents providing visual and historical
background
- Video clips (only a couple of them, for exploration)
- E-mail list of Participants
- Copyright and acknowledgments.
The ODL phase
The possibility of making a full-fledged academic teaching
program accessible to students from universities offering no
regular courses in the particular subject matter is an obvious
major advantage of an internet-designed program such as ALI Akan.
The idea, however, is not that students should be left to
themselves but that communication over the internet should take the
place of the usual classroom interaction between teacher and
students.
The ALI Akan program was designed to encourage interaction not
only between teacher and students but also between participants;
hence appropriate procedures for language data exchange over the
internet had to be provided.
In the first place, the technical problem of adapting the
special script to the requirements of e-mail compatible format
needed to be solved. A mnemotechnically simple keyboarding technique – the
so-called q-notation - in conjunction with conversion macros (the
Akan text pad) ensure full convertibility of all types of data to
and from ASCII format, and hence minimise the hazards still
accompanying the transfer of data that is not yet provided with an
encoding standard over the internet.
Regular student-teacher interaction is an essential feature of
the ODL phase. During the whole post-residential part, this was
realised through a weekly exchange of exercises and
corrections between a distant supervisor and students.
Additional optional exchanges were, in principle, possible at any
time as questions arose.
In ALI Akan 2000, interactive and cooperative aspects benefitted
additionally from a mailing list which occasionally turned
into a discussion forum between students, or between students and
supervisors. This feature seemed to open up stimulating new
possibilities for interaction far beyond the limited kind of
student-teacher dialogue expected to take place in the usual
classroom situation.
A comparison of success rates during both years clearly
underline the importance of distant supervision being reinforced by
effective local supervision. Local supervisors need not be
Akan specialists but must be able and willing to provide guidance
to students participating in the distance-learning program, and to
some extent, to exert a control and advisory function.
There is also a clear correlation between the level of
performance and the availability of native speakers for occasional
practice. This underlines the fact that, as far as ICT-based
language programs are concerned, no amount of links will ever
replace the "human link" to live interaction with speakers
of the language.
Examination phase
Exams for ALI Akan 2000 included a 4 hour written part
covering grammatical knowledge, text understanding and translation
into and from Akan. The written exams were synchronized for all
participating institutions, thereby guaranteeing the application of
proper exam supervision.
The oral part consisted of (i) an exercice in spontaneous
understanding of recorded samples from an individually
allocated downloadable sound file and (ii) a phone
conversation with a native Akan speaker on a previously agreed
subject.
A trial exam was provided 5 weeks in advance, followed
by a period of review.
Evaluation and long-term effects
An informal evaluation of the 1999 Ali Akan pilot course by a
group of ICT experts summarized the initial experience as
follows: “The
ALI-AKAN project has opened up the road to a new appraisal of
European linguistic strategy as regards the African continent and
its languages.”
There has been a fair amount of useful and mostly spontaneous
feedback from students. Comments of a general nature ranged from "I
have made a maximum of progress with a minimum of time investment",
to: [... the importance given to linguistic aspects] "makes
me a little uncomfortable at times ... which makes learning
slower."
It may seem to be stating the obvious to mention the fact that
ODL methods favor individual learning. However, one of the most
rewarding effects of the ALI Akan experience, recognized by many
students, is the emergence of a scientific community awareness.
This is not limited to the Residential part, although it may begin
there as epitomized in the following comment: "I think the
motivating effect of being able to discuss "African Linguistics" in
a (Berlin) bar with people of one's own age can hardly be
overestimated."
This would appear to be a significant contribution of an
internet-based course in a field attracting only a small number of
students at a given time and place who, moreover, tend to disperse
almost immediately into widely divergent fields of
specialization.
A more formal evaluation is due to take place as part of the
planned creation of a European Module for the ICT-based teaching of
African languages.
Institutional effects
In terms of possible effects on long-term capacity building, it
is premature to draw binding conclusions. Interestingly, however,
there are indications that the recourse to teaching methods based
on the new technologies does not inevitably lead to a decrease in
conventional learning opportunities (as some fear), but may, to the
contrary, produce new opportunities for classroom teaching. Thus,
two new introductory classroom courses in Akan were offered at two
of the participating universities in the course of 2000 as a direct
consequence of qualified junior teachers having become available
through ALI Akan.
Strategic implications
The strategic significance of the ALI Akan program may be
summarized as follows:
It is designed to offer a "by-pass" solution to the lack of
resources and to institutional resistance against establishing
sustainable teaching on Africa-related subjects at European
universities in general and at Swiss universities in
particular.
Recourse to ICT- and ODL-methods along with the progressive
involvement of teaching staff from a number of universities in the
use of such methods, is designed to produce a medium-range
effect of multiplication, which will hopefully result in Akan
studies - and perhaps other subjects - becoming available on a
wider scale than would be possible by relying only on traditional
classroom teaching programs. (These would depend on resources
usually unavailable locally.
From a broader educational perspective, ALI Akan contributes
-
to the building of capacities at European institutions of higher
learning in the area of the study and teaching of extra-European
languages,
- to the promotion of research on these languages and
the societies in which they are used, and provides
- a
multi-disciplinary tool for textual research in various
language-dependent fields of inquiry, such as cultural anthropology
and history.
From a still wider perspective, ALI Akan may be seen as a test
case demonstrating that ICT-learning technologies are not just a
means of palliating the problems of mass subjects suffering from an
overflow of students. One conclusion which may safely be drawn from
the ALI Akan experience is that a combined approach to ICT- and
ODL-strategies can become the means of adding momentum and weight
to disciplines with small and geographically scattered audiences
which, brought together in virtual space, may arrive at the
critical mass to justify at least a "minor curriculum" to be run on
a regular basis. The idea was, and still is, that ALI Akan might
function as a sort of „trail-blazer“ in this respect
which could open up new perspectives to other potentially
“threatened” fields of learning.
'How
are you?' (literally: your body is how?) will be converted by the
text pad into the ASCII-compatible, mnemotechnically simple
sequence Woql hoqnqh teql sqeqnqh?, in which qn
stands for the tilda denoting nasalization, qh for the
high tone symbolized by the acute accent, and ql for low
tone symbolized by grave accent. Upon receipt, the q-sequence,
being processed through the text pad, will be re-converted to its
normal Akan shape.