Using TuTalk to build a tutor for Chinese pronunciation Wenyan Zhou, Vanderbilt University Tiffany Taylor, George Mason University

 Project concept Tutor proper pronunciation of Chinese characters through the use of pinyin.  Key Points Chinese is a tonal language Native English speakers often have trouble discriminating tones. The same Chinese characters can be pronounced completely differently and have different meanings. Even when the pinyin is the same, the same characters may have different tones, which affects meaning. Forcing students to distinguish proper pronunciation and tone will help:  conceptualize the tone as part of the word, not separate from it  conceptualize that the same character can sound very different depending on context

Choosing the wrong pinyin provides feedback and choosing the “right” pinyin but the wrong tone leads to remediation

 How to author in TuTalk.  To plan out dialogues before putting them into TuTalk to expedite design time.  How to problem-solve.  How to decipher the documentation.  How to get help from the super-helpful TuTalk crew. (Thanks Jenny, Moses, and Pam!)

 Standardize interface naming conventions: you can “select” or “pick” depending on what you are doing.  Don’t hide the choose goal/concept/say menu. Make it a button instead.  Editing and saving XML directly in the authoring tool.  A tutorial that walks a user through creating their first simple dialogue, in addition to the one in the manual that analyzes an existing dialogue.  Clear explanations of the terminology and how the concepts relate to each other for newbies.