mmhorii
Member
From: SoCal(tech)
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 106
You may have already heard of Mango Languages. The company recently added a new product to their language learning suite, called Mango Premiere. It's billed as the "first and only language and culture learning system that teaches through feature films." (First? Only?!)
More info about Mango Premiere is here:
http://www.mangolanguages.com/mango-premiere/
You can try it out here with a Mandarin movie, Kung-fu Dunk:
http://trymp.mangolanguages.com/
The available films at this time are:
* Cigante (in Spanish)
* Kung-fu Dunk (in Chinese Mandarin)
* Around a Small Mountain (in French)
* La Moustache (in French)
* Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge (in Japanese)
* Ocean Heaven (in Chinese Mandarin)
* Little Big Soldier (in Chinese Mandarin)
* Hospitalite (in Japanese)
* Days and Clouds (in Italian)
* Yella (in German)
* Coipo Celeste (Italian)
* The Diary of Anne Frank (in English for Spanish speakers)
* I’ll believing you (in English for Spanish speakers)
mmhorii
Member
From: SoCal(tech)
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 106
Any library with a subscription to Mango Languages also gets Mango Premiere. The administrator just needs to accepts the Terms & Conditions, according to the website.
I don't know how many non-U.S. libraries have subscriptions to Mango Languages. Individuals can subscribe as well, but then the person has to shell out his or her own money.
Last edited by mmhorii (January 17, 10:32 pm)
mmhorii
Member
From: SoCal(tech)
Registered: 2009-07-28
Posts: 106
I tried out the movie "Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge" (definitely an unorthodox film choice for a language learning system). Each line of dialogue is broken down into parts and explained. The dialogue is shown with kanji and kana. Mouseovers onto words will show phonetic pronunciation (romaji), and clicking on a word will play audio of that word.
I'm also curious as to the intended skill level of the user. The grammar lessons covered within each line of dialogue doesn't seem to assume any prerequisite knowledge about Japanese, and yet kanji and kana are used.
For a complete beginner, it seems like this approach might be overwhelming. At least that's how I felt when trying out the Mandarin demo movie (I don't know Mandarin). Also, there's a big speed difference between the pronunciation of the actors in the movie versus the single-word audio, so it might be hard to bridge the gap between speaking a slow version of each word and speaking the whole sentence at the normal movie-speaking speed.
