Speaking Electronic Dictionary

How texting helps pupils with their textbooks

This cd b v expensive chat, observed my son. He is 19 and in London, I in Tanzania. A scheduled conversation on Skype had failed, but I was determined to extract some news. A dozen brief – and similarly abbreviated – messages followed. An expensive chat indeed. But the alternative – that he write a letter to update his parents as to his whereabouts and wellbeing – seemed out of the question. It would take too long, he’d argue and, he’d point out, there are other, swifter, options.

When he was a malleable eight-year-old, I could coerce him into writing conventional thank you letters (pen, paper, envelope, stamp) post Christmas. By the time he was a teenager, I found myself struggling for a reason why a text – thnx 4 ur pressie gran it is gr8 – mightn’t be as warmly received as a letter in the mail. It was, after all, still a message of gratitude.

His conclusion is that “there is no evidence that literacy is in decline, reading and writing, in whatever form, is advantageous”.

That reminds me of what a teacher said to a mother who was anxious that her child read only comics. “Even the back of the cereal packet over breakfast offers an opportunity to explore words,” she said.

However, Helen Cooper, a professor of English at Cambridge University , voices the worry that textspeak is not enough. “As someone with a deep concern for English literature, and the full possibilities of the use of the language, I’m eager for children and young people to read real books as extensively as possible, so that they can absorb all the things that textspeak doesn’t cover: a large vocabulary, the shape that well-made sentences can take, how to develop ideas through language, even punctuation. I want them to experience all the pleasure that reading gives, and the satisfaction that writing well brings.”

Clare Havers, who teaches GCSE English, shares Prof Cooper’s sentiment about books. “My feeling is that children are daunted by large bodies of text, which is why reading books is so important; it is up to parents and schools to make sure they learn sustained reading skills alongside the browsing skills demanded by the internet.

“There are important things to be gained from 'slow’ meditative reading that can’t be gained from skimming text on the iPhone or iPad.

Foreign Language Dictionaries -Ectaco ER586HT English/Russian Talking

This machine has about !zillion! features and functions, most of which are quite useless at all times (e.g. pointless games, only one of which has anything to do with building-up English vocabulary). I did not have the machine long enough to see, whether it would work well for a long period of time or not. So, it might or might not be very durable, I do not know… The voice that pronounces English words is Ok for an American person(huh?), but not the best for a person, who tries to study English with its help. I’d say that the company does a great job putting together things like this dictionary, but it should work on something less expensive (even if it means less versatile), less fragile, and 100% practical for the price paid. They included Russian-English grammar book/phrasebook, CDROM for working in Russian on your computer, all of which I suppose added to the price. I think that less stuff for lesser value would be better, for people who need a good talking bi-lingual dictionary, istead of some super-machine that does it all.

There is one negative review commenting on bad buttons/ poor manufacture. This is completely counter to our family’s experience. My wife, her mother and sister all have one of these translators and find them to be rugged and problem free. My wife has had hers for what must be 3 years now.

95% of my wife’s usage is single word translations and seldom uses full sentence or pronunciation features. Although she is quite fluent, she still uses it often when she comes across odd words in some books, or needs an equivalent of a technical or other very precise term she only knows in Russian. Her mother and sister are less fluent and use sentence translation and pronunciation much more often. Oddly, the men hardly ever use the translator. No one uses the other organizer features on the unit. We favor this unit rather than the 486 model due to its larger dictionary. A side benefit is that looks much nicer with its leather like case and attractive silver styling. The pronunciation is useful for beginning to intermediate speakers, because it gives you an idea of the kind of sound you should try to make. However, it has the typical computer robotic sound to it- do not expect anything like a recording of actual human speakers.

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