User:Timpo/FLIC

  This is a draft article for  a technology called [learning a ]Foreign Language [using the] Instincts of  a Child  - I need your help to get this right! 
  I also need disambiguation/information regarding The UK Framework for Language and Interaction in the Curriculum http://www.flic.co.uk/ 

Learning a foreign language using the instinct of a child (FLIC) was an EU project http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/Tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/81625/highlights/flic project that evolved from the observation of bilingual children, and in particular on neurological comparison between children and adult learning.

A commercial product was developed by Ralph & Fred Warnke, directors of MediTech GmbH http://shop.meditech.info/FLIC/FLIC-Advanced-Hardware-und-Software-Set::1439.html

The FLIC project is developing a new technology for language learning using innovative linguistic concepts such as exploiting the visual and auditory brain by lateral stimulation, processing the model and student voice channels so that they have the same pitch and speed, and then sharpening the consonant sounds to make sound discrimination and then interlacing the channels producing a form of voice fusion Project Co-ordinator: Mr Ralph Warnke MediTECH Electronic GmbH. www.meditech.de / http://shop.meditech.info/index.php Speech therapists dealing with patients such as dyslectic or dysphasic children and adults can use a proprietary diagnostic and therapy method known as the "Warnke®-method".

Within communities with historical, linguistic and cultural diversity, such as is found across Europe, effective communication is vital for social, commercial and cultural activity.

Despite a wide range of methods of teaching and learning foreign languages which have flourished and evolved over decades, there are still only few people who are reasonably fluent in a foreign language. The inadequacies of current language learning methods arise in part because language tends to be a 'school subject' and therefore a chore for most people.

Whilst conventional methods do work for some academically gifted youngsters, it is generally found that people who are competent in a foreign language have experienced early immersion and pleasurable feedback within that culture. Based on the observation of bilingual children, FLIC is developing an advanced signal processing 'toolbox' for use with both children suffering from impaired learning caused by conditions such as dyslexia and adults suffering from anxiety and impaired hearing conditions.

The time needed for foreign language acquisition can be considerably reduced because the stress level and acoustic clarity can be optimized, so that sounds, meanings and text transfers to long term (strategic) memory more readily.

FLIC based on existing psychological techniques such as lateral training, which has been successful in training dyslexic children, and vocoder (voice encoding) technology

Lateral training is a neuro-psychological technique based on cerebral dominance: It is possible, (usually by simply covering one eye and blocking one ear) to persuade an individual's brain hemispheres to compete in playful activities by using sight and sound tokens.

Brain lateralization is not simple - both hemispheres can do both language and spatial processing, an area of the brain above the ear in the left temporal lobe called Wernicke's area and part of the left frontal lobe called Broca's area appear to specialize in control language functions. Spatial functions tend to be more dominant in the right hemisphere. It has been noted that human males often have particularly strong spatial abilities (they can produce mental models of things like cars and maps and manipulate them easily), and men tend to left-handedness (mostly managed by the right hemisphere), whilst females tend to stronger linguistic and logical skills, and finer motor control, usually optimized in the right hemisphere. FLIC Sounds The human voice consists of sounds generated by the opening and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic sound is then filtered by the nose and throat, which is a complicated resonance mechanism that produces differences in harmonic content, thus creating the wide variety of sounds used in speech.

The vocoder examines speech by finding this basic carrier wave, which is at the fundamental frequency, and measuring how its spectral characteristics are changed over time. This results in a series of numbers representing these modified frequencies at any particular time as the user speaks.

The vocoder thus dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete analogue recording to a digital series. To recreate speech, the vocoder simply reverses the process, creating the fundamental frequency in an oscillator, then filtering the frequency according to an associated series of numbers which recreate the harmonics of the recorded sound.

By providing the accentuated model voice to the ear associated with the more spatially adapted right hemisphere, and the student's own voice to the more linguistically critical left, a disharmony is produced until the sounds are matched. Since model speakers and students have different frequencies and harmonics a method of extracting the essential linguistic content and neutralizing any incidental material is central to FLIC.

Games are essentially ways of harmonizing mental models with the real world – learning to kick a football or strike a tennis ball in a certain way so that it will hit a target goal is a pleasure shared by most people. Mimicking a model's voice so that one can hit the right frequency and harmonic is the game played by infants as they learn to speak, and by adults, as they learn a new language.

FLIC thus uses primitive, playful human methods to impart language as a protocol instead of laboriously memorizing vocabulary to be modified according to sophisticated (and often incomplete) rigorous grammatical models

PDF Download ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/ist/docs/ka3/eat/FLIC.pdf