[Athen] Advice on German foreign language learning for blind student

[PATRICK BURKE]

Hello Adina!,

I'm blind and was a German major (up to Masters level), altho in the late
80s/early 90s, so I have some knowledge (perhaps not the correct
knowledge?!) for you. I switched to a university adaptive tech job after
that, so I was on the provider side for Russian, Latin, & a few other
language courses. If you or the student want to follow up with me further,
please do.

Overall, my experience matches Deborah Armstrong's (except that I didn't do
extensive testing of Kurzweil etc. Not recently, anyway...). The main
problem of language switching in learning materials is THE WORST! Marking
an intro textbook to speak correctly at the phrase or word level (in HTML
or Word) is incredibly time consuming. And, for German it can be important
for learning pronunciation, since English screenreading software usually
reads umlaut characters the same as unmarked letters, which can be *bad*
for learning singular/plurals, verb forms, etc.

As Deborah says, dealing with multilingual material in Braille is much
easier. At least that's also what I found. I had a small (4 volume) braille
dictionary, and I started early with learning the German contractions,
which was a timesaver when I took notes (with Perkins brailler). I.e., lots
of early practice. Then I was (more) ready to deal with published German
Braille materials, when I could get them.

So, yes, the unknowns you mention are important to find out quickly.: Which
screenreader does the student use? Do they read Braille? etc. That will
shape the type of service you need to provide.

Good luck, and plese get in touch if I can help more,

Patrick



On Tue, Feb 21, 2023 at 2:56 PM Adina Mulliken <am2621 at hunter.cuny.edu>
wrote:


> Hi everyone,

>

> I’m interested in finding out about materials and strategies for a blind

> student who may want to learn German.   My understanding is the student

> uses a screen reader but we don’t know which one yet.  We don’t know if

> they read Braille.  We don’t know what course materials the professor uses

> yet, but we’re trying to begin learning about what might be involved with

> obtaining and converting appropriate materials.

>

>

>

> I understand that popular screen readers can read German.   I’ve looked

> through athen listserv’s archives and found a few relevant posts, although

> I probably could have searched further.  I looked on Bookshare and found 74

> results came up under foreign language learning materials in German and

> available in the United States.

>

>

>

> Does anyone have additional advice?

>

>

>

> Here are the links I found on this listserv in case anyone wants to know

>

>    -

>    http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/htdig/athen-list/2019-July/015345.html

>    -

>    http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/htdig/athen-list/2019-July/015325.html

>

> “German contracted Braille for example is just as complex as our grade 2,

> and though I speak German I read the contractions with great difficulty.

> This is because I only learned it for a year when I was nineteen so I’m

> terrible at it.

> But reading German by setting my display to use the computer Braille table

> is easy for me because it is just the alphabet and the special accented

> letters.”

>

>    -

>    http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/mailman/htdig/athen-list/2019-November/015820.html

>

>

>

>

>

> Thank you!

>

> Adina

>

>

>

> Adina Mulliken

>

> Associate Professor, Librarian Silberman Social Work and Urban Public

> Health Library

>

> Hunter College, City University of New York

>

> 2180 3rd Ave. New York, NY

>

> Phone 212-396-7665

>

> Pronouns she/her

> _______________________________________________

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>

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