James Tauber

journeyman of some

blog > 2008 > 02 > 10 >

A New Kind of Graded Reader

Back in 2004, I talked about algorithms for optimal vocabulary ordering. Then in 2006, I talked about using this and other techniques in teaching New Testament Greek (which I've resumed doing with this method, btw)

Earlier this year at BibleTech:2008 I briefly touched on my graded reader approach. It generated a lot of interest so I decided to record a separate presentation at home this weekend, explaining some of the ideas behind the graded reader.

After multiple failed attempts to upload it to Google Video, it's now on YouTube and embedded below. Sound was recorded and mixed in Logic Pro and then synchronized with a presentation in Keynote and output as Quicktime.

Running time is just shy of 9 minutes.

UPDATE 2008-03-22: I have started a mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/graded-reader and also I plan to make my code available at http://code.google.com/p/graded-reader/

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Comments (8)

David Driver on Feb. 10, 2008:

I am looking forward to seeing your work come to fruition. I am finishing my MBA in a few months. I intend to come back to university after a little time off to study biblical literature. Hopefully these tools will be useable by then. Thank you for your work.

Rick Brannan on Feb. 11, 2008:

James Tauber is my hero! Looks awesome. I'm anxious to see how this develops.

John Young on Feb. 15, 2008:

This seems like a great idea. I have tried introducing the most interested members of my congregation to some elementary Greek, but we don't ever get very far. I especially like the idea of using Greek clauses in context with English text.

Charles D Clayton Jr on Feb. 18, 2008:

This looks like a wonderfully useful creation. I especially like reading the text in English with the various Greek phrases so the learner does get the idea of context.

tehgeekmeister on March 12, 2008:

I've been thinking of the same problem on and off for the past three years -- the main difference being that I'd not gotten so far with it, nor had I considered using tagged corpuses (mostly because I don't know much about them or where to find them). Glad to see your approach! How speedy is the analysis? Do you think this approach could be adapted to untagged texts? Also, I noticed you're still using SA after a previous mention by a commenter of tabu search -- have you not tried it yet, or was it not as useful?

James Tauber on March 15, 2008:

tehgeekmeister, I replied to you (partially) at http://tehgeekmeister.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/a-new-kind-of-graded-reader/#comments

With my current data set and ordering algorithm, it takes maybe 10 seconds to generate for the Gospel of John (15k words). It varies a lot as it's a pipeline driven by a Makefile so most of the time only some of the steps need to be run if I update any of the source data.

I'll write up more about the steps in the pipeline as that will make clearer both what I'm doing and what would (and wouldn't) work with an untagged text.

Watch this space!

Karyn T. on March 17, 2008:

Do you have anyone working with you on a similar reader and teaching pedagogy for Biblical Hebrew?

James Tauber on March 18, 2008:

Karyn, no but I'd love to collaborate on alternative languages and texts.

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Created: Feb. 10, 2008
Last Modified: March 22, 2008
Author: jtauber