Title:
A Kitchen That Talks? This One Teaches You French
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
A "talking kitchen" teaches students how to cook
French and speak French. Researchers at New Castle
University in Britain have developed the French
Digital Kitchen. Professors Paul Seedhouse and
Patrick Olivier led the project. Professor Seedhouse
says it works like a satellite navigation system in
a car. "The sat nav speaks to you and it tells you,
for example, to turn left. And if you turn left then
it continues with the program. If, for example, you
turn right, then it's a mistake, so it loops back
and it gives you further instructions."The kitchen
equipment and tools use motion sensor technology
similar to the Nintendo Wii game system. The sensors
help a computer guide the students through
instructions in French. "The system can tell whether
you've done what you were asked to do or not. So
let's say, for example, the system tells you to take
some butter and cut it with a knife ... The sensor
in the knife not only knows that the knife is
moving, but it also knows what motion the knife is
making."Students can ask the computer to repeat the
instructions or translate them into English. There
are vocabulary lessons before and after the
cooking.Professor Seedhouse became interested in the
idea after he visited a talking kitchen designed for
a different purpose. "It was actually for
communicating with people who suffer from dementia
... It can tell them, for example, that they've left
the oven on." He says the French Digital Kitchen
turns the process of learning language into a
real-life experience. But the idea -- known as
task-based language learning -- required a few
changes as the researchers were designing the
system. For example, if they had a sink full of
water, as soon as people finished cooking with an
instrument, they would throw it into the water. "And
for us that's deadly because the digital sensors
were immediately ruined."The system could be
available for sale by the end of twenty twelve.
Adding the technology to a new kitchen could add an
estimated ten to twenty percent to the building
costs. The system could also be added to an existing
kitchen.The researchers are also developing portable
versions. And the European Union has given them
money to begin programs in six other languages,
including English, Italian and Spanish. For VOA
Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.You can find
links to videos about the talking kitchen at
voaspecialenglish.com.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
