ESL Reading & Listening Comprehension Training Course Site
With PHP and MySQL I have developed a simple interactive web site that only requires an XML file upload to add contents to a page. For details about the website, please refer to the user manuals below.
To access the website, click on the image to the left or click on the URL below:
|
Project Description
This website is designed to help Japanese learners of English language (Japanese ELLs) to learn, practice, and improve their reading and listening comprehension skills in English. The site will host many lessons comprised of (a) reading material of various topics and difficulty levels, (b) audio recordings of the text, and (c) video lectures to assist the Japanese ELLs in developing skills and strategies for reading and listening comprehension. Member users of this website will have access to all lessons and resources. The website will also have a site management component, which will allow the site administrator to: (a) add new reading materials and update or delete the existing reading materials; (b) add, update, or delete audio recordings; and (c) add, update, or delete video lectures.
Educational Needs
Based on my literature review on different language teaching methods, it seems that all existing methods and approaches do not seem to provide adequate instruction and training for developing the ability to think in English word order for Japanese ELLs. My hypothesis is that for Japanese ELLs explicit instructions are necessary in this area, and I plan on testing the effect of guided reading practice approach on Japanese ELLs’ ability to think in English word order.
Due to lack of instructors who are well equipped to teach Japanese ELLs how to think in English word order, I plan on creating instructional videos and Web applications for Japanese ELLs to learn and practice reading in English word order and simultaneously negotiating meaning. It will allow me to gather large number of samples from larger area as I do not have to be there to teach the reading skills.
USER MANUALS
User Side
User Registration & Login
All of the lessons and materials are in the password-protected member area. User will create their own login and password on the registration page and access the member area with their login and password.
All of the lessons and materials are in the password-protected member area. User will create their own login and password on the registration page and access the member area with their login and password.
User Main Page (Lesson Index/Search Page)
If login is successful, the user will be taken to the lesson index or search page where the lessons are listed in the chronological order (according to the date modified or created) by default and the user can search lessons by keywords.
If login is successful, the user will be taken to the lesson index or search page where the lessons are listed in the chronological order (according to the date modified or created) by default and the user can search lessons by keywords.
For each lesson, the page displays the lesson title, brief description, date modified, link to the lecture page, and link to the practice page.
Lecture Page
Each lesson has a lecture page and practice page. Each lecture page will have (a) a video lecture that goes over the reading material in detail; (b) a link to the reading material in PDF; and (c) the navigation link on the top of the page.
Practice Page
Each practice page provides (a) the top navigation links; (b) three levels of audio recordings; (c) text for reading that is segmented into short phrases and words in order to promote the natural flow of reading; and (d) buttons to show and hide the corresponding Japanese translations.
Each practice page provides (a) the top navigation links; (b) three levels of audio recordings; (c) text for reading that is segmented into short phrases and words in order to promote the natural flow of reading; and (d) buttons to show and hide the corresponding Japanese translations.
Administrator Side
Login
Access to the administrator area requires the administrator login and password, which will be created by using MySQL Workbench or MyPHPAdmin.
Access to the administrator area requires the administrator login and password, which will be created by using MySQL Workbench or MyPHPAdmin.
Administrator Main Menu
While all the site management tasks included in the menu can be done fairly easily through the use of MySQL Workbench or MyPHPAdmin, creating the web interface that automates some of the frequently repeated tasks by using PHP and MySQL statements will make the site management a lot easier.
User's Usage Statistics...
This feature will be useful, but I do not currently know how to implement this feature through PHP and MySQL.
This feature will be useful, but I do not currently know how to implement this feature through PHP and MySQL.
CVS Upload
This allows the administrator to create a new lesson and upload the text content of a reading material that is saved in the CVS format to the database as a table.
This allows the administrator to create a new lesson and upload the text content of a reading material that is saved in the CVS format to the database as a table.
Data entered on this page will be used in the following ways:
- Table Name: This will become the name of the table on the database.
- Lesson Title: This will be used as a lesson title.
- Upload: The content of the uploaded CVS file will be organized and stored on the MySQL database.
- Description: This will be used as a brief description of the lesson.
CVS Download
This page will allow the administrator to download the content of the table where the reading material is stored. The downloaded data will be saved as a CVS file for easy editing and reuploading.
This page will allow the administrator to download the content of the table where the reading material is stored. The downloaded data will be saved as a CVS file for easy editing and reuploading.
Audio/Video Management
This page will list all the lessons stored on the database. It allows the administrator to:
- get a quick overview of all the lessons such as the lesson ID, name of the tables the reading contents are stored, status of the audio recordings, and the status of the video lectures;
- add new audio recordings and video or overwrite the existing audio recordings and video
Database Design
ER Diagram
Business Rule
Even though this is a relational database, tables are not related by means of foreign keys in this design. The design of this database requires that for each lesson in the Lessons table, there has to be a corresponding table on the database. In other words, I need a record-to-table relation, not a record-to-record relation.
Even though this is a relational database, tables are not related by means of foreign keys in this design. The design of this database requires that for each lesson in the Lessons table, there has to be a corresponding table on the database. In other words, I need a record-to-table relation, not a record-to-record relation.
Since such relational linkage is not supported in MySQL, I set up a business rule to “use the same name for the tbl_name in the Lessons table and for the name of the corresponding table on the database. Since each table name has to be unique within the same database, this business rule may not be too hard to enforce.
Since the relations are not enforced by the database, I must take rather unusual steps to retrieve or store data properly.