Abstract:

This paper describes “Quick Greek”, a mobile application aiming at facilitating communication in Greek as a foreign language, developed by the Institute for Language and Speech Processing/ Research Center “Athena” within the framework of a two-year national scientific project.

The design of this app preceded research of relevant literature in the field of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL), review of existing mobile apps for learning Greek and questionnaire distribution to collect information about the expectations of potential users.

The literature review of MALL has shed light on the new ways to support the process of foreign language learning. For instance, the use of touch screens, instead of typing in the keyboard, has facilitated access to unfamiliar alphabets like the Greek one. The review of mobile apps for learning Greek to foreigners resulted in 15 apps and showed that where some of them are free of charge, others are available upon payment. The majority are addressed to beginners and include mostly teaching of words and phrases in communicative situations with them being translated into English and in various other languages. Short questionnaires have been distributed to detect the expectations of potential users concerning the content and the functionalities that will be useful to foreigners.

As a result of the previous research, “Quick Greek” was designed and developed as an app for Android/iOS, with English as supportive language, to help visitors coming to Greece to cover their basic needs to communicate with the locals in order to discover interesting spots and get the feeling of the country. By using this app they will be able to read the restaurant menu, order traditional dishes in a Greek tavern, call a taxi, buy tickets for a museum, and much more.

As far as the language content is concerned, the material is presented in the form of short dialogues followed by useful phrases covering various communicative situations, for example, being at a hotel reception and asking for a room, asking for directions in the street, etc. The dialogues are spoken by native speakers and are transliterated using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Users can get involved in communicative situations through role play. Dialogues are accompanied by illustrations to provide additional help to the user so as to understand their meaning and multiple choice questions are used to consolidate knowledge of the vocabulary. All the vocabulary of the dialogues are comprised in a dictionary and are accompanied by illustrations and examples of use.

There is also a short introductory unit with general information on the Greek language like the Greek alphabet and letter combinations, gender and articles, the declination system of the most common nouns and verbs. Additionally, there is a unit containing vocabulary organized in thematic areas, e.g. clothes, numbers, time, months, days, etc. All the material is translated in English with the possibility of adding other support languages.

Finally, to facilitate navigation and improve pronunciation in Greek, the following language technology tools have been incorporated: a) a search tool that allows the user to search the material (communicative situations and dictionary entries) in Greek and English, b) transcription tool using the IPA symbols and c) speech synthesis tool that allows the users to listen to every word with an almost native pronunciation.

Keywords:

MALL apps, Greek as a foreign language, communicative situations, language technology tools.