Jodo: A Tool for Foreigners to Build and Speak Hindi Sentences

Abstract

'Jodo' is a language learning tool with a grammatical approach, which enables users to build and speak complete Hindi sentences, with the vocabulary that they have learned (Or might learn along the way). Jodo means 'join', in Hindi, and it reflects the core of the tool -- learning to join together grammatically accurate Hindi sentences. The focus of the tool is Hindi grammar, and the aim is to deliver it to the user by masking as much of the actual grammatical terms as possible. The Hindi skills in focus are: Listening (supplemented with reading transliterated text), and Speaking. The learning in Jodo is divided into 7 levels -- with an increasing level of grammatical complexity. Each level is divided into three stages: Learning: Where the user learns to internalize Grammar rules in sentence building through reading, listening, and exploration. Dialog: Where the user practices composing and speaking out simple sentences, and overcomes the speaking barrier. Test: Where the user plays a small game, which is like an exercise. The goal of the Test stage is to re-enforce the learning goal of the current level, revise the learning in the previous levels, and test the user's ability to build sentences or word phrases. Three levels of Jodo were evaluated with the users. It was found that the users learnt to build grammatically correct sentences within the limitation of the vocabulary known. They were also able to carry out a simple, impromptu conversation with a local.