Development of the Advanced Bi-Lingual Reading Assistant (ABRA) And Authorizing System (ABRA-AS)

Abstract

Two programs were created to fulfill a contract with the German, Russian, and East Asian Language Department at Miami University. These programs, Advanced Bilingual Reading Assistant (ABRA) and Advanced Bi-lingual Reading Assistant - Authoring System (ABRA-AS), create a teaching system designed to implement a "reading strategies" approach to teaching German. ABRA is a reading program where a student reads a gven text several times, each time in greater detail. At each level highlighted words or phrases to which the student can obtain translation help. Each level also has comprehension questions. ABRA-AS is the authoring system which creates the levels, the highlights and definitions, and question and answers for the articles read by the ABRA program. Although this program has been written specifically for this project, it may have uses outside the foreign language classroom.