Language learning in a pandemic world

[tungemål]

This is a good example of why you need to know languages. German media:
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/articl ... ierte.html

"Auf WhatsApp kursieren Nachrichten zu einem möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen Ibuprofen und der Schwere einer Covid-19-Erkrankung. Die Unikliniken in Wien sprechen von „Fake News“. Doch auch der französische Gesundheitsminister warnt vor dem Medikament."

[Cavesa]

This is a good example of why you need to know languages. German media:
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/articl ... ierte.html

"Auf WhatsApp kursieren Nachrichten zu einem möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen Ibuprofen und der Schwere einer Covid-19-Erkrankung. Die Unikliniken in Wien sprechen von „Fake News“. Doch auch der französische Gesundheitsminister warnt vor dem Medikament."

Yes, exactly. But I highly doubt the French minister for health is spreading fake news. And Toulouse hasn't said it wasn't true (and it is their hospital, which should have those 4 cases of young people with severe symptomes due to ibuprofen)

[tarvos]

Eh the more time I spend at home the more Netflix and all its languages appear on my screens

[tiia]

This is a good example of why you need to know languages. German media:
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/articl ... ierte.html

"Auf WhatsApp kursieren Nachrichten zu einem möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen Ibuprofen und der Schwere einer Covid-19-Erkrankung. Die Unikliniken in Wien sprechen von „Fake News“. Doch auch der französische Gesundheitsminister warnt vor dem Medikament."

Heard this earlier today. Here the paper mentioned in the article. It's a very vague hypotesis and it's only about 32 people, who died earlier this year due to the virus.
If there are other proves (I had not heard about anything from Toulouse before), linking a source would be good.

[Cainntear]

I reckon we should all do something positive. Every now and then people start talking about doing stuff with the FSI materials to make them easier to use. I say we do that.

I've got a mostly-formed idea of a way to approach it, and I'll flesh it out to a full proposal for you all, but here's a quick summary.

The plan is to maximise the utility at every stage. Large group projects fail before they reach a stage where they generate much of value. In particular, projects based around update FSI tend to be all-or-nothing affairs, where there is no value until the whole project is complete.

So, to generate instant value, the first goal will simply be to extract the dialogues in both audio and text form. These dialogues will then be usable individually, and will be uploaded to LingQ and LanguageTools.io . In that way, every hour of labour will result in a tangible resource.

Then we iterate back over, and flesh out the course in parts:

• Further separating the dialogues into individual lines
• Extracting word lists from lessons, which can be used for flashcard sets and the like
• Extracting drills and exercises
• Proofreading and editing the lesson notes.

Eventually we'll have the full courses in digital format, but at each stage we should have independently valuable data.

Now I'll be running this to generate absolutely free data that can be used for any purpose, even commercially. This is for a number of reasons:
First off, I've noticed that a great many language teachers sharing resources online specify "non-commercial use only", even in the TEFL/TESOL world, where most teachers teach in commercial for-profit schools, so the material is technically illegal for most people to use.
Secondly, I feel at the moment that the availability of more content would allow software developers to experiment and innovate with methodology. There's a lot that can be done with very little programming, but collating all the language content is such a big job that it generally only ends up being big companies that can afford to do it, and small companies lose out.
Besides, when people say "no commercial use", they're normally worried about big companies, and no big company can make a lot of money selling stuff that's free in dozens of other places. It's only the small companies that will really benefit from it, so why worry?

Of course, when I talk about small companies innovating, I do hope to include myself in this, so you could say I'm just doing this for my own benefit. However, unlike the 1.5 billion dollar Duolingo, I don't like the idea of taking free labour for my sole benefit -- if there's anything I get for free, my competitors should get it for free too. Seems only fair to me.

As I say, I'll post a fuller proposal shortly.

[rdearman]

I have been using a program called Gradint written by a Cambridge professor to generate Pimsleur type audio lessons using the same algorithm used by Pimsleur. If you did extract the audio dialogue then creation of an audio course would be child's play.

[Kraut]

This is a good example of why you need to know languages. German media:
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/articl ... ierte.html

"Auf WhatsApp kursieren Nachrichten zu einem möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen Ibuprofen und der Schwere einer Covid-19-Erkrankung. Die Unikliniken in Wien sprechen von „Fake News“. Doch auch der französische Gesundheitsminister warnt vor dem Medikament."

An (experimental) vaccine by June/July? German media are claiming Americans are trying to buy up bio-tech firm CureVac to lure them to the US.

https://www.n-tv.de/politik/CureVac-leh ... 43024.html

Weltweit wird derzeit fieberhaft nach einem Impfstoff gegen das Coronavirus geforscht. CureVac hofft, bis Juni oder Juli einen experimentellen Impfstoff entwickelt zu haben, um dann grünes Licht der Aufsichtsbehörden für Erprobungen mit Menschen zu bekommen. Man sei mit CureVac in Kontakt, bestätigten sowohl Sprecher des Forschungs- als auch des Gesundheitsministeriums. Zuvor hatte die "Welt am Sonntag" ohne Nennung von Quellen berichtet, die Bundesregierung versuche das Unternehmen mit finanziellen Angeboten in Deutschland zu halten.

[emk]

Hello. I'm sorry that we all turned out to be living in this particular timeline. All my best wishes to those who are infected, those who are in quarantine, those who are working the front lines in the medical system, and all those who need to go to work to keep society functioning.

There are going to be a lot of people spending a lot of time inside. As a remote worker who lives in the woods, I know how hard social isolation can sometimes be. And isolation is harder in a crisis, when you want to come together with the people around you, but have to stay apart to protect each other.

I've been thinking about the forum this weekend, and I realize that it has an important role to play: despite the occasional disagreements, this is a community. We can't help each other by dropping off groceries or anything like that. But we can still provide community bonds and a pleasant diversion in difficult times, which is no small thing. So please don't hesitate to reach out to people for some friendly support, or just to enjoy languages and take your mind off current events for a while.

I'm going to work with Rick and the moderators to make sure that we have plans to keep the forum running. We may not have time to fix all the bugs we'd like to fix, but we want to do our best to keep the community here. And we'll make sure that there are Twitter accounts, etc., to keep people informed if there are any outages.

Take care of yourselves. You're a wonderful community and I've been proud to study and talk with you over the years.

[Kraut]

This is a good example of why you need to know languages. German media:
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/articl ... ierte.html

"Auf WhatsApp kursieren Nachrichten zu einem möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen Ibuprofen und der Schwere einer Covid-19-Erkrankung. Die Unikliniken in Wien sprechen von „Fake News“. Doch auch der französische Gesundheitsminister warnt vor dem Medikament."

Heard this earlier today. Here the paper mentioned in the article. It's a very vague hypotesis and it's only about 32 people, who died earlier this year due to the virus.
If there are other proves (I had not heard about anything from Toulouse before), linking a source would be good.

Dr Campbell says the French minister is a hundred per cent right. He goes into detail here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuWo5lmWuZI

[tiia]

This is a good example of why you need to know languages. German media:
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/articl ... ierte.html

"Auf WhatsApp kursieren Nachrichten zu einem möglichen Zusammenhang zwischen Ibuprofen und der Schwere einer Covid-19-Erkrankung. Die Unikliniken in Wien sprechen von „Fake News“. Doch auch der französische Gesundheitsminister warnt vor dem Medikament."

Heard this earlier today. Here the paper mentioned in the article. It's a very vague hypotesis and it's only about 32 people, who died earlier this year due to the virus.
If there are other proves (I had not heard about anything from Toulouse before), linking a source would be good.

Dr Campbell says the French minister is a hundred per cent right. He goes into detail here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuWo5lmWuZI

Disclamimer: I have not studied medicine or anything related.

In the video he mainly said, that taking medication agains fever is not such a good idea. (Except when the fever rises too high, which is when it can be pretty dangerous. - Google about the problem with very high fever. But he doesn't even mention that point.) This argument is independet of COVID-19. He even wasn't too fond of the idea of taking paracetamol either, but kept it short and otherwise relied on the two quotes. So this looked more like a general argument against lowering the fever via medication. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But I didn't hear any specific detail related to COVID-19. Did I miss anything? The two quotes he's using are pretty much the only ones that I found in addition to the paper I mentioned before. And also those never mention any source. The doctor from Toulouse probably gave a whole interview, but the only thing you find is such a short quote? Where's the rest? So there are quotes by people who indeed have a degree in medicine. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) So that's at least something. But: Where's the scientific study? Where's the paper? Where is the original source? Or other reported cases?
Right now, the only relatively reliable source I have found, is the paper I linked earlier. Their hypothesis is rather vague and all patients in the study had other deseases as well. (Preconditions can absolutely have an impact on medication.)

Cavesa mentioned something with teenagers in Toulouse, but I didn't find anything, when I searched for it. However, I don't know French, so I cannot google in French. But this would certainly be interesting.

Don't get me wrong, I don't deny, that it can be true. I mean there is a possibility. And maybe it is just safer to take Paracetamol. (Better safe than sorry.) But I have seen weird stuff and false information spreading around, so sometimes I try to verify the statements and look whether a reliable (original) source can be found. Sometimes people just simplify the original source. Maybe the next one simplifies it even more or even adds some piece of information and in the end you end up with something that is far from the original.