OER Catalog

Basic Tamil is an online, interactive, and tech-enhanced textbook that promotes speaking, listening, reading, writing, and cultural skills. Each Chapter in this book has clearly stated learning outcomes, relevant grammatical items, and cultural notes. Each chapter is designed to teach the vocabulary needed as a building bloc as the student progresses to the next chapter. The pedagogical approach in the book is mixed and informed by the socio-cultural approaches and the generative approaches of the Second Language Acquisition theory. The mixed theoretical backgrounds match diverse learning and teaching philosophies and styles. Following the learning outcomes guided by American Council of Teaching Foreign Language (ACTFL), this textbook aims for the novice learners to attain intermediate low to mid-level proficiency level. The textbook incorporates pictures, audio-visual materials, and activities developed on the H5P platform to keep learners engaged.

Basic Urdu is a theme-based, interactive open-source online textbook for the true novice learners of the Urdu language. The book aims to help true novice learners of the Urdu language to achieve intermediate low to mid-level American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency level. The book has eight chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the Urdu script. Chapters 2 to 8 follow a similar pattern. They all begin with stated goals followed by three to four readings and listening, followed by grammar points. Reading and listening sections have the vocabulary, pre- and post-activities which follow a combination of pedagogical approaches to language teaching. It also has grammatical points so that users can build overall language proficiency inductively or deductively. Each chapter ends with cultural notes and extra online resources. The book has several interactive activities with in-built feedback for independent learners.

Elementary Chinese II is aimed at those who have learned Chinese as a second/foreign language for one semester, using the OER textbook “Elementary Chinese I“.

This open textbook contains six main lessons, including topics such as school life, shopping, transportation, weather, eating out, and asking and giving directions. They are organized in a straightforward and well-structured manner that are easy to follow. Within each lesson, there are a set of two dialogues or a set of one dialogue plus one narration. The texts of the dialogues or narrations are created to provide real-life Chinese language to beginning learners. After the texts, vocabulary words are listed for them to study and review. Grammatical points are explained in English and example sentences are provided for students to understand. Each dialogue or narration ends with culture notes where learners can read and better understand the target text.