Language Learning
For immigrants and refugees who are learning the language of one of the LIDA countries (English/Italian/Norwegian/Portuguese), we have developed the website lidastories.net, which provides 30 stories in the language of each host country as well as about 35 major immigrant and refugee languages in Europe (Figure 11 below). By reading the story in both languages, learners can benefit from better understanding and draw on prior knowledge in a familiar language. The stories are available as both text and audio recordings in all languages, which makes the website useful even for people who are not (fully) literate in their mother tongue, a key target group. We hope the stories will appeal to others as well.
As an educational resource bilingual stories, either digital or dual-language books, have been pro-posed as a contribution to literacy development in multilingual educational settings (e.g., Zaidi, 2020).
The second value is mutual learning, which refers to the fact that neither the users nor the designers have enough knowledge of both the design possibilities and the domain/context, and they need to learn from each other to be equal contributors to the result.
The section on the LIDA website has been designed to be as useful and accessible for youth and adults, even those with few or even no literacy skills. This inclusive design includes content, layout, and navigation. The key design features and principles are:
- Relevance: The majority of stories are short and simple, since the largest need for support materials is at the lowest level. However, the five levels cater for a range of students at different proficiency levels. The 30 stories have been written with the target group in mind to meet the need for texts that are both relevant and appealing.
- Accessibility: For people with limited experience of computers, and in particular users with little or no formal schooling, simple-to-use websites are crucial in making content accessible. The website has been designed with this target group in mind.
- Device and format experience: The website works equally well on a large computer screen, a tablet, and a small smartphone. The text, images and icons neatly fold together such that the size of the screen does not affect the readability or other functions. The stories are also available for download and printing in multiple formats.
- Multilingualism and multimodality: The few other websites that offer the same story in multiple languages, generally keep them separated, making it hard to compare text or swiftly navigate between them. Toggling between a language of choice and the main language is a core feature. By offering the same set of stories in all languages, a group of students can read the same story in their own language as well as in the target language.
- Audio recordings: For people with little or no print literacy skills in their first language, conventional print dual-language books are of little or no use. The audio recordings are segmented by page, so it is possible to read a page (one or a few sentences) and listen to the corresponding audio.
- Truly open: All 30 stories have Creative Commons licences, which means people can use them free of charge. The web architecture builds on previous open projects, which have made lidastories.net possible. In the same spirit, we hope our stories, illustrations, translations, and audio recordings will spur more creative innovation and use.