Computationally Evaluating and Reproducing the Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy

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A proposal of calligraphy learning assistant system with letter portion practice function using projection mapping

Purpose For several decades, calligraphy has been popular among people in Japan, China, and even in the world. Traditionally, a teacher teaches how to write letters on a paper with a brush, and a student will imitate them by referring to the model letters. However, if a teacher is not available, this method will not be applicable either. This study aims to propose a calligraphy learning assistant system (CLAS) using projection mapping, which allows a student to learn calligraphy by him/herself. Design/methodology/approach By following the letter writing video of a teacher that is directly projected on the paper, a student is able to learn the stroke order and writing speed in addition to the letter shape. Moreover, the letter portion practice function is incorporated in CLAS to allow a learner to repeat practicing hard portions of each letter. Findings For evaluations, the authors implemented CLAS using Raspberry Pi and open-source software and asked students to use it. The results confirmed that CLAS is effective in improving calligraphy skills of novice students. Originality/value With CLAS, a student can practice calligraphy using a conventional brush, ink and paper at a desk while looking at the model letter writing of a teacher projected on the paper using projection mapping

Study on the optimization path of chinese online study tour program under the "5W" mode in the post-epidemic era

This paper provides an analysis and a detailed discussion on the Chinese Online Study Tour, a special product of the times. The study was carried out through a survey of the teaching resources of universities in 2021 on the online experience platform of "Chinese Bridge" of the Chinese-Foreign Language Cooperation Center of the Ministry of Education, and took the Zhejiang Yuexiu University's project "A Tour to the Water Town of Shaoxing in South China -- Clothing, Food, Residence, Travelling and Art" as a case study. The paper gives an in-depth analysis of the current situation and existing problems of Chinese online study tour camp, aiming to put forward the path of optimizing the Chinese online study tour camp from the "5W" mode of communications, and to provide feasible suggestions for the construction of new modes for Chinese online study tour camps in universities

Computer Assisted Language Learning Based on Corpora and Natural Language Processing : The Experience of Project CANDLE

This paper describes Project CANDLE, an ongoing 3-year project which uses various corpora and NLP technologies to construct an online English learning environment for learners in Taiwan. This report focuses on the interim results obtained in the first eighteen months. First, an English-Chinese parallel corpus, Sinorama, was used as the main course material for reading, writing, and culture-based learning courses. Second, an online bilingual concordancer, TotalRecall, and a collocation reference tool, TANGO, were developed based on Sinorama and other corpora. Third, many online lessons, including extensive reading, verb-noun collocations, and vocabulary, were designed to be used alone or together with TotalRecall and TANGO. Fourth, an online collocation check program, MUST, was developed for detecting V-N miscollocation and suggesting adequate collocates in student’s writings based on the hypothesis of L1 interference and the database of BNC and the bilingual Sinorama Corpus. Other computational scaffoldings are under development. It is hoped that this project will help intermediate learners in Taiwan enhance their English proficiency with effective pedagogical approaches and versatile language reference tools

School’s Out for the Summer: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Second Language Learning in Informal Settings

This ethnographic, cross-cultural study used a dialogic, sociolinguistic framework to describe learning processes in portraits of three immersion summer camps in the eastern United States. Using the data collection techniques of in-depth interviewing, participant observation and textual analysis, the study examined the process of second language learning and ethnic socialization through linguistic and cultural activities at two Chinese and one Hebrew summer day camp for children ages 4-12. Informal alternatives to standard learning elements such as the “classroom;” “student;” “teacher;” “curriculum;” “textbooks;” and “tests” within the four language learning skill sets were observed and analyzed. Participants described positive language learning and social outcomes as a result of: voluntary participation in task or project-based activities; modeling using authentic materials and native speaking role models; wide-ranging learning methods with an emphasis on physical activities; and language and social mediation through dialogue and relationships with junior counselors and counselors-in-training

How the change to online learning affected Chinese language teaching in California schools due to the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

This research study investigates how Chinese language teachers in California made the change from in-person learning to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, how they set up and taught virtual classes and what their reactions were to the online transitions. Teachers utilized various interactive tools and strategies to teach students in their virtual classrooms. Parental involvement with the child’s education at home increased. Some public school district polices caused greater reductions in student participation than others. Teachers applied various communication strategies to engage students in creative ways while teaching online. This together with curriculum development and assessment design required that teachers adapt them to the new teaching environment. Teachers\u27 reactions toward the transition are described in this research. Some expressed it as difficult, others mentioned it as easy. Teachers indicated that students’ participation rates changed during the transition. This research used a questionnaire and one-on-one interviews to understand how Chinese language teachers switched from in-person classes to online learning. A link to the online survey was sent to K-16 Chinese language teachers in California. The one-on-one interviews were conducted on Zoom. One-hundred-sixteen teachers participated in the study. One-hundred-sixteen questionnaires were collected and twenty in-depth interviews were conducted

Chinese calligraphy: character style recognition based on full-page document

Calligraphy plays a very important role in the history of China. From ancient times to modern times, the beauty of calligraphy has been passed down to the present. Different calligraphy styles and structures have made calligraphy a beauty and embodiment in the field of writing. However, the recognition of calligraphy style and fonts has always been a blank in the computer field. The structural complexity of different calligraphy also brings a lot of challenges to the recognition technology of computers. In my research, I mainly discussed some of the main recognition techniques and some popular machine learning algorithms in this field for more than 20 years, trying to find a new method of Chinese calligraphy styles recognition and exploring its feasibility. In our research, we searched for research papers 20 years ago. Most of the results are about the content recognition of modern Chinese characters. At first, we analyze the development of Chinese characters and the basic Chinese character theory. In the analysis of the current recognition of Chinese characters (including handwriting online and offline) in the computer field, it is more important to analyze various algorithms and results, and to analyze how to use the experimental data, besides how they construct the data set used for their test. The research on the method of image processing based on Chinese calligraphy works is very limited, and the data collection for calligraphy test is very limited also. The test of dataset that used between different recognition technologies is also very different. However, it has far-reaching significance for inheriting and carrying forward the traditional Chinese culture. It is very necessary to develop and promote the recognition of Chinese characters by means of computer tecnchque. In the current application field, the font recognition of Chinese calligraphy can effectively help the library administrators to identify the problem of the classification of the copybook, thus avoiding the recognition of the calligraphy font which is difficult to perform manually only through subjective experience. In the past 10 years of technology, some techniques for the recognition of single Chinese calligraphy fonts have been given. Most of them are the pre-processing of calligraphy characters, the extraction of stroke primitives, the extraction of style features, and the final classification of machine learning. The probability of the classification of the calligraphy works. Such technical requirements are very large for complex Chinese characters, the result of splitting and recognition is very large, and it is difficult to accurately divide many complex font results. As a result, the recognition rate is low, or the accuracy of recognition of a specific word is high, but the overall font recognition accuracy is low. We understand that Chinese calligraphy is a certain research value. In the field of recognition, many research papers on the analysis of Chinese calligraphy are based on the study of calligraphy and stroke. However, we have proposed a new method for dealing with font recognition. The recognition technology is based on the whole page of the document. It is studied in three steps: the first step is to use Fourier transform and some Chinese calligraphy images and analyze the results. The second is that CNN is based on different data sets to get some results. Finally, we made some improvements to the CNN structure. The experimental results of the thesis show that the full-page documents recognition method proposed can achieve high accuracy with the support of CNN technology, and can effectively identify the different styles of Chinese calligraphy in 5 styles. Compared with the traditional analysis methods, our experimental results show that the method based on the full-page document is feasible, avoiding the cumbersome font segmentation problem. This is more efficient and more accurate

Raising Cross-Cultural Awareness among the Undergraduates through Intentional Design in a Culture Course in the US—An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Experimental Design

The cultivation of intercultural competence is a growing trend globally, and integration of intercultural competence into coursework was widely acknowledged as a valid strategy to achieve this goal. The purpose of this study is to examine (1) the effects of the intervention of connecting one’s own culture to affect students\u27 cross-cultural awareness development in American colleges; and (2) students’ perceptions of their own cultural‐awareness changes. Data was collected through pre-and post-questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. This study also compared between-group participants’ posttest ratings on a cross-cultural awareness scale, as well as pre- and post-test ratings within each group. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed and integrated. Results indicate connecting one’s own culture to reflect on cultural topics helps to facilitate the development of cross‐cultural awareness by providing opportunities for students to gain insight into the values of their own culture, understanding other cultures, and understanding the difference between the cultures. The majority of the participants noted the reflection via connecting their own culture as an effective means of facilitating cross-cultural understanding