Foreign Language Realia

from the authors of Wie, bitte? and ¿Cómo? proficiency-oriented introductory language textbook packages Updated:18 October 1998

William B. Fischer (www)	Juan Manuel Gómez
Earl L. Rees	Peter N. Richardson
Portland State University	Linfield College
Links to Collections	read © info

About the Collections Over the years we have collected, catalogued, classified, databased, and now digitized thousands of graphic and sound resources for language teaching. Our materials are primarily in Spanish and German. They are intended both to illustrate the everyday culture of the Spanish- and German-speaking countries and to provide samples of language particularly suited to teachers and learners of languages at the ACTFL levels Novice through Advanced. Our realia have appeared in conventional form on the pages of our textbooks and on the cassettes distributed with them. Recently we have transformed Wie, bitte? and ¿Cómo? into multi-media packages for in-class presentation and individual student use outside the classroom. The CD-ROM versions are now being used in pilot classes and should be available for adoption and purchase within a year. We are also considering transferring the graphics and sound files to CD-ROM as libraries of resources for teachers to put into their own activities. Obviously, we'd like people to adopt our commercial packages. But the resources you can download here are "e-mailware." They are free of charge, and you can give them to friends - with the usual request that you send us a note, and the customary provision that you must not reassemble them into another collection or use them in another product that you distribute for profit. send e-mail directly from here A related collection is called "ForReal" - web sites, downloadable graphics, and activities using them created by participants in an Eisenhower-funded PASS workshop for language teachers held at Portland State University, 23-27 June 1997.

Links to Collections Images The graphics are .jpg (=.jpeg) files of up to 5.5 x 5.5 inches (400 x 400 pixels) in dimension and of up to about 200K per image in file size. Color is 16-bit. Downloading a file should take just a few seconds. Depending on how your browser is set, the download may display immediately or else be saved as a file for you to view later. If you save the download you can edit it in such programs as Photoshop or SuperPaint. The files started as Macintosh documents, but they can be converted into PC files by several readily available applications. Audio The audio files are taken from radio broadcasts in the countries where the language is spoken. They include such items as commercials, weather reports, brief news items, and disk-jockey chatter. The sound files are delivered as digital QuickTime(TM) files (extension .mov, flattened for PC). File sizes range from about .5 to 1.5 MB. Downloading a file should take about a minute. Depending on how your browser is set, the download may play immediately or else be saved as a file for you to hear later. If you save the download you can edit it in such programs as SoundEdit 16(TM) for Macintosh or whatever you have for PCs. Transcriptions for most segments are available for downloading as well, in the form of ASCII text files.

All materials © by William B. Fischer and various colleagues and co-authors. Downloads of these materials are provided, without any warranties, as a professional courtesy and as promotions of other materials which may be offered for purchase. You may download at no charge the items from this site, and you may share them freely with colleagues, students and friends. (An e-mail acknowledgment will be appreciated.) But you may not alter their form or content, except as described for a specific item or collection of items, and you may not, without express consent, incorporate any item in another product which is offered for sale or to gain some other pecuniary benefit. Proper acknowledgment of origin must be given with any use. This permission is granted as a limited license; I and my colleagues and co-authors retain all rights of authorship. Have a nice download! =:)

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