Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning

Press Release

For Immediate Release

COERLL PUBLISHES BEGINNING YORÚBÀ TEXTBOOK

AUSTIN, TX - AUGUST 4, 2011 - COERLL, a federally funded foreign language resource center specializing in Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Internet public, released its newest interactive language textbook, Yorúbà Yé Mi - A Beginning Yorúbà Textbook. The online textbook is available to the public for free and includes an affordable print-on-demand option.

Yorúbà Yé Mi is a communicative, introductory, multi-media program intended to provide college/university students with basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Yorùbá. In addition, it exposes the learner to the culture of the Yorùbá-speaking people of South-western Nigeria.

To access the interactive textbook, go to http://coerll.utexas.edu/yemi/. The website offers:

* Yorúbà monologues, dialogues, and songs to be used with the textbook
* Free PDFs for each chapter
* Free audio archive download
* Links to the textbook and CD online stores

The textbook uses QR codes that link directly to the audio on the website and can
be easily accessed on smartphones and other camera phones.

"Project Director Dr. Fehintola Mosadomi has put her years of pedagogical experience to work in developing this Yorùbá textbook," says Carl Blyth, Director of COERLL.

"I am especially excited that COERLL has produced this textbook as an Open Educational Resource. Print-on-demand technology makes perfect sense for publishing materials in less commonly taught languages."

About COERLL

COERLL is one of 15 language resource centers funded by the US Department of Education, and its work is organized around seven basic areas:

* Applied linguistic research
* Teaching materials
* Language assessment
* Teacher development
* Less commonly taught languages
* K-12 initiatives
* Outreach and dissemination.

COERLL's mission is to produce and disseminate Open Educational Resources (OERs)
for the Internet public (e.g., online language courses, reference grammars, assessment tools, corpora, etc.). The term OER refers to any educational material offered freely for anyone to use and, with permission, to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. In addition, COERLL aims to reframe foreign language education in terms of bilingualism and/or multilingualism. For more information, visit www.coerll.utexas.edu.

Contact: Carl Blyth
Phone: (512) 232-2312

University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station
(512) 232-2312
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