.
<p>Welcome to FLAX's extensive reading system - "Fern Reader". This is still under development.</p><h3>How does the Fern Reader work?</h3><p>The Fern Reader allows English language learners to search for news articles that they would like to read about, and then analyses the found articles with a difficulty. This difficulty is calculated from a vocabulary model that evolves over time based on previous content read by this particular learner.</p><p>When a learner reads an article, they click on a word to indicate that they are unfamiliar with this word, and a definition is then displayed to help learn the word. Likewise, if they don't click on a word, it is concluded that they are familiar with this word. The model is updated accordingly to reflect the degree of confidence that the learner knows this particular word.</p><p>The Fern Reader is primarily based on a prototype system developed by Michael Walmsley, a PhD student at the University of Waikato, for Spanish language learners. Visit his site <a href='http://fern.nzdl.org' target='_blank'>here</a> or click <a href='http://fern.nzdl.org/about/Extensive_reading' target='_blank'>here</a> to read more about extensive reading.</p>
You must be logged in to access this page.