“Idiom Zoo”, a website developed by LangComp Company Limited, an affiliated company of City University of Hong Kong (CityU), has been chosen as one of the meritorious websites in the 2005 Meritorious Websites Contest.  The website is designed to help learners understand Chinese idioms.

 

This is the second year running that the site has received this award. Such an achievement shows that the site is well-received by the general public and that CityU’s enthusiasm and dedication in education is widely recognized.

 

“We are all excited to learn that the Idiom Zoo website was been chosen again as a meritorious website,” said Dr Caesar Lun, Assistant Professor in CityU's Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, and a founding director of LangComp. “We will continue to produce high-quality, computer-assisted language learning courseware to contribute to society,” he said.

 

The Meritorious Websites Contest 2005, formerly known as the “Ten Healthy Websites Contest”, was jointly organized by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority and the Hong Kong Young Women's Christian Association. The contest encourages young people to pay more visits to healthy websites. Nomination and voting were open to the public by post, fax and the Internet. In total, 2,060 nominations were received, and 11 websites were chosen from 424 nominees. 128,316 votes were cast by 18,380 people.

 

“Idiom Zoo”, hosted by the Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB), helps students understand 90 animal-related Chinese idioms using animation, interactive multimedia elements and edutainment games in the “Movie room”, “Library”, “Game centre” and “Information room”. LangComp was in charge of the second phase of the project (developing 85 idioms), and worked on data research, content compilation, animation production, subtitling, voice-over production and programming.

 

Founded in 1997, LangComp provides language-related educational products, application software and services to schools and the public. In addition to “Idiom Zoo (II)”, LangComp has developed a series of computer-assisted language learning software packages for the EMB, such as “Dianhualiuxing” and “Congjianrufan”. LangComp also contributes to the research and development of its own name brands such as “Jyutping Bat Naan”, “Practical Jyutping Input Method” and “Biaoyinyi”.

 

“Idiom Zoo” can be found at http://resources.emb.gov.hk/idiom2 and more information on LangComp is at http://www.langcomp.com.hk