Working with Language Accents

Owned by Janice Orcutt
Last updated: Nov 05, 2024
4 min read

ID&D KB How-to Guide

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Creating Content in Languages Other than English

Whether you are creating original content pages for a language course, or incorporating short excerpts in languages other than English, DesignPLUS provides a tool to support you in developing accurate punctuation and other language notations.

The DesignPLUS Language Accents tool helps you to insert language accent characters into the Canvas editor, insert a Word/Phrase, Paragraph, or Block of text that is tagged as being written in a specific language, and make the language accents tool available to students in Discussions.  The Language Accent tool can help students learn the keyboard shortcuts associated with commonly used characters for specific languages.

The Language Accents tool currently includes characters for the following languages:

  • French

  • Chinese Pinyin

  • German

  • Greek (Ancient)

  • Hawaiian

  • Hiragana

  • Italian

  • Latin

  • Old English

  • International Phonetic Alphabet

  • Portuguese

  • Russian

  • Spanish

 

Tip! You can click on the images in this article to see them larger and with more detail.

This article provides step-by-step instructions on:

Using the Language Accent Tool in Content Pages

You can use the Language Accent Tool to create content pages in languages other than English.

  1. To activate the Language Accent tool:

    1. Open an existing or new page in Editing mode.

    2. Open the DesignPLUS sidebar

    3. Select the Language Accent option from the Settings menu (three dot icon on the upper right corner of the sidebar).

      language1.png

  2. The Language Accent tool will appear in a pop-up window.

    1. Click on the “Select Language” button to view the drop-down menu of available languages

    2. Select your language

      language2.png

  3. A display of accented characters or punctuation marks will appear in the window.

     

  4. Start entering your content in the page element. Where you need to insert special characters or punctuation:

    1. Place your cursor in the location where the character will be inserted (OR highlight the character that will change)

    2. Select the character in the Language Accents window

  5. The character will be inserted or replaced

Tip! The PC and Mac keyboard shortcuts for the selected character appears in the Language Accent tool when a character is selected.

Enabling the Language Accent Tool in Discussions for Students

You can enable the Language Accent Tool for students to use in Discussions, where it may an important part of the learning activity.

  1. To do this:

    1. Create (or Open in Edit mode) the Discussion activity in your MyClasses course.

    2. Open the DesignPLUS Sidebar and the Language Accent Tool (see instructions above).

  2. When the Language Accent tool opens:

    1. Select the Language from the pull-down list

    2. Select the tick box next to the “Let students use selected language in responses”

  3. Save and Publish the discussion activity.

To Check the Student View

  1. The Language Access Tool will appear on the right side of the window to identify that it is enabled for the discussion.

    1. Note that the Language Accent tool appears in the right side of the window to show it is enabled

    2. Click on “Student View”

  2. When the student opens the discussion, direct them to click on the Language Accent tool icon in the upper right corner.

  3. The tool will appear next to the discussion activity and be accessible when they reply.

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Visit the DesignPLUS Training Series Tutorials for more videos. For more step-by-step guides, visit the DesignPLUS User Guide. (These links will overwrite this page.)

 

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