applied linguistics Archives - Page 22 of 29

EUROCALL2015 Deadline for submissions of proposals 15th February #corpuscall

Submission of abstracts is now open for EUROCALL2015

The 22nd EUROCALL conference will be held at the University of Padova in Italy from 26th to 29th August 2015.

The program will include individual papers, symposia, workshops, presentations on EU-funded projects, and posters.

EUROCALL conferences are hosted under the auspices of the EUROCALL Association. They bring together educators, researchers, PhD students, administrators, designers of software and language learning systems, policy makers and other professionals involved in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) around the globe.

Conference Theme
The theme of this year’s conference is Critical CALL, fostering the notion that we now want to step back and critically appraise the field of CALL, to unpack and examine some of the assumptions that may have become ingrained in our practice, and also to reflect on the state of CALL and language pedagogy. There is also a need to take a critical stance and question what it is we are doing and whose interests we might be serving, since technology is not neutral, and nor is education. Inspired by those who advocate critical approaches to second language teaching, learning and assessment, especially when mediated by technology, we are particularly interested in contributions that look at the interdependence between language learning, power relationships and social change.

Papers on the following themes would be particularly welcome:
· Lessons learnt in CALL
· The constraints of CALL (institutional, financial, technological, social)
· Hegemonies in CALL
· Corpora and foreign language teaching and course design
· Learner corpora
· CALL for CLIL and Language Medium Instruction
· Interdisciplinarity and Internationalization through CALL
· Telecollaboration and CMC
· CALL and less commonly taught languages
· CALL, inclusion and social justice
· Digital and critical literacies
· Open educational resources
· MOOCs for language learning
· Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL)
· Gaming and virtual worlds
· Learning analytics and CALL design
· Online testing and assessment
· Teacher education and professional development
· Evaluating CALL research

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Keynote speakers at EUROCALL2015 will be:
-Sìan Bayne (University of Edinburgh) on critical approaches to ICT
-Lynn Mario Menezes de Souza (Universidade de Sao Paulo)
-Robert O’Dowd (Universidad de León, Spain)

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Proposals for Papers, Symposia, European Projects, Workshops and Posters must be submitted online via the EUROCALL submission system which is now open. The submission system will close on 15th February 2015.

Abstracts may be submitted in English or Italian.

Authors of accepted presentations are requested to submit a short paper (1,500 words) for publication in the online conference proceedings, and may also submit an extended version for peer-reviewed publication in ReCALL or the EUROCALL Review. Details will follow shortly.

Important dates
Deadline for submissions of proposals: 15th February 2015

Notification of acceptance: 31st March 2015

Early-bird Registration ends: 31st May 2015

Deadline for submissions of short papers for proceedings: 30th June 2015

Learner Corpora in Language Testing and Assessment

Edited by Marcus Callies and Sandra Götz

University of Bremen / Justus Liebig University, Giessen

ISBN 9789027203786

The aim of this volume is to highlight the benefits and potential of using learner corpora for the testing and assessment of L2 proficiency in both speaking and writing, reflecting the growing importance of learner corpora in applied linguistics and second language acquisition research. Identifying several desiderata for future research and practice, the volume presents a selection of original studies, covering a variety of different languages. It features studies that present very thoroughly compiled new corpus resources which are tailor-made and ready for analysis in LTA, new tools for the automatic assessment of proficiency levels, and new methods of (self-)assessment with the help of learner corpora. Other studies suggest innovative research methodologies of how proficiency can be operationalized through learner corpus data. The volume is of particular interest to researchers in (applied) corpus linguistics, learner corpus research, language testing and assessment, as well as for materials developers and language teachers.

Learner corpora in language testing and assessment: Prospects and challenges

Marcus Callies and Sandra Götz

1 – 10

New corpus resources, tools and methods. The Marburg Corpus of Intermediate Learner English (MILE)

Rolf Kreyer

13 – 34

Avalingua : Natural language processing for automatic error detection

Pablo Gamallo Otero, Marcos Garcia, Iria del Río and Isaac González López

35 – 58

Data commentary in science writing: Using a small, specialized corpus for formative self-assessment practices

Lene Nordrum and Andreas Eriksson

59 – 84

First steps in assigning proficiency to texts in a learner corpus of computer-mediated communication

Tim Marchand and Sumie Akutsu

85 – 112

Data-driven approaches to the assessment of proficiency

The English Vocabulary Profile as a benchmark for assigning levels to learner corpus data

Agnieszka Lenko-Szymanska

115 – 140

A multidimensional analysis of learner language during story reconstruction in interviews

Pascual Pérez-Paredes and María Sánchez-Tornel

141 – 162

Article use and criterial features in Spanish EFL writing: A pilot study from CEFR A2 to B2 levels

María Belén Díez-Bedmar

163 – 190

Tense and aspect errors in spoken learner English: Implications for language testing and assessment

Sandra Götz

191 – 216

How to Batch Convert Text Files to Other Formats in Mac via the Terminal

Source: www.maketecheasier.com

XVIIth International CALL Research Conference: Task Design and CALL Deadline for submission of abstracts Jan 30

Second CALL for Papers

XVIIth International CALL Research Conference: Task Design and CALL

(http://wwwa.fundacio.urv.cat/congressos/call-conference-2015/)

6-8 July 2015

Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

More CFP here

The concept

In recent CALL articles, conference presentations and project proposals, we notice a renewed interest in activities, and less emphasis on technology or theoretical pedagogy. These activities, elective or compulsory, can be subdivided into three partly overlapping categories: (a) focus-on-form tasks which can be defined as meaningful tasks in which the focus on particular forms is tightly embedded; (b) focus-on-meaning tasks which should lead to communication (CMC approach) or any kind of non-linguistic outcome (TBLT approach); and (c) form-focused exercises that focus on isolated forms, such as improved and enriched (drill-and-practice) exercises.

During this conference we will discuss the design process behind these tasks: How do we decide on task types? How do we shape them? How do we monitor and evaluate them?

Submitted presentations should tackle questions such as:

– How do we design authentic, meaningful, useful and enjoyable tasks?
– To what extent do tasks depend on context?
– What can CALL learn from TBLT?
– What can TBLT learn from CALL?
– What affordances and limitations of technology should be considered in task design?
– How does technology impact on non-technological tasks?
– What are the specific challenges for LMOOCs, OERs, WebQuests, Interactive Whiteboards, Student Response Systems, Synchronous Collaborative Writing Tools, Serious Games… ?
– How do our tasks fit in with Complex Dynamic Systems Theory, Socioconstructivist environments, Flipped Classroom approaches …?
– What is the role of corrective feedback in tasks?
– What are the consequences for Learner Analytics?
– Which tasks are best suited for which skills?
– Which tasks are most appropriate for developing intercultural competence?

Keynote speakers

Prof. dr. Kris Van Den Branden, KULeuven, Belgium
David Collien, PhD researcher & VP Engineering OpenLearning.com, Sydney, Australia

Conference website

http://www.call2015.org

Awards

The conference organizers will reward the best paper submission as ‘selected plenary’.
The best presentation by a PhD student will receive the Jaclyn Ng Shi Ing Award, in memory of our friend and colleague who passed away in the tragic event of Flight MH17.

Call for Proposals

Just download the template provided on the conference website. Your submission should contain:

– 10-20 lines on the context of your research: situate your contribution;
– 20-40 lines where you focus on the conference theme and try to tackle one of the questions mentioned above.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: January 30, 2015
Notification of acceptance: February 23rd 2015
Deadline for submission of conference paper (1 000 – 3 000 words): March 20th 2015