Category: applied linguistics

CFP RESEARCH CHALLENGES IN CALL

The editor, associate editors and editorial board of Computer Assisted Language Learning (Taylor and Francis) extend a cordial invitation to attend our  XVIth International CALL Research Conference at Universiteit Antwerpen (Antwerp, Belgium), 7-9 July 2014.

RESEARCH CHALLENGES IN CALL

The starting points for this conference are the 12 challenges Jozef Colpaert recently identified and presented at WorldCALL 2013 in Glasgow, and which he classified into three categories:

contextual (academic meritocracy, academic value of CALL, myths/hypes and broad-public perception), methodological (design, replication, slow research and transdisciplinarity), and epistemological (open, psychological, smart and sustainable aspects).

Our three proposed session types reflect these categories:

-Keynote speakers – Piet Desmet (K.U. Leuven University) and Bryan Smith (Arizona State University) – will tackle the contextual challenges in thought-provoking plenary sessions.

-Research papers  should  focus on your current research and should discuss the methodological challenges you encounter. Two selected research papers will be awarded as plenary presentations.

-Pre- and post-conference surveys, polls, group discussions and panels will focus on epistemological challenges we define together. If we want academic evaluation to become more objective, fair and justifiable, then epistemological challenges need to be defined clearly in advance. We would like this conference to be a catalyst for discussions regarding the question: What priority research topics can be defined by our community?  This should lead to a document that can be used by all CALLers worldwide for supporting their research proposals.

Deadline for submissions is 30 November 2013. Please send your abstract (300 words) and biodata (100 words) to ann.aerts@uantwerpen.be.

Participants have the opportunity to combine the CALL conference with a Summer School in Design-Based Research (by Sven De Maeyer and Vincent Donche) or a Master Class in Educational Engineering (by Jozef Colpaert). Both events will be held from 30 June until 4 July. Further information will follow soon on the conference website www.antwerpcall.be.

Using corpora in the language classroom: what is possible and what is feasible.

[…] it is certainly possible to use language corpora and CL methodology in the language classroom. This “possibilities” scenario (Alcaraz and Pérez-Paredes, 2008) takes the research tools and methodology of the CL research paradigm straightaway to the language classroom. In other words, in the specific contexts of the language learning it seemed appropriate to do so. However, other considerations affecting pedagogic issues were simply neglected. The methodological transfer from the CL research area to the applied ring of language learning and teacher underwent no adaptation, and thus learners were presented with the same tools, corpora and analytical tasks as well-trained and professional linguists.

[…]

The “feasibility” scenario advocated by Alcaraz & Pérez- Paredes (2008) postulates itself as a complement to the possibilities scenario for learning environments other than the university or those
oriented towards professionals like linguists or translators. In this scenario language corpora are specifically compiled, annotated and exploited with a pedagogic intention. The main characteristics of this new scenario are defined against the present role of principled corpora in language education, and are concerned with the role played by corpora in language learning, corpus design issues such as annotation and usability, and, how the notion of authenticity is operationalized in this context.

Pérez-Paredes, P. (2010). Corpus Linguistics and Language Education in Perspective: Appropriation and the Possibilities Scenario. In T. Harris & M. Moreno Jaén (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics in Language Teaching (pp. 53-73). Peter Lang. 

Using corpora in the language classroom: what is possible and what is feasible.

[…] it is certainly possible to use language corpora and CL methodology in the language classroom. This “possibilities” scenario (Alcaraz and Pérez-Paredes, 2008) takes the research tools and methodology of the CL research paradigm straightaway to the language classroom. In other words, in the specific contexts of the language learning it seemed appropriate to do so. However, other considerations affecting pedagogic issues were simply neglected. The methodological transfer from the CL research area to the applied ring of language learning and teacher underwent no adaptation, and thus learners were presented with the same tools, corpora and analytical tasks as well-trained and professional linguists.

[…]

The “feasibility” scenario advocated by Alcaraz & Pérez- Paredes (2008) postulates itself as a complement to the possibilities scenario for learning environments other than the university or those
oriented towards professionals like linguists or translators. In this scenario language corpora are specifically compiled, annotated and exploited with a pedagogic intention. The main characteristics of this new scenario are defined against the present role of principled corpora in language education, and are concerned with the role played by corpora in language learning, corpus design issues such as annotation and usability, and, how the notion of authenticity is operationalized in this context.

Pérez-Paredes, P. (2010). Corpus Linguistics and Language Education in Perspective: Appropriation and the Possibilities Scenario. In T. Harris & M. Moreno Jaén (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics in Language Teaching (pp. 53-73). Peter Lang. 

The evidence is now in: the explicit teaching of grammar rules leads to better learning



According to The Guardian there is evidence that the explicit teaching of grammar rules leads to better learning. Nothing that surprises researchers in Form-focused instruction. The article has been written by Dr Catherine Walter, Lecturer in applied linguistics at the University of Oxford, co-author with Michael Swan of the Oxford English Grammar Course. 

What really interests me is the fact that such specialized topic has been discussed in a newspaper. I must say that we find these days more and more linguistics in everyday media and news, possibly one of the effects of globalization, “viral” language learning and the attention to apllied sciences. 

The evidence is now in: the explicit teaching of grammar rules leads to better learning



According to The Guardian there is evidence that the explicit teaching of grammar rules leads to better learning. Nothing that surprises researchers in Form-focused instruction. The article has been written by Dr Catherine Walter, Lecturer in applied linguistics at the University of Oxford, co-author with Michael Swan of the Oxford English Grammar Course. 

What really interests me is the fact that such specialized topic has been discussed in a newspaper. I must say that we find these days more and more linguistics in everyday media and news, possibly one of the effects of globalization, “viral” language learning and the attention to apllied sciences.