ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Expert Views on How Language Education May Develop in the Next 20 Years and What CALL Could Contribute
Author: Koenraad, Ton
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Second Language Instruction,Interviews,Secondary School Teachers,College Faculty,Educational Environment,Educational Technology,Computer Assisted Instruction,Teacher Attitudes,Educational Trends,Prediction,Language Teachers

The celebration of EUROCALL's twentieth anniversary also provides a proper occasion to reflect on the future of language teaching and the role of CALL in these developments. In this paper we present the views of five authorities on language teaching and learning from different EU countries. Most of them are also CALL experts and well respected EUROCALL members, including the late Graham Davies. Our presentation is based on a summary of the Skype interviews in which they contributed to a symposium entitled &quot;And now for another century of modern language teaching…&quot; organised by the Dutch national Association of Language Teachers on the occasion of its first centennial in 2011. To provide a more global (or at least European) perspective the interviewees were asked to cover the same topics that were central to the live panel discussion by six Dutch participants representing a variety of perspectives: secondary and university teachers, students, curriculum experts and teacher educators. By way of preparation all involved had been given a number of challenging statements related to some aspects of the discussion theme: the characteristics of the future learning environment, teacher, learner, pedagogy and technology. In this audio-supported document we will focus on interesting points of view particularly related to pedagogy and technology expressed in the interviews. A video report summary of the live discussion (in Dutch) is available on the limited edition CD with recordings of the centennial festivities. [A version of this paper has also been published in &quot;The EUROCALL Review&quot; v22 n1 p59-68 Mar 2014 (see EJ1055213). For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Further Investigation into the Reuse of OERs for Language Teaching
Author: Pulker, Hélène
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Resource Units,Computer Uses in Education,Shared Resources and Services,Foreign Countries,Second Language Instruction,French,Computer Assisted Instruction,Electronic Learning,Online Courses,Open Universities,Distance Education,Case Studies,Semi Structured Interviews,Media Adaptation,Teaching Styles,Web Based Instruction,Language Teachers,Synchronous Communication,Computer Mediated Communication,Educational Change,Teacher Attitudes,Tutorial Programs

The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to support language teaching and learning in higher education has become standard practice in recent years. While OER initiatives have given considerable attention to teacher's engagement as well as the sharing of culture and the creation and uploading of OERs, there is little evidence about specific reuse by teachers in the classroom. This paper builds on a previous study conducted in December 2012 and presents further reflection on the reuse of OERs for teaching French beginners online. The initial enquiry was a case study based on interviews with four teachers of an online beginners' French course at a distance education institution, the Open University, UK. The results of the initial study show that even when resources meet all the criteria teachers are looking for, material adaptation is still occurring. Teachers adapt the resources to fit their own teaching styles and gain ownership of the materials, but above all, materials are adapted according to teachers' own beliefs about online teaching. This paper revisits the types of changes made to original resources and provides further observation about the changes, suggesting that whatever the modification made to the original resource as, the pedagogical intent will always be changed. This paper is of relevance to language teaching practitioners as well as course developers who are interested in reuse of language teaching materials for online language teaching. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
The European Project TILA
Author: Jauregi, Kristi
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Intercultural Programs,Language Acquisition,Lifelong Learning,Second Language Programs,Communicative Competence (Languages),Technology Uses in Education,Educational Practices,Appropriate Technology,Technical Assistance,Computer Mediated Communication,Secondary School Teachers,Faculty Development,Online Surveys

Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition (TILA), is an EU-funded project within the Lifelong Learning Programme that will run between January 2013 and June 2015. TILA's overall objectives are: (1) to innovate, enrich and make foreign language teaching programmes more attractive and effective by encouraging the implementation of telecollaboration activities in secondary schools across Europe; (2) to assist teachers and teacher training programmes in developing information and communications technology (ICT) literacy skills as well as organisational, pedagogical and intercultural competences to guarantee adequate integration of telecollaboration practices; and (3) to study the added value that telecollaboration may bring to language learning in terms of intercultural understanding and motivation amongst younger learners. Our aim in this (albeit short) paper is to introduce the project, its background and outline the specific teaching needs of our participants with regards to languages and technology. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Separating Fact and Fiction: The Real Story of Corpus Use in Language Teaching
Author: Boulton, Alex
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Computational Linguistics,Teaching Methods,Word Frequency,Comparative Analysis,Language Research,Futures (of Society),Search Strategies,Educational Trends,Trend Analysis

This paper investigates uses of corpora in language learning (&quot;data-driven learning&quot;) through analysis of a 600K-word corpus of empirical research papers in the field. The corpus can tell us much--the authors and the countries the studies are conducted in, the types of publication, and so on. The corpus investigation itself starts with frequency lists of words and clusters to detect initial themes, which are then extended (via distribution plots, collocates, concordances, etc.) to look at specific items: the researchers cited, the theoretical constructs and concepts investigated and how they are treated, and so on. The paper ends by dividing the corpus into early and more recent papers to compare evolution over time. This reveals keywords that were prevalent in earlier days as a snapshot of the past, and keywords today which may give an idea of future directions. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Developing Phonological Awareness in Blended-Learning Language Courses
Author: Dell'Aria, Carmela
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Blended Learning,Phonological Awareness,Second Language Learning,Educational Technology,Simulated Environment,Visualization,Pronunciation,Feedback (Response),Intonation,Communication Skills,Suprasegmentals,Italian,Language Rhythm,Auditory Stimuli,Foreign Countries,Native Speakers,Visual Stimuli,Experimental Groups,Control Groups,Pretests Posttests,Online Courses

This study is based on Second Language Acquisition through blended learning and explores the application of new educational technologies in the development of distance education. In particular, the paper focuses on ways to enhance oral, aural, and intercultural skills through learners' engagement, develop authentic social interaction and intercultural awareness in virtual environments and at the same time actively engage the students' powers of perception, communication and reasoning. A speech visualization technology is introduced, specifically tailored to pronunciation training. It provides relevant and comprehensible visual feedback of all three components of speech: prosody-intonation, stress and rhythm. In this paper we stress that the achievement of successful communication should be the main objective of a second language learner, whilst overcoming the foreign accent can be deemed as a secondary goal. A strong or incorrect placement of word stress may impair understanding--from the listener's point of view--of the word(s) being pronounced. On the other hand, acquiring correct timing of phonological units helps to overcome the impression of foreign accent, which may ensue from an incorrect distribution of stressed vs. unstressed stretches of linguistic units such as syllables or metric feet. For these reasons our study looks at how to improve a student's performance both in perception and production of spoken Italian prosodic features, which include the correct position of stress at word level, the alternation of stress and unstressed syllables, the correct position of sentence accent, the generation of the adequate rhythm from the interleaving of stress, accent, phonological rules, and the generation of adequate intonation patterns for each utterance related to communicative functions. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Using Smart Phones in Language Learning--A Pilot Study to Turn CALL into MALL
Author: Kétyi, András
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Telecommunications,Handheld Devices,Second Language Learning,Management Systems,German,Second Language Instruction,Pilot Projects,Feedback (Response),Learning Experience,Learning Activities,Student Attitudes,College Students,Foreign Countries,Qualitative Research,Teaching Methods,Information Technology,Vocabulary Development,Instructional Effectiveness,Computer Software,Questionnaires

The popularity of smart phones has increased enormously in the last few years. Because of the increasing penetration of these devices and the above-average willingness of our students using new tools and devices in language courses, we decided to design a voluntary pilot project for mobile language learning for students who learn German as a second language (N = 70). In our project we decided to use &quot;busuu.com,&quot; because of its easy registration process, the clear design, the very active and helpful &quot;busuu&quot; community and primarily, because of the provided tasks and materials, which are available via PC and via mobile devices too. The voluntary pilot project started in March and ended in May 2013. Every week, the students had to finish a lesson of their own choice and they could give feedback and share their experience during the project in the learning management system of the school. In May, we asked the participants how they used their devices in language learning, their experiences with language learning with &quot;busuu,&quot; what they felt were ideal learning environments for mobile learning and the types of activities they felt that their mobile devices were suited for. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Automatic Selection of Suitable Sentences for Language Learning Exercises
Author: Pilán, Ildikó
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Second Language Learning,Sentences,Readability,Swedish,Natural Language Processing,Computer Assisted Instruction,Electronic Learning,Learning Modules,Reading Comprehension,Native Language,Difficulty Level

In our study we investigated second and foreign language (L2) sentence readability, an area little explored so far in the case of several languages, including Swedish. The outcome of our research consists of two methods for sentence selection from native language corpora based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) techniques. The two approaches have been made available online within Lärka, an Intelligent CALL (ICALL) platform offering activities for language learners and students of linguistics. Such an automatic selection of suitable sentences can be valuable for L2 teachers during the creation of new teaching materials, for L2 students who look for additional self-study exercises as well as for lexicographers in search of example sentences to illustrate the meaning of a vocabulary item. Members from all these potential user groups evaluated our methods and found the majority of the sentences selected suitable for L2 learning purposes. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Online Role-Plays: Combining Situational and Interactional Authenticity in Foreign Language Learning
Author: Correia Martins, Maria de Lurdes
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Role Playing,Second Language Learning,English Language Learners,Web 2.0 Technologies,Electronic Learning,Computer Mediated Communication,Higher Education,Communicative Competence (Languages),Action Research,English (Second Language),Cooperative Learning,Educational Benefits,Electronic Mail,Focus Groups,Outcomes of Education,Tourism,Foreign Countries

Role-plays have been almost ubiquitous in foreign language classes and their potential has been widely recognised. In the last decade, the dissemination of Web 2.0 has created a wide range of possibilities for this type of activity, including conducting online role-plays between institutions, the opportunity to combine synchronous and asynchronous communication tools and also articulate online with face-to-face interactions. Online role-plays are first and foremost a social process in which knowledge is emergent resulting from interactions between participants. It is also an activity that mirrors contextualised everyday situations and students are faced with new information, promoting research and reflection, thus enhancing autonomy. Within a dialogical and dialectical perspective of English language learning, the following research question was developed: how can online role-plays in English language learning in higher education be integrated in order to enhance the development of communicative competence? In order to answer the research question, an action research project was carried out, according to the model proposed by Stringer (2007), and an online role-play was implemented over six weeks in the English II course unit from the degree in Tourism at the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Listeners' Responses in Interaction through Videoconferencing for Presentation Practices
Author: Iino, Atsushi
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Foreign Countries,College Students,Second Language Learning,English (Second Language),Listening,Videoconferencing,Verbal Ability,Responses,Public Speaking,Interviews,Questionnaires,Repetition,Intercultural Communication

This study investigated the change of listeners' responses of Japanese learners of English over a semester of presentation training sessions. We were also concerned with the relationship between speaking ability and perceived use of listeners' responses. In this paper, the listeners' responses we focused on were: acknowledging signals, repetition of the teacher's utterances, and asking questions to the teacher. Therefore, the research questions were: (1) how did the learners' perceived use of listener's responses change over time?, and (2) what is the relationship between speaking ability and listeners' responses? The participants were 21 Japanese university students whose majors were in Economics. During the semester, the participants experienced five videoconferencing sessions in total. Each English teacher in charge of a group of three Japanese learners listened to three presentations during a 50-minute session. Speaking ability was assessed through an interview test following the format of STEP Eiken test for Japanese learners of English. To obtain the data of the listeners' responses, a questionnaire was provided after each session, asking how much they could actually put into practice from the three types of responses. The results indicated that as for RQ (1), three learners' responses changed to some extent over the sessions. Concerning RQ (2), there was only a significant relationship between speaking ability and repetition of the teacher's utterance. From these results it can be said that videoconferencing interaction, particularly after presentation, provided opportunities for the learners to increase output and interaction, which boosts their L2 performance development. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
A Constructionist Approach to Student Modelling: Tracing a Student's Constructions through an Agent-Based Tutoring Architecture
Author: Beuls, Katrien
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Grammar,Counseling Theories,Second Language Instruction,Second Language Learning,Intelligent Tutoring Systems,Learning Strategies,Modeling (Psychology),Spanish,Morphemes,Case Studies,Prediction,Progress Monitoring

Construction Grammar (CxG) is a well-established linguistic theory that takes the notion of a construction as the basic unit of language. Yet, because the potential of this theory for language teaching or SLA has largely remained ignored, this paper demonstrates the benefits of adopting the CxG approach for modelling a student's linguistic knowledge and skills in a language tutoring application. I propose a tutoring architecture for (adult) second language learning that relies on a student model that tracks a student's constructional knowledge. This model is embodied in a fully operational student agent, which has a construction inventory, a grammar engine (to process constructions) and learning strategies (to update constructions after learning). Through linguistic interactions between a language learner and the tutoring system, the student agent is enabled to model the behavior of the real student and tries to predict his input. The student construction inventory is aligned to the real student's input after every interaction. This innovative architecture, implemented in Fluid Construction Grammar, is demonstrated here for the use case of Spanish past tense expressions, which remains a complex task even for the most advanced learners of Spanish. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Use of Discussion Board and PaperShow in Translation Class
Author: Takewa, Mika
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Translation,Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Computer Simulation,Active Learning,Graduate Students,Computer Mediated Communication,Group Discussion,Student Centered Learning,Teaching Methods,Student Participation,Learning Processes,Computer Software,Hearing Impairments,Educational Technology,Japanese,English,Foreign Countries

This report presents how the learning technologies Discussion Board and PaperShow are incorporated into postgraduate translation modules by means of observing their impact on students' learning. Initially and mainly for administrative reasons as well as being encouraged to make use of the university's virtual learning environment (VLE), I set up discussion forums to collect students' translation work. It soon became clear that the forums had the potential to facilitate student-centred learning and increase students' responsibility toward learning. In this paper, the use of Discussion Board on the VLE, which forms the foundation of in-class discussion and student participation, is described. Then, students' learning is evaluated from an &quot;active learning&quot; aspect. It can be said that Discussion Board enhances students' active learning and promotes quality learning experiences for them. PaperShow, which is used in class to support a student who has a hearing disability, is also discussed. PaperShow is useful for all who wish to revise important points raised in class, which are saved and included in the presentations made available online. Both Discussion Board and PaperShow proved to be more pedagogically useful than initially anticipated. The paper concludes with suggestions for possible areas of language learning in which these pieces of technology could be applicable. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Discourse Markers in Italian as L2 in Face to Face vs. Computer Mediated Settings
Author: De Marco, Anna
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Italian,Second Language Learning,Advanced Students,Native Speakers,Computer Mediated Communication,Correlation,Pragmatics,Videoconferencing,Linguistic Competence,Interpersonal Communication,Discourse Analysis,Language Usage,College Students,Language Proficiency

This pilot study aims to highlight a) differences in pragmatic function and distribution of discourse markers (DMs) in computer mediated and face to face (FtF) settings and b) any correlation of DM uses and language competence. The data have been collected by video-recording and analysing three speakers of Italian L2 (language level competence: A2, B2) talking with an Italian native speaker face to face and through computer mediated video calls. A pragmatic functional approach has been applied for analysing data. Our investigation shows that the difference between face to face and computer mediated environments is worth noting only in less expert L2 speakers' discourse (i.e. A2 level). In fact, less advanced learners show a tendency to use more discourse markers with an interactional function (specifically addressee oriented) in face to face than in virtual environments. Conversely, there is no remarkable difference in the use of discourse markers by the two more expert speakers. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]
Speech Acts in a Virtual World: Design and Implementation
Author: Arvanitis, Panagiotis
Date: 2013-09-00
Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers
Subjects: Speech Acts,Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Teaching Methods,Communicative Competence (Languages),Guidelines,Correlation,Computer Simulation,Language Skills,French,Higher Education,Computer Assisted Instruction,Computer Mediated Communication,Vignettes,Foreign Countries,Native Speakers,Educational Technology

In the first half of the twentieth century, notions such as linguistic structures and students' linguistic capacity were the traditional elements of any language teaching. These notions are yielding their place to the functional use of language and how language is being shaped by the different communicative situations. This communicative approach of teaching a foreign language has led the redefinition of learning objectives and general principles of the teaching act. The emphasis is on students' communicative ability, therefore communication plays a key role in teaching Language-Civilisation. In the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR), we find the key notion of speech acts. The interest in this project is the relationship between traditional speech acts and simulated situations in Virtual Worlds. Furthermore, there is an interest in finding out if it is possible to develop learner's language skills by teaching and using speech acts in these environments. In the above context, in this paper we first illustrate current needs in teaching and learning second languages, then we discuss the design of a Virtual world and finally its implementation for teaching speech acts of French language in higher education. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]