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Contentid: 19022
Content Type: 1
Title: Enormous Collection of Corpus Links
Body:

David Lee has assembled an extensive collection of links for linguists and language teachers who work with corpora at http://www.uow.edu.au/~dlee/CBLLinks.htm


Source: Bookmarks for Corpus-based Linguists
Inputdate: 2015-02-16 08:54:25
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Contentid: 19023
Content Type: 3
Title: CMC and Interpersonal Communication
Body:

Shannon Sauro is an associate professor in the department of Culture, Languages and Media at Malmö University in Sweden. Her research interests include task-based language teaching in computer-mediated contexts and the intersection of online media fandoms and language learning.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is person-to-person communication that can take place over a range of different digital tools and modalities. These include asynchronous digital communication tools such as email and discussion boards as well as synchronous tools such as text-chat and voice- and video-conferencing. However, CMC also includes interpersonal communication that takes place in digital spaces that are of more recent interest to language educators and researchers such as gaming environments and social media. When setting up interpersonal interaction or language exchanges using a particular CMC tool, it is crucial for practitioners to keep in mind the ways in which communication technologies can transform how we interact, the language we use, and the relationships such computer-mediated interaction can foster (Kern, 2014).  What follows are four points for practitioners to consider when implementing CMC-based activities:

  1. Different CMC tools lend themselves to certain types of interaction, tasks, and topics. This distinction is particularly apparent when looking at social media. Twitter's 140 character limit is an obvious example of how technology can constrain the amount and type of language used. However, providing learners with multiple modes of communication (e.g. bimodal voice-text chat, video-conferencing with a discussion board) may allow learners with different interactional styles greater options for communication and interaction (e.g. Sauro, 2009).
  2. An important issue to consider when using social media to support interaction is students' prior familiarity and the kind of language and social relationships they have experienced in this digital context. This prior history can become an issue, for example, when asking students to use a social media platform for work or educational purposes that they may prefer to use primarily for social and non-school related interaction (e.g., Manca & Ranieri, 2013).
  3. When selecting a CMC tool for interaction, consider also what other tasks will be competing with learners' attention. For instance, will learners be negotiating cross-cultural misunderstandings in a telecollaboration and therefore benefit from a CMC tool that supports either real-time or asynchronous written interaction? Or will learners be engaged in game play that requires the use of one or both hands, potentially making voice-chat a better tool for interaction than text-chat?
  4. CMC tools are a staple for distance language teaching in which learners can access a variety of CMC tools and modes concurrently (e.g. text-chat, voice-chat, shared blackboard, etc.) during a real-time remote class. Understanding that students are likely to multi-task (e.g. Suzuki, 2013) with the different CMC modes and online and offline resources (or distractions) can guide teachers in the structuring of class time, selection of tools, or use of whole group or individual instruction.

References

Kern, R. (2014). Technology as Pharmakon: The promise and perils of the Internet for foreign language education. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 340-357.

Manca, S., & Ranieri, M. (2013). Is it a tool suitable for learning? A critical review of the literature on Facebook as a technology-enhanced learning environment. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 29(6), 487-504.

Sauro, S. (2009). Strategic use of modality during synchronous CMC. CALICO Journal, 27(1), 101-117.

Suzuzki, S. (2013). Private turns: A student's off-screen behaviors during synchronous online Japanese instruction. CALICO Journal, 30(3), 371-392.


Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-02-17 12:59:59
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Contentid: 19024
Content Type: 4
Title: Assessing Interpersonal Communication Using Conversations
Body:

Daniel Trego is a Spanish Instructor and the Coordinator of Technology-Enhanced Instruction in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University where he is involved in the development and implementation of online and hybrid curriculum. His interests include second language acquisition and the creation and use of multimedia in the classroom. Betsy Lavolette is Director of the Language Resource Center at Gettysburg College. Her research interests are in computer-assisted language learning and language pedagogy. Angelika Kraemer is Executive Associate Director of the Center for Language Teaching Advancement at Michigan State University. Her research interests include computer-assisted language learning, program development, and community engagement and service-learning.

Introduction: In a large class, it can be logistically difficult to do formative assessment of students’ interpersonal communications skills. Conversations is a tool that allows you to assess all students simultaneously during class or collect students’ responses outside of class time. Because this tool allows students to practice before submitting their responses, it can help to lower test anxiety as well as give students more opportunities to use the language.

The activity that we describe below is a mid-stakes formative assessment, but Conversations can also be used for preparing for oral exams, collecting introductory information from students, and placing students. The activity is designed for Spanish but can be transferred to other languages.

Purpose: Mid-stakes formative oral assessment

Target function: Students’ ability to tell a salesperson what they are looking for and ask a salesperson basic questions such as if something comes in another size, what the price of something is, and if there is a sale or discount.

Target audience: End of first semester college-level Spanish (Novice-mid)

Format: Individual

Time: 40 minutes to prepare students; 5 minutes for students to record their oral responses

Materials: Conversations (free CLEAR account required for instructor only), access to computer with webcam & headphones for each student. Computers must have Flash installed.

Directions:

Teacher preparation:

  1. Create a Conversation. Detailed instructions for creating one are available in text and video form on the CLEAR website. (See an example of a Conversation using the target function at http://clear.msu.edu/mashups/19426.)

  2. Embed the Conversation in your learning management system. Alternatively, you can embed the Conversation in a Mashup (another CLEAR tool) and link to it. (Instructions for how to do this are in the links in Step 1.)

Student preparation:

  1. Before the next class, students assess themselves for the target function as follows.

2: Student can perform this function with ease.
1: Student can perform this function, but not easily.
0: Student cannot perform this function.

During class:

  1. Prepare the students to perform the target function. See example presentation (translated into English for the sake of this example).

  2. Students use Conversations to interact with a salesperson to buy a sweater for their professor. They should be instructed to get a medium and pay no more than $15.

After class:

  1. Listen to students’ responses in Conversations and grade them as follows.

2: Student can perform this function with ease.
1: Student can perform this function, but not easily.
0: Student cannot perform this function.

Thank you to Le Anne Spino and to the Spanish Basic Language Program at Michigan State University for sharing their materials and likeness.


Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-02-17 15:31:26
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Contentid: 19025
Content Type: 3
Title: "But My Language Doesn't Have a Corpus": Building and Using Your Own
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by Lindsay Marean, InterCom Editor

One of my favorite languages is Paka’anil, an indigenous California language spoken and taught by fewer than a dozen Tübatulabal people in the area of Lake Isabella. There isn’t a large online corpus like the COCA for Paka’anil, and there are no published curricula like there are for major languages like Spanish and German. Among the available materials are a grammar written in 1935 by a young linguist named Charles Voegelin, and a collection of texts by the same researcher. The Tübatulabal community wants to speak Paka’anil the way their ancestors did, and we are all concerned that basing our learning on the grammar alone may lead us to speak in a way that is grammatically correct, but unlike the way first-language Paka’anil speakers really spoke.  Corpus-driven instruction (CDI) is a promising tool for making more use of the text collection so that we can learn from the actual patterns of Paka’anil as it was spoken in 1935.

I started by going through CALPER’s tutorial.  This tutorial uses WordSmith to do the analyses, but since I use a Mac, I ended up using a different application, the UAM Corpus Tool.

Following the instructions in the tutorial, I created a plain text file with all of the stories in Voegelin’s text collection. I wasn’t sure exactly what questions to ask, so I started by generating a list of the most common words.  Most of the results weren’t very surprising: different forms of the word that means “then” or “and then;” “came” and “went;” and “coyote” (an important figure in Tübatulabal stories). However, the 15th most frequent word jumped out at me: ogon occurred 44 times; Voegelin translated it as an “empty word” or as a “particle with vague modal meaning.” Modern Paka’anil speakers rarely use this word; after all, how does one incorporate an “empty word” into one’s speech? However, its high frequency in these texts tells us that we can’t ignore this word any more; we need to figure out how it is used.

My next step was to do a concordance search to see what occurred before and after the word.  In my small corpus, there are seven instances of a form of wün “be” followed by ogon followed by pinü “the same.”  In other words, I found a common expression that I hadn’t known existed:  wün ogon pinü “it is the same (some event happening).” I created an activity for the Pakanapul language team to work on together to practice using this newly-discovered expression in the appropriate context.

Of course, this single discovery only begins to explain all of the uses of ogon, to say nothing of everything else that we can learn about Paka’anil using a corpus. I learned a few lessons along the way:

•    Set aside some distraction-free time to be curious and explore the corpus.
•    Read about how others are using corpora in language instruction to get some ideas of what to look for (we describe several more resources in this InterCom issue).
•    Seek out professional development opportunities in CDI to get better at asking good questions and turning discoveries into good learning activities.

I hope that you, too, are inspired to try CDI in your own teaching and learning.


Source: CASLS Topic of the Week
Inputdate: 2015-02-19 12:25:08
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Contentid: 19026
Content Type: 5
Title: New Games 2 Teach Website Launches This Spring
Body:

CASLS is proud to announce that a new version of the Games 2 Teach website is going to be launched in the spring of 2015. The updated website offers a more dynamic and engaging experience for users to take full advantage of the resources on Games 2 Teach. The new site still offers the same resources, such as reviews of trending vernacular digital games for how appropriate they are for L2 teaching and learning, but certain features have been updated in order to provide a more seamless user experience. For example, the service to request any of the publications available on Games 2 Teach has been updated to give users access to the publications even faster than before.

Games 2 Teach is codirected by Julie Sykes and Jonathon Reinhardt, and is funded in part by CERCLL, the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy. Over the course of the next four years, this project will provide classroom resources for L2 learning activities, academic-level working papers and white papers, a manual for L2 teachers and activities, and summer workshops on L2 pedagogy, all centered on using vernacular digital games in second language acquisition.


Source: CASLS Spotlight
Inputdate: 2015-02-19 13:27:04
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Contentid: 19027
Content Type: 4
Title: Exploring Spoken L1 Speech Usage with Lextutor.ca
Body:

By Renée Marshall, CASLS Curriculum Consultant

This activity provides a way to use a corpus with a guiding question or hypothesis in mind. In French the word "donc" is used often in L1 speech but not often in L2 speech. This activity has students listening to an interview and paying attention to when and how the speaker uses "donc." After brainstorming and discussing some of the different usages of "donc" in French speech, students use lextutor.ca to find other similar examples to what they found in the interview. To adapt this to another language, pick a word that is commonly used in spoken speech by L1 speakers but not by L2 speakers. You can use one of the corpora discussed in our February 2, February 9, and February 16 Topic of the Week articles. Otherwise, you can search for a corpus in your target language using Google or a similar search engine. If you cannot find one for your language you can make your own corpus like our editor, Lindsay Marean, describes in this week's Topic of the Week. While the activity here uses a French example and French corpus, the handout is in English so that it can be easily adapted for use in other languages.

Objectives:

  • Students will be able to identify and hypothesize L1 usage of the word "donc" in spoken speech.
  • Students will be able to use a corpus to identify similar examples of L1 usage of the word "donc" in spoken speech.

Resources:

How do Francophone speakers use the word "donc" in conversation? handout

Teacher Resource sheet

Procedure:

  1. Let students know that today they are going to be active language learners and create hypotheses of how language is used based on examples from L1 speech in an interview and from a French language corpus. If you have not talked about or used language corpora in your class yet, you may want to briefly discuss what a corpus is and why one might use it.
  2. Pass out the How do Francophone speakers use the word "donc" in conversation? to all students. Have them read directions for #1 (or go over as a whole class).
  3. Play the interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEFiWwqG06c) for students three times. You may, on the third listen, want to pause and replay a few of the places where Romain Duris or the interviewer uses "donc." (see Teacher Resource handout for the time stamps of when "donc" is used in the video) You may also want to transcribe some of the sentences used in the interview that include "donc" so that students have the visual, written form in addition to the spoken.
  4. Move to #2 on the handout and have students work with a partner or group to examine the way "donc" was used in the interview. Their goal is to come up with different ways "donc" is used. If they are having trouble with this task, you can model one usage as an example with them. For instance, in the interview Romain Duris uses "donc" combined with "euh..." a few times. In this case, what does "donc" mean here? What is its function? It's used as a filler word, just like "euh..." in French or "um..." and "so..." in English. One hypothesis then of "donc" usage is that French speakers use "donc" as a filler or pause word.
  5. Move to #3 on the handout. You may want to model how to navigate the website and go through the steps as a whole class before having them do it themselves. You can also assign #3 as homework and then complete the rest of the lesson in the next class. In Step #3 students are using a corpus of French language to find examples of L1 usage of "donc" in spoken speech. The goal is for them to find 3 examples of usage of "donc" that coincide with ONE of their hypotheses from #2.
  6. After students collect their three examples, have them discuss their findings with a partner. Then as a class, using student hypotheses, their examples, and examples from the interview, highlight some common usages of "donc." Refer to the Teacher Resource handout for a few examples of "donc" usage. (Note that different sources like websites or books may group together the various usages of "donc" in different ways.)
  7. Encourage students to try out using "donc" more often in their conversations.

Note: Often spoken speech and written speech are different; certain rules may apply for spoken usage while different rules may apply for written usage. The http://lextutor.ca/conc/fr/ website also includes an option for searching for "donc" in written speech if you would like to examine that in a future lesson.


Source: CASLS Activity of the Week
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Contentid: 19028
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: English for Academic Purposes
Body:

From http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415716345/

English for Academic Purposes
Edited by Helen Basturkmen
Published by Routledge

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) focuses on the types of English learners encounter and use in academic or study situations, usually in higher education contexts, and on the teaching and learning of academic English. It also focuses on the types of English and forms of communication used by academics in research settings.

This new 4-volume collection from Routledge will highlight key research, thinking and developments in pedagogy and document the concepts and debates that have impacted on EAP over the last three and a half decades. The selection of articles will enable readers to follow the developments and to understand how contemporary perspectives and research interests have emerged. The volumes will include key material that has been influential and represents the diversity of research interests and thinking in the area. Fully indexed, and with a new introduction to each volume by the editor, this collection will be a valuable research resource.

To see the contents or order the book, go to http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415716345/


Source: Routledge
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Contentid: 19029
Content Type: 1
Title: Book: Korpuslinguistik
Body:

From https://www.isdistribution.com/BookDetail.aspx?aId=54515

Korpuslinguistik
By Carmen Scherer
Published by ISD, Distributor of Scholarly Books

A corpus is a collection of authentic linguistic data. Thus, there are corpora of newspaper language, historical corpora or corpora of children's language. The linguistics of a corpus concerns itself with the construction and analysis of these corpora. Corpus-linguistic knowledge is indispensable because the analysis of a corpus represents the most important empirical methods of linguistics. In this work, the essential aspects of corpus linguistics are explained in detail. Integrated exercises make it possible for the reader to implement the contents in a practical way. The goal of this work is that students learn to establish their own corpora and to use existing ones. This book is a resource for a practice-based study of Germanic linguistics.

For more information or to order the book go to https://www.isdistribution.com/BookDetail.aspx?aId=54515


Source: ISD, Distributor of Scholarly Books
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Contentid: 19030
Content Type: 1
Title: Call for Papers: Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2015
Body:

From http://publish.illinois.edu/hisplingsymposium/2015/02/

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will host the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium from September 24 – 27, 2015. The Hispanic Linguistics Symposium is an annual conference with a focus on theoretical and applied linguistics in Spanish and Portuguese.

Call for Papers:

Abstracts for paper presentations or posters are invited on any area of Hispanic linguistics, and within any theoretical or quantitative framework.

Submission Guidelines:

- Papers and posters may be delivered in English, Portuguese, or Spanish.
- Authors may submit up to two abstracts, one individual and one joint.
- Abstracts should be submitted in .pdf format and should not exceed one page (1-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman font), with a second page reserved for examples, tables, and references.
- Abstracts must clearly present a specific thesis statement and include a description of the topic, the approach, and conclusions. To preserve anonymity during the review process, authors should not include their names or otherwise reveal their identity anywhere in the abstract.
- Abstracts must be submitted through EasyAbstracts (EasyAbs): http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/HLS2015
- Please specify the title of the paper, area of research, author names, academic affiliations, and email addresses in the form within the abstract submission system.
- Please also specify whether you wish your submission to be considered for presentation as a paper, a poster, or for both categories.
- Abstracts can be submitted through EasyAbs from February 3, 2015 to May 1, 2015.
- Notifications of acceptance/rejection will be sent in mid-July.

For more information visit http://publish.illinois.edu/hisplingsymposium/2015/02/ or http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-758.html


Source: LINGUIST List
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Contentid: 19031
Content Type: 1
Title: Call for Papers: Second Language Acquisition in the Domestic Immersion Context
Body:

From http://www.mla.org/convention

Second Language Acquisition in the Domestic Immersion Context
07-Jan-2016 - 10-Jan-2016
Austin, Texas, USA

A special session is being proposed at the 2016 Modern Language Association convention and the organizers are currently accepting papers that examine and provide data on adult L2 learners in domestic immersion contexts from an Applied Linguistics perspective.

Please submit a 250-word abstract by 15 March 2015 to Christina Isabelli (cisabell@iwu.edu).

See the call for proposals at http://www.mla.org/cfp_detail_7755


Source: MLA
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