The value of languages, Prof. Wendy Ayres-Bennett

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A SLEG seminar, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Prof. Wendy Ayres-Bennett, U. Cambridge

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Challenges:

staff recruitment

transition to Secondary

inconsitent marking (A levels)

lack of confidence in the new A levels

decline of Modern Languages in HE (HEFCE data)

post-BREXIT UK?

2009 Worton report for HEFCE (Link here)

Objectives of the Multilinguialism Cambridge-led research project:

how languages can address key issues of our time

multidisciplinary perspectives (6 areas: from literature to applied linguistics and cognition)

British Academy Born Global (Link here)

Key findings here.

britac_ac_uk_sites_default_files_2__20sme_20language_20survey_20summary_pdf

britac_ac_uk_sites_default_files_2_9_20sme_20language_20survey_20summary_pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

#CFP Applied Natural Language Processing May 18 – 20, 2015, FL, US

Special Track at FLAIRS-28, Hollywood, Florida USA

Organizers:
·         Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University (fkeshtkar@semo.edu)
·         Vasile Rus, University of Memphis, vrus@memphis.edu

Full Title: Applied Natural Language Processing

Date:                           May 18 – 20, 2015
Call Deadline: November 17, 2015
Location:                     Hollywood, Florida, USA
Web Site:                    http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/fkeshtkar/anlpflairs-2015/
Field(s):                       Computational Linguistics, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science
Email:                          Fazel Keshtkar (fkeshtkar@semo.edu)
                                  Vasile Rus (vrus@memphis.edu)
                     

Applied Natural Language Processing

Special Track at
The 28th International FLAIRS Conference
In cooperation with the American Association for Artificial Intelligence
Hollywood, Florida, USA
May 18 – 20, 2015
Paper submission deadline: November 17, 2014.
Notifications: January 19, 2015.
Camera ready version due: February 23, 2015.

All accepted papers will be published in FLAIRS proceedings by the AAAI.

Call for Papers

What is ANLP?
The track on Applied Natural Language Processing is a forum for researchers working in natural language processing (NLP)/computational linguistics(CL) and related areas. The rapid pace of development of online materials, most of them in textual form or text combined with other media (visual, audio), has led to a revived interest for tools capable to understand, organize and mine those materials. Novel human-computer interfaces, for instance talking heads, can benefit from language understanding and generation techniques with big impact on user satisfaction. Moreover, language can facilitate human-computer interaction for the handicapped (no typing needed) and elderly leading to an ever increasing user base for computer systems.

What is the GOAL of the track?
The goal of the ANLP track is to inform researchers as to current project and studies that identify, investigate, and (begin to) resolve issues that relate to human/computer language interaction.

Who might be interested?
Papers and contributions on traditional basic and applied language processing issues are welcome as well as novel challenges to the NLP/CL community: bioNLP, spam filtering, security, multilingual processing, learning environments, multimodal communication, etc. We also encourage papers in information retrieval, speech processing and machine learning that present novel approaches that can benefit from or have an impact on NLP/CL.

What kind of studies will be of interest?
We invite highly original papers that describe work in, but not limited to, the following areas:
1. NL-based representations and knowledge systems
2. Lexical Semantics
3. Syntax
4. Co-reference Resolution
5. Word Sense Disambiguation
6. Text Cohesion and Coherence
7. Dialogue Management Systems
8. Language Generation
9. Language Models
10. Human Computer Interfaces – in particular multimodal human-computer communication
and language as the only acceptable human-computer communication channel for
handicapped and elderly
11. NL in Learning Environments
12. Machine Learning applied to NL problems
13. Multilingual Processing
14. Standardization, Language Resources, Corpora Building and Annotation Languages
15. Semantic Web, Ontologies, Reasoning
16. Semantic Similarity Metrics
17. Applications: Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, Summarization, Intelligent
Tutoring, Question Answering, Information Extraction and others
18. Other related topics

Note: We invite original papers (i.e. work not previously submitted, in submission, or to be submitted to another conference during the reviewing process).

Submission Guidelines
Interested authors should format their papers according to AAAI formatting guidelines. The papers should be original work (i.e., not submitted, in submission, or submitted to another conference while in review). Papers should not exceed 6 pages (4 pages for a poster) and are due by November 17, 2014. For FLAIRS-28, the 2015 conference, the reviewing is a double blind process. Fake author names and affiliations must be used on submitted papers to provide double-blind reviewing. Papers must be submitted as PDF through the EasyChair conference system, which can be accessed through the main conference web site (http://www.flairs-28.info/). Note: do not use a fake name for your EasyChair login – your EasyChair account information is hidden from reviewers. Authors should indicate the [your track name] special track for submissions. The proceedings of FLAIRS will be published by the AAAI. Authors of accepted papers will be required to sign a form transferring copyright of their contribution to AAAI. FLAIRS requires that there be at least one full author registration per paper.

Please, check the website http://www.flairs-28.info/ for further information.

Conference Proceedings
Papers will be refereed and all accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings, which will be published by AAAI Press.

Organizing Committee
Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University (fkeshtkar@semo.edu)
Vasile Rus, University of Memphis, vrus@memphis.edu

Current Program Committee
Sivaji Bandyopadhyay, Jadavpur University, India
Lee Becker, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Cosmin Adrian Bejan, University of Southern California, USA
Eric Bell, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
Chutima Boonthum, Hampton University, USA
Justin Brunelle, Old Dominion University, USA
Nicoletta Calzolari, Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale, Italy
Andrea Corradini, University of Southern Denmark, DK
Asif Ekbal, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, India
Stefano Faralli, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy
Anna Feldman, Montclair State University, USA
Katherine M Forbes Riley, University of Pittsburg, USA
Christian Hempelmann, RiverGlass Inc. and Purdue University, USA
Verena Henrich, University of Tubingen, Germany
Diana Inkpen, University of Ottawa, Canada
Pamela Jordan, University of Pittsburg, USA
Christel Kemke, University of Manitoboa, Canada
Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University, USA
Travis Lamkin, University of Memphis, USA
Mihai Lintean, University of Memphis, USA
Xiaofei Lu, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Mehdi Manshadi, University of Rochester, USA
Phil McCarthy, University of Memphis, USA
Manish Mehta, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Cristina Nicolae, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Nobal Niraula, University of Memphis, USA
Constantin Orasan, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Shiyan Ou, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Gilles Richard, Paul Sabatier University, France
Vasile Rus University of Memphis, USA
Hansen A. Schwartz, University of Central Florida, USA
Svetlana Stoyanchev, The Open University, UK
Rene Venegas, Pontificia University, Chile
Nina Wacholder, Rutgers University, USA
Michael Wiegand, Saarland University, Germany
Alistair Willis, The Open University, UK
Soon Ae Chun, City University of New York, USA
Fatiha Sadat, UQAM, Canada

Further Information
Questions regarding the Applied Natural Language Processing Special Track should be addressed to the track co-chairs:
Fazel Keshtkar, Southeast Missouri State University, fkeshtkar@semo.edu
Vasile Rus, University of Memphis, vrus@memphis.edu

Questions regarding Special Tracks should be addressed to Chair Zdravko Markov at MarkovZ@mail.ccsu.edu
Conference Chair:
 Chutima Boonthum-Denecke, Hampton University, USA (chutima.boonthum@gmail.com)
Program Co-Chairs:
William (Bill) Eberle, Tennessee Technological University, USA
 Ingrid Russell, University of Hartford, USA (irussell@hartford.edu

Special Tracks Coordinator:
Zdravko Markov, Central Connecticut State University, USA (markovz@ccsu.edu)

Invited Speakers
To be announced

Conference Web Sites
Paper submission site: follow the link for submissions at http://www.flairs-28.info/
FLAIRS-28 conference web page: http://www.flairs-28.info/
Florida AI Research Society (FLAIRS): http://www.flairs.com

……..
Fazel Keshtkar, PhD., Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Southeast Missouri State University
Voice: 573-651-2208
Fax: 573-651-2791
email: fkeshtkar@semo.edu
Web: http://cstl-csm.semo.edu/fkeshtkar/index.html

#FLlearnenglish Free MOOC Exploring English: language and culture

This course is for people who are learning English and who are interested in finding out more about British culture and improving their English language skills.

The course will use short videos to present a different topic each week, including English as a global language, the environment, entrepreneurship and literature. Filmed in Great Britain, these videos will help you to develop your listening skills as you watch authentic examples of people speaking English. Our experienced tutor will examine some of the language used in the videos and will draw your attention to useful points that will help you improve your spoken and written English.

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