TAALES 2.2 is out : automatic analysis of lexical sophistication, Windows and Mac

From the TAALES website:

Kyle, K. & Crossley, S. A. (2015). Automatically assessing lexical sophistication: Indices, tools, findings, and application. TESOL Quarterly 49(4), pp. 757-786. doi: 10.1002/tesq.194

TAALES is a tool that measures over 400 classic and new indices of lexical sophistication, and includes indices related to a wide range of sub-constructs. TAALES indices have been used to inform models of second language (L2) speaking proficiency, first language (L1) and L2 writing proficiency, spoken and written lexical proficiency, genre differences, and satirical language.

Starting with version 2.2, TAALES provides comprehensive index diagnostics, including text-level coverage output (i.e., the percent of words/bigrams/trigrams in a text covered by the index) AND individual word/bigram/trigram index coverage information.

TAALES takes plain text files as input (it will process all plain text files in a particular folder) and produces a comma separated values (.csv) spreadsheet that is easily read by any spreadsheet software.

 

You can find all the info here. Windows and Mac versions available for free.

4th Learner Corpus Research Conference, Bolzano, Italy, 5‐7 October 2017

4th Learner Corpus Research Conference
Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, 5‐7 October 2017

http://lcr2017.eurac.edu

Abstracts should be submitted through EasyChair by Sunday 15 January 2017.

Notification of the outcome of the review process will be sent by 31 March 2017.

Call for Papers

Following the successful conferences in Louvain‐la‐Neuve (Belgium) in 2011, Bergen (Norway) in 2013 and Nijmegen (the Netherlands) in 2015, the 4th Learner Corpus Research Conference will be hosted by the Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism at EURAC Research, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy. The conference, organized under the aegis of the Learner Corpus Association, aims to be a showcase for the latest developments in the field and will feature full paper presentations, work in progress reports, poster presentations, software demos and a book exhibition.

The theme of LCR 2017 is “Widening the Scope of Learner Corpus Research”.

Conference Venue: European Academy Bozen/Bolzano – EURAC Research

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Philip Durrant (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
Stefan Th. Gries (University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A.)
Stefania Spina (Università per Stranieri Perugia, Italy)
The keynote speakers will adress the theme of LCR 2017 in their respective lectures on L1 writing  development and Learner Corpus Research, quantitative methods in Learner Corpus Research, and Learner Corpus Research and Italian as L2. We welcome papers that address all aspects of Learner  Corpus Research, in particular the following ones:

* Corpora as pedagogical resources
* Corpus‐based transfer studies
* Data mining and other explorative approaches to learner corpora
* English as a Lingua Franca
* Error detection and correction of learner language
* Extracting language features from learner corpora
* Innovative annotations in learner corpora
* Language for academic/specific purposes
* Learner varieties
* Learner corpora for less commonly taught languages
* Learner Corpus Research and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)
* Learner Corpus Research and Natural Language Processing
* Links between Learner Corpus Research and other research methodologies (e.g. experimental methods)
* Search engines for learner corpora
* Statistical methods in learner corpus studies
* Task and learner variables

There will be four different categories of presentation:

* Full paper (20 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion)
* Work in Progress (WiP) report (10 minutes + 5 minutes for discussion)
* Corpus/software demonstration
* Poster
* The Work in Progress reports and posters are intended to present research still at a preliminary stage and on which researchers would like to get feedback.

The language of the conference is English.

Abstracts
Your abstract should be between 600 and 700 words (excluding a list of references). Abstracts should  provide the following:
* clearly articulated research question(s) and its/their relevance;
* the most important details about research approach, data and methods;
* the main results and their interpretation.

Abstracts should be submitted through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lcr2017) by Sunday 15 January 2017. Please follow instructions provided on the conference website (http://lcr2017.eurac.edu).
Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the scientific committee. Notification of the outcome of  the review process will be sent by 31 March 2017.

The LCR 2017 organising committee
Andrea Abel (EURAC Research)
María Belén Díez‐Bedmar (Universidad de Jaén)
Daniela Gasser (EURAC Research)
Aivars Glaznieks (EURAC Research)
Verena Lyding (EURAC Research)
Lionel Nicolas (EURAC Research)

The LCR 2017 scientific committee
Andrea Abel (EURAC Research)
Katherine Ackerley (Università degil Studi di Padova)
Annelie Ädel (Dalarna University)
Nicolas Ballier (Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7)
María Belén Díez‐Bedmar (Universidad de Jaén)
Marcus Callies (Universität Bremen)
Erik Castello (Università degil Studi di Padova)
Francesca Coccetta (Università Ca’Foscari Venezia)
Pieter de Haan (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
Hilde Hasselgård (Universitet i Oslo)
Sandra Deshors (New Mexico State University)
Ana Diaz‐Negrillo (Universidad de Granada)
Michael Flor (ETS)
John Flowerdew (City University of Hong Kong)
Lynne Flowerdew (independent researcher)
Fanny Forsberg Lundell (Stockholm University)
Gaëtanelle Gilquin (University of Louvain)
Sandra Götz (Justus Liebig Universität Gießen)
Solveig Granath (Karlstad University)
Sylviane Granger (Universtié catholique de Louvain)
Nicholas Groom (University of Birmingham)
Jirka Hana (Charles University Prague)
Shin’ichiro Ishikawa (Kobe University)
Jarmo Harri Jantunen (University of Jyväskylä)
Scott Jarvis (Ohio University)
Marie Källkvist (Lund University Sweden)
Agnieszka Lenko‐Szymanska (University of Warsaw)
Anke Lüdeling (Humboldt‐Universität Berlin)
Carla Marello (Università degil Studi Torino)
Fanny Meunier (Universtié catholique de Louvain)
Detmar Meurers (Universität Tübingen)
Florence Myles (University of Essex)
Susan Nacey (Hedmark University College)
Lionel Nicolas (EURAC Research)
Michael O’Donnell (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
Signe Oksefjell Ebeling (Universitetet i Oslo)
Magali Paquot (Universtié catholique de Louvain/FNRS)
Pascual Pérez‐Paredes (University of Cambridge)
Tom Rankin (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Paul Rayson (UCREL, Lancaster University)
Ute Römer (University of Michigan)
Anna Siyanova‐Chanturia (Victoria University of Wellington)
Jennifer Thewissen (Universiteit Antwerpen)
Yukio Tono (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Nina Vyatkina (University of Kansas)
Heike Zinsmeister (Universität Hamburg)

For inquiries, contact Andrea Abel: Andrea . Abel @ eurac . edu

The value of languages, Prof. Wendy Ayres-Bennett

img_20161024_170301

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Education crisis? Yes. Revisit 1970.

Ours is an age of crisis […] The crisis in the classroom – the public school classroom, the college classroom, the national classroom created by the mass media and by the operation of the American political system- is both a reflection of and a contributor to the larger crisis of American society. It cannot be solved unless all who have a stake in the remaking of American education-teachers and students, school board members and taxpayers, public officials and civic leaders, newspaper and magazine editors and readers, tv directors and viewers, parents and children- are alerted to what is wrong and what needs to be done.

Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in the classroom. 1970.

img_20161013_173618

 

Corpus Pragmatics: new journal

 

Corpus pragmatics (Springer) is s platform for research and discussion in the linguistic discipline at the intersection of corpus linguistics and pragmatics.

A forum for research and discussion on the new linguistic discipline at the intersection of corpus linguistics and pragmatics.

Aims to enlarge and implement current pragmatic theories that have yet to benefit from empirical corpus support.

Offers original research papers, short research notes and occasional themed issues

This journal offers a forum for research and discussion in the new linguistic discipline that stands at the intersection of corpus linguistics and pragmatics. The contents include original research papers, short research notes, and occasional thematic issues.

Editor-in-Chief: Jesús Romero-Trillo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Email: jesus.romero@uam.es