Using the CEFR: Principles of Good Practice @Cambridge_Uni

 

www_cambridgeenglish_org_images_126011-using-cefr-principles-of-good-practice_pdf

 

The CEFR is a comprehensive document, and as such, individual users can find it difficult to read and interpret. The Council of Europe has created a number of guidance documents to help in this interpretation. Helping you find your way around the CEFR and its supporting documents is one of our key aims in creating Using the CEFR: Principles of Good Practice. If you want a brief overview of the CEFR read Section 1 of this booklet. If you are a teacher or administrator working in an educational setting and would like guidance on using and interacting with the CEFR then reading Section 2 will be useful to you. If you want to find out about how Cambridge ESOL works with the CEFR then read Section 3. Each section is preceded by a page that signposts key further reading.

Here’s the CEFR online pubication.

CFP Migration Discourses across Languages, Societies and Discourse Communities

 

Migration Discourses across Languages, Societies and Discourse Communities

part of CADAAD 2016 at the University of Catania, 5-7 September 2016.

While in the last two decades public and political discourses about migration have been studied within a range of countries and languages, only a small amount of research has been concerned with comparing and contrasting migration discourses across languages, societies and discourse communities. The panel invites such comparative and contrastive approaches to migration discourses with the aim of carving out their potential to reveal common threads of migration discourses as well as those that are determined by specific historical, political and social contexts. In so doing, we may be able to track the similarities and shared frames of migration discourses across contexts.

We invite comparative studies of migration discourses based on a range of text types, languages and discourse communities including, but not limited to the following:
– Newspaper discourse across languages
– Social media discourse across languages/discourse communities
– Political discourse across parties, languages or discourse communities
– Inter- or intralingual comparison of the discourses of different stakeholder communities

We welcome papers coming from a variety of theoretical and methodological angles, including but not limited to:
– Corpus assisted discourse approaches
– Discourse historical approaches
– Cognitive approaches
– Argumentation
– Media Communication Studies
– Multimodal Discourse Analysis
– Discourse Psychology
– Pragmatics
– Sociolinguistics

Please send an abstract of 300 words (excluding references) attached to an email to Charlotte Taylor (charlotte.taylor@sussex.ac.uk) or Melani Schröter (m.schroeter@reading.ac.uk). The abstract should be anonymised, but please include in your email your name, institutional affiliation and preferred email address for correspondence with the panel organisers.
Submissions need to be received by 30 November.

Please see http://www.cadaad2016.unict.it/ for information about the conference. For more information about the planned panel, please contact Charlotte Taylor (charlotte.taylor@sussex.ac.uk) or Melani Schröter (m.schroeter@reading.ac.uk).

John Wells: Phonetics from blog to book talk at Cambridge

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John Wells, UCL
Thursday 15 October 2015
GR06-7, English Faculty, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site).

This talk is part of the Cambridge University Linguistic Society series.

This was the first time I had the chance to listen to Prof. Wells in person. Really fascinating talk from one of the pioneering figures in modern linguistics after WWII. He spoke about different pronunciations of common and not so common words, the influence of classic Greek on pronunciation, English varieties and about himself. He wrote a blog between 2006 and 2013. This is part of the last entry there (then):

 

…In fact over recent months I have increasingly been feeling that in this blog I have by now already said everything of interest that I want to say. And if I have nothing new to say, then the best plan is to stop talking.

So I am now discontinuing my blog.

Thank you, all those readers who have stayed with me over the seven years that I have been writing it. If you still need a regular fix, there are archives stretching back to 2006 for you to rummage through.

Goodbye, au revoir, tschüss, hwyl, cześć, tot ziens, до свидания, さようなら, ĝis!

ˌðæts \ɪt

 

Luckily, Prof. Wells is feeling better and is back with a new book: Sounds interesting, CUP:

It was an honour to meet somebody like Prof. Wells in person. It may sound overused and cliché but there’s no scholars like him these days. On a personal note, I was touched by his many references to his childhood memories.

John Wells is Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at UCL and author of Accents of English and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

5th Valencian Workshop on CALL: Telecollaboration & social media

 

5th Valencian Workshop on Computer-Assisted Language Learning: TELECOLLABORATION & SOCIAL MEDIA

  
V Jornadas Valencianas en torno al aprendizaje de lenguas asistido por ordenador: Telecolaboración y redes sociales

Noticia en la UPV 

13-14 noviembre 2015

Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería del Diseño, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia

Precio inscripción: 40 euros (35 euros PDI, PAS y estudiantes UPV)
Política de devolución: hasta el 01/11/2015 (75%)

 

Flyer here

Programa
Viernes, 13 de noviembre de 2015
9.00 – 9.30
Recogida de documentación. Vestíbulo de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería del Diseño (edificio 7B), UPV

9.30 – 10.00

Apertura de las Jornadas. Salón de Actos de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería del Diseño
10.00 – 10.30

Exposición novedades editoriales y café
Vestíbulo de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería del Diseño

10.30 – 13.30

Presentaciones teóricas. Salón de Actos de la ETSID:

Joan Tomàs Pujolà. Universitat de Barcelona – Christine Appel. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Melinda Dooly. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Caoimhín Ó Dónaill. Universidad de Ulster, Irlanda del Norte
13.30 – 14-00

Presentación a cargo de editorial. Salón de Actos ETSID.

14.00 – 16.00

Descanso para comer

16.00 – 17.00

Taller práctico impartido por Joan Tomàs Pujolà y Christine Appel

17.10 – 18.10

Taller práctico impartido por Melinda Dooly

18.20 – 19.20

Taller práctico impartido por Caoimhín Ó Dónaill

Sábado, 14 de noviembre de 2015
10.00 – 12.00
Presentaciones teóricas. Salón de Actos ETSID:

Giorgos Ypsilandis. Universidad Aristotélica. Salónica, Grecia
Camino Bueno Alastuey, Universidad Pública de Navarra
12.00 – 12.30

Exposición novedades editoriales y café
Vestíbulo de la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería del Diseño

12.30 – 13.30
Presentación teórica. Salón de Actos ETSID:

Pascual Pérez Paredes. Universidad de Murcia
13.30 – 14.00 Presentación a cargo de editorial. Salón de Actos ETSID.
14.00 – 16.00

Descanso para comer

16.00 – 17.00

Taller práctico impartido por Giorgos Ypsilandis

17.10 – 18.10

Taller práctico impartido por Camino Bueno Alastuey

18.20 – 19.20

Taller práctico impartido por Pascual Pérez Paredes

19.30

Conclusiones. Puesta en común y clausura de las Jornadas. Salón de Actos ETSID.

 

Conferenciantes invitados

Camino Bueno Alastuey, Universidad Pública de Navarra

Telecollaboration and the development of competences

The rapid advancement of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has allowed for new ways of teaching and learning. As those technologies have become an essential part of our daily life, they have brought about new possibilities for education and the need to integrate them purposefully into the curriculum. One of the possibilities for integration is telecollaboration. Based on sociocultural approaches to learning which claim that people learn through social interaction, many studies have analyzed the effect of telecollaboration endeavours. This presentation will analyze some of those studies to present the various possibilities of telecollaboration to develop different kinds of competences. First, I will show the results of some telecollaboration projects based on the development of language and cultural competences. Secondly, I will focus on the possibilities of telecollaboration for teacher training and for the development of techno-pedagogical competences. Finally, I will describe our current research project (REDTELCOM), whose aim is to analyze the development of less-assessed key competences (digital competence, learning to learn, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, social competence, and cultural awareness and expression) through telecollaboration, and to create instruments to evaluate their development.

Workshop: In this workshop, we will explore aspects which have been shown to contribute to the successful implementation and development of telecollaboration projects. Considering the results of studies that have signal the advantages and disadvantages of such projects, this workshop will show what needs to be considered, the steps to be followed and how to mitigate some of the most common obstacles telecollaboration projects present for the teachers and students involved.

Caoimhín Ó Dónaill. Universidad de Ulster, Irlanda del Norte

What is my role? Exploring the impact of Social Media/Telecollaboration on teacher-learner-learner relationships.

In spite of the widespread participation in social media networks by a broad cross section of society, and the dominance of electronic methods of communication, language educators still face the traditional duty of guiding their students through a defined programme of study and measuring success against set criteria. Introducing computer-mediated communication (CMC) to the language classroom, real or virtual, breaks down barriers and opens up a wealth of possibilities, however, this can conversely bring new challenges e.g. participation in social media networks often serves to increase the quantity of communication without regard to quality, and for younger age groups issues relating to pastoral care become more acute. This talk will examine examples of current best practice in using CMC in language education and consider the changing role of the language teacher in web enriched study programmes.

Workshop: Planning and assessing computer-mediated communication activities

During this session participants will engage in a series of activities designed to evaluate a range of CMC tools and use templates to plan and review practical activities relating to their own teaching and using the resources available to them.

Melinda Dooly. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Telecollaborative Language Learning: What, why and how?

This talk is divided into two parts. The first part of the talk will look at ways in which Telecollaborative Language Learning (TcLL) has been defined, designed and implemented within educational contexts in the past twenty years. Taking a brief look at research results, the pros and cons of TcLL, as well as underlying assumptions of this approach will be interrogated. The second part (the workshop) will deal with more practical aspects of how to design, implement and assess effective TcLL exchanges, with a particular emphasis placed on TcLL projects.

Giorgos Ypsilandis. Universidad Aristotélica. Tesalónica, Grecia

The notion of feedback in computer-assisted language learning

Feedback in language learning has been an issue for research since the Skinnerian behaviorist days. While different types of corrective feedback have been tested over the years, supportive feedback (provided automatically by software) is an issue that has only recently begun to attract a small number of scientists and findings resulting from experimental research are not solid yet. This keynote discusses the different notions of feedback and concentrates on feedback provided by language learning software. The methodology for data collection is presented. Effectiveness to short and long term memory is explored while findings from past experimental research is summarized. Future research on the topic is presented in relation to learner’s cognitive and learning style.

Workshop: Decoding and improving feedback provision strategies in CALL software

This workshop follows the relevant keynote and further presents an opportunity for participants to use acquired knowledge in practice and: a) decode existing feedback strategies in ready-made CALL software, b) improve existed feedback strategies and further, c) design feedback provision strategies for new software. Participants will prepare and present their ideas to the group and contribute to the creation of a list of different feedback strategies they will take with them at the end of the workshop.

Pascual Pérez Paredes, Universidad de Murcia

Normalising corpus use in the language classroom

Much has been said about the use of language corpora in the language classroom during the past 25 years. This includes both regular contributions to well-established conferences in the area such as TALC or Corpus Linguistics, as well as a wealth of edited volumes. This plethora of studies, mostly non-empirical, seems to suggest, in very general terms, that data driven learning (DDL) is beneficial for language learning. However, the use of corpora in the language classroom is far from being mainstream, and even farther from normalisation. This keynote will explore the factors that impede a wider spread and use of language corpora in FLT. In particular, this paper will discuss the teaching logistics, the learners’ conception and skills, the syllabus and software integration, as well as the training of the educators and learners that are involved in the use of corpora in the language classroom. A follow-up session will offer the opportunity to examine these factors across different applications and will offer the analytical tools to draw a picture of the role(s) of corpora in CALL.

Joan Tomàs Pujolà. Universidad de Barcelona
Christine Appel. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

From gaming to gamification in language learning

Games have always been present in language teaching, from traditional methods to communicative approaches. The playful features of games help us develop students’ interaction, cooperation, and proactive involvement in doing language tasks. They are the catalyst to improve students’ motivation and to engage them with the content that is being provided. In recent years a new approach to enhance students’ motivation called gamification has started to make its way as an effective pedagogical approach. Now we are experimenting with game elements, game mechanics and game thinking to make the language teaching and learning experience game-like. In the workshop we will explore ways of how to gamify activities in the language class.

CFP Corpora and Discourse International Conference abstract deadline 31/1/16 #corpuslinguistics

 

corpora list

Corpora and Discourse International Conference: Call for papers
bisol
Siena University
Pontignano Conference Centre
June 30-July 2, 2016
(June 30 Conference workshop; July 1-2 Main Conference)

Main Conference

Plenary speakers:
Michael Hoey (Liverpool), Gerlinde Mautner (Vienna, WU), Michael Stubbs (Trier)

Corpus-based and corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) investigate the employment of corpus techniques to shed light on aspects of language used for communicative purposes or, put another way, to analyse how language is used to (attempt to) influence the beliefs and behaviour of other people.

‘CADS’ does not refer to a particular school or approach, but is an umbrella term of convenience. Indeed, the types of research it refers to are extremely eclectic and pragmatic in the techniques they adopt given that they are goal-driven, that is, the aims of the research dictate the methodology.

We welcome proposals on the corpus-assisted analysis of, for instance:

Ø discourse organisation

Ø political, institutional and media texts (including social media)

Ø social science and social policy issues

Ø cultural and cross-cultural topics

Ø discourse implications in translation studies

Ø discourse effects in literary texts

Ø notably thorny issues for corpus research like irony, metaphor and (im) politenesss
and, indeed, of any study of discourse where the three corpus linguistics virtues of Collecting, Counting and Collating are deemed to have enabled, assisted, enhanced and even perhaps complicated the data analysis. Studies of how things are done across different discourse types or of how they have developed over recent periods of time are also highly relevant.

We also welcome papers which include considerations on the general methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to CADS. These might include:

Ø what are the overall objectives of CADS research(ers); has its focus altered over the years and is it likely to alter in the future?

Ø what counts as good (in the senses of both ‘useful’ and ‘honest’) practices and are there any practices best avoided (perhaps, over-claiming, over-generalising and over-dramatising)?

Ø how do we minimise the corroboration impulse?

Ø is there a justification for deliberate ideological suasion in discourse analysis and the teaching thereof, or does this compromise the attempt at scientific data description and teacher impartiality?

Ø what counts as evidence? How much do we need to support the claims we make and evaluate those made by others?

Ø what counts as an ‘explanation’; how do we evaluate co-existing or competing explanations?

Ø corpus analysis is only one aspect of CADS. What tend to be other useful sources of information, and how are they best integrated into the research project?

Ø can CADS usefully integrate practices like, say, fieldwork, as typically employed in similar fields such as corpus-based sociolinguistics (Friginal & Hardy 2014)?

Ø what can CADS contribute to describing, proposing and ameliorating real-world social policies?

Ø what are the repercussions of CADS on theories of language (which may include theories of discourse structure and function, of sociolinguistics, of stylistics and so on)?
We invite speakers to share their own experiences of using corpus techniques to shed light on discourse and to debate these fundamental questions.

Main Conference talks will be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions.

Abstracts

Please send abstracts for the Main Conference to: cadssiena@gmail.com

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words including references and five keywords.
Please supply the abstract by e-mail attachment without author names with a separate document with your name and affiliation. Address e-mail subject as “CADS conference”.

Abstracts will be sent to the scientific committee for anonymous refereeing.

Workshop: Festival of Methods (June 30th)

Workshop conveners: Charlotte Taylor, Tony McEnery, Vaclav Brezina.

We have introduced a new regular feature into the Corpus & Discourse conference series in which we explore the effects of our choice of tools, methods and approaches. Ahead of each conference in the series, a task will be set which researchers are invite to tackle and then time will be set aside at the conference itself for presentation of findings and extended discussion on the kinds of analyses which were developed. We are calling this new kind of panel event the Festival of Methods because we hope it will be an engaging exploration and celebration of the range of methods we have at our disposal. This kind of activity follows on from inter-researcher and objectivity/subjectivity studies such as Marchi & Taylor (2009), Baker (2011) and Baker & Levon (2015), but also draws on the traditions of the shared task in computational linguistics where conference participants are given the chance to all work on the same data with the same research question.

For further information, please see the separate call or email FestivalofMethods@gmail.com

Important dates

Deadline for Main Conference abstract submission: January 31st 2016.

Notification of acceptance / non acceptance of submission: by March 1st 2016.

Preliminary programme published and registration opens: March 21st 2016.

The number of conference places is limited to 50. After the Conference speakers have been accepted, the admission of further places will be first come, first served.

Conference prices

Costs include: The Conference fee (including coffee breaks) and full board and lodging at the Pontignano Centre from Thursday evening meal to Sunday morning breakfast, inclusive.

Single room: 360€

Double room as single: 385€

Double room per person: 340€

The Centre also has a number of apartments which are available on request.

We practice a €40 discount for students who do not have any research funding support.

Scientific committee

Alison Duguid (Siena, Coordinator)

Costas Gabrielatos (Edge Hill)
Michael Hoey (Liverpool)
Sylvia Jaworska (Reading)
Jane Johnson (Bologna)
Anna Marchi (Bologna, Forlì)
John Morley (Siena)
Amanda Clare Murphy (Milano, UniCatt)
Alan Partington (Bologna)
Amanda Potts (Cardiff)
Charlotte Taylor (Sussex)

List of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals

 

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From Scholarly Open Access: http://scholarlyoa.com/

This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access standalone journals. For journals published by a publisher, please look for the publisher on the list of publishers, here. This list is only for single, standalone journals.

We recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards. The criteria for determining predatory journals are here:

https://scholarlyoa.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/criteria-2015.pdf

 

We hope that tenure and promotion committees can also decide for themselves how importantly or not to rate articles published in these journals in the context of their own institutional standards and/or geo-cultural locus. We emphasize that journals change in their business and editorial practices over time. This list is kept up-to-date to the best extent possible but may not reflect sudden, unreported, or unknown enhancements

Access the current listing here.