Proceedings of the COLING 2004 Post Conference Workshop on Multilingual Linguistic Ressources MLR2004

International audienceIn an ever expanding information society, most information systems are now facing the "multilingual challenge". Multilingual language resources play an essential role in modern information systems. Such resources need to provide information on many languages in a common framework and should be (re)usable in many applications (for automatic or human use). Many centres have been involved in national and international projects dedicated to building har- monised language resources and creating expertise in the maintenance and further development of standardised linguistic data. These resources include dictionaries, lexicons, thesauri, word-nets, and annotated corpora developed along the lines of best practices and recommendations. However, since the late 90's, most efforts in scaling up these resources remain the responsibility of the local authorities, usually, with very low funding (if any) and few opportunities for academic recognition of this work. Hence, it is not surprising that many of the resource holders and developers have become reluctant to give free access to the latest versions of their resources, and their actual status is therefore currently rather unclear. The goal of this workshop is to study problems involved in the development, management and reuse of lexical resources in a multilingual context. Moreover, this workshop provides a forum for reviewing the present state of language resources. The workshop is meant to bring to the international community qualitative and quantitative information about the most recent developments in the area of linguistic resources and their use in applications. The impressive number of submissions (38) to this workshop and in other workshops and conferences dedicated to similar topics proves that dealing with multilingual linguistic ressources has become a very hot problem in the Natural Language Processing community. To cope with the number of submissions, the workshop organising committee decided to accept 16 papers from 10 countries based on the reviewers' recommendations. Six of these papers will be presented in a poster session. The papers constitute a representative selection of current trends in research on Multilingual Language Resources, such as multilingual aligned corpora, bilingual and multilingual lexicons, and multilingual speech resources. The papers also represent a characteristic set of approaches to the development of multilingual language resources, such as automatic extraction of information from corpora, combination and re-use of existing resources, online collaborative development of multilingual lexicons, and use of the Web as a multilingual language resource. The development and management of multilingual language resources is a long-term activity in which collaboration among researchers is essential. We hope that this workshop will gather many researchers involved in such developments and will give them the opportunity to discuss, exchange, compare their approaches and strengthen their collaborations in the field. The organisation of this workshop would have been impossible without the hard work of the program committee who managed to provide accurate reviews on time, on a rather tight schedule. We would also like to thank the Coling 2004 organising committee that made this workshop possible. Finally, we hope that this workshop will yield fruitful results for all participants

Applied Language Typology:Applying typological insights in professional practice

In this paper we introduce and outline a new research area, Applied Language Typology (ALT). ALT builds on fundamental typological findings in morphology, syntax and semantics. ALT examines the attested and potential practical consequences of these contrasts for different professional contexts of communication, such as translation, the law and second language learning and teaching. We propose three general organising principles that underlie ALT, illustrating how these principles enable us to identify exact points of language contrasts that result in significant practical difficulty, and we suggest future directions in ALT research for the benefit of academics and language practitioners

Translanguaging in World Language Higher Education

Increased global migration and a myriad of other social and political factors has made today’s universities more diverse than ever. As a result, teachers in higher education regularly find multilingual learners from a variety of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in their classrooms and must consider this diversity in their teaching. One of the ways that teaching can better serve today’s multilingual and multicultural student population is through translanguaging. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the intentional and unintentional use of translanguaging by multilingual language learners and world language instructors in higher education. Additionally, this qualitative case study aims to explore the perceptions of both teachers and students towards translanguaging, using transformative interviewing to prompt participants to reflect on their own language learning ideologies and the application of translanguaging pedagogies to their teaching and learning. Findings point to numerous ways in which both teachers and students in world language university classrooms use translanguaging to make meaning during their language teaching and learning experiences. In addition, class observations and transformative interviews showed how participants gained reflective self-awareness and began to reconsider more/different ways in which translanguaging could enrich their teaching and learning. The significance of the study lies in a greater understanding of what translanguaging could look like in world language higher education settings, particularly regarding the way in which more inclusive language pedagogies such as translanguaging can allow teachers to recognize and utilize the full linguistic repertoire of their multilingual students while at the same time navigating tensions related to target language use and time constraints. Advisor: Theresa Catalan

FOUND IN SPACE: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN ENGLISH MAP TASK PERFORMANCE

Understanding the relationship between first and second language use in the area of spatial language has broader implications for our understanding of language learning and consequences for the construction of bilingual assessment instruments for second language learners. This study shows that observing and interpreting the task of map drawing and the related behavior of explaining maps can be a way to explore the linguistic emergence of the conceptualization of spatial language (at a moment of simultaneous and synchronized incarnation). Altogether, 50 dyads (pairs) participated in the New Mexico Map Task Project; the project included native speakers of English, Russian, Japanese, Navajo, and Spanish. In an examination of how the grammatical constructions used for spatial descriptions in a speaker\u27s first language carry over into the usage of this speaker\u27s second language, new observations include the intra-subject comparison of dyadic map task performances. Each non-native English-speaking dyad participates in two map task performances: one in their native language and one in their second language, English. Evidence was generated through morphosyntactic, phonological, and pragmatic analyses performed on the sound files of the transcripts. This evidence confirms the connection between the participants\u27 productions of tokens of selected landmark names both in their native language and their second language. Combining the results of linguistic analyses with educational assessment frameworks predicts the development of an instrument for use with immigrant and refugee students from areas of conflict

Trends in qualitative research in language teaching since 2000

This paper reviews developments in qualitative research in language teaching since the year 2000, focusing on its contributions to the field and identifying issues that emerge. Its aims are to identify those areas in language teaching where qualitative research has the greatest potential and indicate what needs to be done to further improve the quality of its contribution. The paper begins by highlighting current trends and debates in the general area of qualitative research and offering a working definition of the term. At its core is an overview of developments in the new millennium based on the analysis of papers published in 15 journals related to the field of language teaching and a more detailed description, drawn from a range of sources, of exemplary contributions during that period. Issues of quality are also considered, using illustrative cases to point to aspects of published research that deserve closer attention in future work, and key publications on qualitative research practice are reviewed

The role of linguistics in language teaching: the case of two, less widely taught languages - Finnish and Hungarian

This paper discusses the role of various linguistic sub-disciplines in teaching Finnish and Hungarian. We explain the status of Finnish and Hungarian at University College London and in the UK, and present the principle difficulties in learning and teaching these two languages. We also introduce our courses and student profiles. With the support of examples from our own teaching, we argue that a linguistically oriented approach is well suited for less widely used and less taught languages as it enables students to draw comparative and historical parallels, question terminologies and raise their sociolinguistic and pragmatic awareness. A linguistic approach also provides students with skills for further language learning

The cognitive hypothesis, task design, and adult task-based language learning

The Cognition Hypothesis of task-based language learning proposes that pedagogic tasks be sequenced for learners largely on the basis of increases in their cognitive complexity so as to increasingly approximate the demands of real-world target tasks. In this paper I describe a framework for operationalizing this proposal that distinguishes between dimensions of tasks that can be manipulated to develop access to an existing L2 knowledge base (such as allowing planning time) and dimensions that can be manipulated to promote greater syntacticization and grammaticization of current interlanguage (such as increasing reasoning demands). Three predictions of the Cognition Hypothesis are that increasing the cognitive demands of tasks along the latter developmental dimensions will (a) push learners to greater accuracy and complexity of L2 production in order to meet the consequently greater functional/communicative demands they place on the learner and (b) promote interaction and heightened attention to and memory for input, so increasing incorporation of forms made salient in the input; and that (c) individual differences in cognitive and affective factors contributing to perceptions of task difficulty will progressively differentiate performance and learning as tasks increase in complexity. I describe results of studies in a componential framework for task design which have examined these issues, providing some support for the predictions made

Dialogues with the written world(s): Plurilingual TEAL pedagogy and content learning of Japanese young learners in multilingual landscapes

This ethnographic study aims to describe the literacy development of young Japanese children learning English at an international school in Tokyo (Japan). The research participants, who were recruited from Kindergarten to 4th grade (5 to 10 years old), also participated in summer programs in British Columbia (Canada) for periods ranging from 2 weeks to 2 months. The school adopts a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach (Coyle, Hood & Marsh, 2010), within a Hundred Languages of Children of Reggio Emilia educational approach (Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998) and Miyazakian dialogic pedagogy (Miyazaki, 2013). The school also adopts a plurilingual approach to teaching (Lau & Van Viegen, 2020) and used linguistic landscapes as a pedagogical tool (Dagenais, Moore, Sabatier, Lamarre & Armand, 2009) to promote children’s English and content learning through a series of critical inquiries. Methodological tools include classroom ethnography (Heath & Heath, 1983; Frank, Dixon & Green, 1999; Egan-Robertson & Bloome, 1998), Action Research (Wallace, 1998), as well as visual (Pink, 2009) and walking ethnography (Ingold & Vergunst, 2008) to explore the linguistic landscapes with the participants. The analyses are anchored within the theoretical concepts interconnecting plurilingualism (Marshall & Moore, 2018), multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, New London Group, 1996) and language learning in an asset-oriented perspective on education that views language competence as holistic and plurilingual and intercultural awareness conducive to critical thinking (Coste, Moore & Zarate, 2009). The purpose of the thesis is to build upon the current discussion on plurilingual pedagogies, curriculum design and language instruction for K-12 children, in the context of English teaching and learning in elementary schools in Japan. It has wider implications for teacher education in English as an Additional Language (TEAL) situations

A survey of studies in systemic functional language description and typology

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The Politics of Teaching English in South Korean Schools: Language Ideologies and Language Policy

Around the world, English proficiency is perceived to bring about class mobility and better employment prospects. South Korea is no exception to this belief where English test scores and speaking ability often serve as gate-keeping criteria for university admission, white-collar employment, and promotion. Within the past 30 years, the proliferation of private English-language institutes, the record numbers of Koreans studying in English-speaking countries, and language policies regarding English-language study enacted by the Ministry of Education (MOE) collectively point to the increasing hegemony of English in the lives of Koreans. In this dissertation, I examine an aggressive effort launched by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to improve English instruction called the Teaching English in English (TEE) policy. In 2001, the MOE enacted the TEE policy to improve the English proficiency of Korean students mainly through English instruction, with the implicit acknowledgement that over 40 years of teaching English through Korean had not produced competent English users. To make sense of this policy\u27s overt and covert agendas, I spent five months conducting ethnographic participant observations and interviews at a government-sponsored, residential training center where a cohort of 40 teachers participated in an intensive English course designed to improve language instruction. After the completion of the course, I continued observing and interviewing three focal English teachers at elementary schools in Seoul to understand how they interpreted and implemented the TEE policy on a daily basis. Approaching this research from a language ideological framework, I pay particular attention to how language ideologies interact with the current policy to account for the motivations behind the policy and the language choices and pedagogical practices by practitioners. Moreover, I focus on metalinguistic and written policy discourse to uncover how these ideologies contribute to the prominent role that English plays in Korean education. Analysis of the findings reveals that even though teachers supported the policy, their practices did not always lead to English-medium instruction due to contextual factors and teachers\u27 beliefs. Moreover, teachers reproduced dominant language ideologies that prevented viewing themselves as legitimate English teachers. The findings of this dissertation illustrate the importance of paying attention to the social and language practices of the local community when designing a well-informed language policy that can effectively transform language education