Design of a Learner Corpus for Listening and Speaking Performance

A learner corpus is a useful resource for developing automatic assessment techniques for implementation in a computer-assisted language learning system. However, presently, learner corpora are only helpful in terms of evaluating the accuracy of learner output (speaking and writing). Therefore, the present study proposes a learner corpus annotated with evaluation results regarding the accuracy and fluency of performance in speaking (output) and listening (input).

ALANZ handbook 2018

Co-edited Handbook for participants at December ALANZ Symposiu

ALANZ 2018

1st December 2018 Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) Hamilton We are pleased to announce that the Call for Papers for the ALANZ SYMPOSIUM 2018 is now open. We invite proposals for paper presentations, interactive sessions and posters. The landscape of English language teaching is constantly changing and as teachers contemplate new cohorts of learners, they face this question: Is business as usual enough? In today’s settings there are new technologies to incorporate into learning and teaching, different teaching spaces becoming available, a need to balance fostering learner autonomy with the pastoral care of students, as well as ensuring that our teaching is relevant to the world our students face. We would like to adopt a collegial approach to this question and so invite abstracts from members and non-members of ALANZ and in particular from new and emerging researchers. Presentation types: * Oral Presentations: These will be allocated 20 minutes and 5 minutes for questions (25 minutes total) usually supported with visual aids. * Interactive sessions: These could be workshops or informal discussions around points of interest in Applied Linguistics (45 minutes) and could be supported by visual aids or activities. * Posters: Often some research projects can be best presented in a visual manner in the form of a poster. Abstracts (250 words max.) can be submitted to one of two committee members: * Anthea Fester email: [email protected] or * Celine Kearney email: [email protected] Deadline for abstract submission: 7th September 2018 Notification of acceptance: 28th September 201

ALANZ handbook

Co-edited Handbook for participants at December ALANZ Symposiu

ALANZ handbook

Co-edited Handbook for participants at December ALANZ Symposiu

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

Expectations eclipsed in foreign language education: learners and educators on an ongoing journey / edited by Hülya Görür-Atabaş, Sharon Turner.

Between June 2-4, 2011 Sabancı University School of Languages welcomed colleagues from 21 different countries to a collaborative exploration of the challenging and inspiring journey of learners and educators in the field of language education.\ud \ud The conference provided an opportunity for all stakeholders to share their views on language education. Colleagues met with world-renowned experts and authors in the fields of education and psychology, faculty and administrators from various universities and institutions, teachers from secondary educational backgrounds and higher education, as well as learners whose voices are often not directly shared but usually reported.\ud \ud The conference name, Eclipsing Expectations, was inspired by two natural phenomena, a solar eclipse directly before the conference, and a lunar eclipse, immediately after. Learners and educators were hereby invited to join a journey to observe, learn and exchange ideas in orde

Diachronic and/or synchronic variation? The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in L2 French.

A majority of the early research in Second Language Acquisition focused on diachronic variation in the learners’ interlanguage (IL), that is, differences in the IL linked to a supposed increase in knowledge between two points in time (cf. Tarone 1988). The last decade has seen an increase in studies combining a diachronic perspective with a synchronic one, that is, where variation in production is seen as the consequence of individual differences among learners (gender, extraversion, learning strategies, attitudes, motivation, sociobiographical variables linked to the language learning experience and the use of the target language (TL)). In this perspective, non-native-like patterns are not automatically assumed to be the result of incomplete knowledge, but other possible causes are taken into consideration such as temporary inaccessibility of information in stressful situations or even a conscious decision by the L2 user to deviate from the TL norm

State of the art review : language testing and assessment (part two).

In Part 1 of this two-part review article (Alderson & Banerjee, 2001), we first addressed issues of washback, ethics, politics and standards. After a discussion of trends in testing on a national level and in testing for specific purposes, we surveyed developments in computer-based testing and then finally examined self-assessment, alternative assessment and the assessment of young learners. In this second part, we begin by discussing recent theories of construct validity and the theories of language use that help define the constructs that we wish to measure through language tests. The main sections of the second part concentrate on summarising recent research into the constructs themselves, in turn addressing reading, listening, grammatical and lexical abilities, speaking and writing. Finally we discuss a number of outstanding issues in the field