D8.6 Dissemination, training and exploitation results

Mauerhofer, C., Rajagopal, K., & Greller, W. (2011). D8.6 Dissemination, training and exploitation results. LTfLL-project.Report on sustainability, dissemination and exploitation of the LtfLL projectThe work on this publication has been sponsored by the LTfLL STREP that is funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. Contract 212578 [http://www.ltfll-project.org

ReaderBench goes Online: A Comprehension-Centered Framework for Educational Purposes

International audienceIn this paper we introduce the online version of our ReaderBench framework, which includes multi-lingual comprehension-centered web services designed to address a wide range of individual and collaborative learning scenarios, as follows. First, students can be engaged in reading a course material, then eliciting their understanding of it; the reading strategies component provides an in-depth perspective of comprehension processes. Second, students can write an essay or a summary; the automated essay grading component provides them access to more than 200 textual complexity indices covering lexical, syntax, semantics and discourse structure measurements. Third, students can start discussing in a chat or a forum; the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) component provides in- depth conversation analysis in terms of evaluating each member’s involvement in the CSCL environments. Eventually, the sentiment analysis, as well as the semantic models and topic mining components enable a clearer perspective in terms of learner’s points of view and of underlying interests

ReaderBench goes Online: A Comprehension-Centered Framework for Educational Purposes

International audienceIn this paper we introduce the online version of our ReaderBench framework, which includes multi-lingual comprehension-centered web services designed to address a wide range of individual and collaborative learning scenarios, as follows. First, students can be engaged in reading a course material, then eliciting their understanding of it; the reading strategies component provides an in-depth perspective of comprehension processes. Second, students can write an essay or a summary; the automated essay grading component provides them access to more than 200 textual complexity indices covering lexical, syntax, semantics and discourse structure measurements. Third, students can start discussing in a chat or a forum; the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) component provides in- depth conversation analysis in terms of evaluating each member’s involvement in the CSCL environments. Eventually, the sentiment analysis, as well as the semantic models and topic mining components enable a clearer perspective in terms of learner’s points of view and of underlying interests

The English language needs and priorities of young adults in the European Union: student and teacher perceptions

The rapidly changing communicative landscape presents challenges to ELT professionals and students. In the European Union (EU), as elsewhere, increased mobility, migration, and integration, combined with developments in online communication, have led to substantial changes in English language use and practices. Young-adult learners are inevitably most receptive to and arguably most affected by such changes, with potential implications for English language teaching. This paper reports on the project The English language needs and priorities of young adults in the EU: student and teacher perceptions, an investigation into the contemporary English language needs of 18–24 year olds in a context of increasing English language use, emergent forms of English, and increasing use of new technologies for communication. The project involved the collection of both quantitative survey data gathered through a Europe-wide questionnaire for teachers and students, and qualitative interview and focus-group data from three specific EU contexts: Germany (a founder member), Romania (a later acceding member) and Turkey (a candidate member). The body of this report draws mainly upon the qualitative data, using it to exemplify and add depth to the quantitative findings, which are presented in the appendices. The findings offer clear evidence that young-adult students and their teachers in the three contexts share generally similar attitudes towards English. They accept both different native English language varieties and non-native English as a lingua franca for communication; they recognise the need for English language proficiency for employment and study; and they emphasise the importance of English in online communication – perhaps the most notable use of English in young adults’ current non-academic and personal lives – while also noting evident differences between ‘classroom English’ and ‘online’ or social English. Consequently, young adults and their teachers identify a tension between learning English for real-life use, and teaching/learning English to pass a test, for further study or for future employment. Two possible resolutions to this tension were suggested by participants. In contexts in which students had fewer opportunities for communication in English outside the classroom, whether face-to-face or online, the preferred solution was to focus more on communication than form in class. However, in those contexts where young adults often communicate in English outside class (for example, online) and may be more familiar with emergent and non-standard aspects of the language, the best use of classroom time may be to provide more formal language instruction in areas where young-adult students are less competent than their teachers, to reduce attempts to reproduce contemporary, informal communication in materials and activities and instead to draw on students’ own knowledge of these aspects of English language use. In this way, the ELT classroom would become a two-way exchange in which students and teachers bring together complementary sources of English language knowledge

LANGUAGE OUTCOMES IN SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN ADOPTED FROM EASTERN EUROPEAN ORPHANAGES

Developmental studies by pediatricians and surveys of adoptive parents of children that have been adopted to the United States from foreign countries indicate that many of these children are experiencing substantial difficulties with the acquisition of their new language. Language difficulties may compromise the adopted child's abilities to understand, negotiate, and adjust to a new family and environment (Jenista, 1993). Reports range from 100% of the children having difficulties (Willig, 1995) to 34% (Groza,1995), with the majority of researchers reporting incidences in the 30-50% range (Johnson et al. 1996; Hough, 1996). These figures are in-line with research from countries such as Norway (Dalen, 2001a; Saetersdal & Dalen, 1987), Denmark (Rorbech, 1997) and Holland (Hoksbergen, 1997). To date, no studies directly assessing the language skills, long-term outcomes, or the types of language difficulties experienced by these children after experiencing an abrupt language switch have been completed. This study evaluated the language skills of a group of 44 school-aged, post-institutionalized Eastern European adoptees (EEA-PI) to determine the extent, and the types, of problems present in the areas of semantics, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and reading, and explored the factors of institutionalization that might predict language development. Results showed that as a group, EEA-PI children, in comparison to the normative data on the standardized and spontaneous speech measures, performed lower than age expectations on all of the measures, with the exception of measures of listening (receptive language). The disparity within the group's performance was notable. Though institutional factors of time in institution, age of adoption, and time in U.S. did not correlate with measures of receptive and expressive language, they were significant for reading and nonword repetition scores. This research furthers our professional knowledge regarding long-term language outcomes and the selection of appropriate diagnostic measures for these children and other children experiencing early neglect in our country

Translingual Practices and Reconstruction of Identities in Maghrebi Students in Galicia

In this article, we explore the emergence of a new translingual repertoire among young adolescents of Moroccan and Algerian origin in Galicia and the role it plays in reconstructing the transnational identity of young people within the Maghrebi diaspora. The data include a multimodal corpus with spoken and written interactions, collected as part of a classroom action research project, in which each student reconstructed their family and school language repertoire, as well as a WhatsApp group chat set up with the same young people. The results of our analysis reveal how the intercrossing of parental and adolescent agency plays a crucial role in dealing with the new multilingual translingual repertoire. The findings also indicate how this repertoire is deeply rooted in Moroccan Arabic as the family language and the incorporation of local languages, namely Spanish and Galician, and relies heavily on translingual multimodal practices, associated with transnational trajectories and the local schooling process of these young people

“Eastern Europe”, “Balkanism” and “European-ness” in the works of Gabriel Liiceanu and Slavenka Drakulić

The thesis proposes a critical reading of the discourse of “Europe” and “European-ness”. I argue eastern European writers have internalized the imagery reproduced by these discourses in which “Eastern Europe” is cast as an inferior Other. With a postcolonial critique in mind I propose a critical reading of the works of two contemporary east European writers and intellectuals, Romanian Gabriel Liiceanu and Croatian Slavenka Drakulić. Intellectuals in eastern Europe have had a curious mix of responses to the discourse of “Eastern Europe” from acceptance, resistance, adaptation, transformation to rejection of “Europe”, “Eastern Europe” and “Balkanism”. They have crafted distinctly-new sites of resistance and post-socialist subjectivities, modes of inhabiting and belonging to contested geographies that previous paradigms have failed to properly capture. I argue that Liiceanu and Drakulić’s writings reveal the contested and enduring relationship that east European intellectuals have had with the idea of “Europe”. Their accounts complicate the image of a neatly divided Europe, and challenge the idea of a coherent and stable East and West. Liiceanu and Drakulić participate as agents in negotiating the idea of “Europe”. These texts are spaces in which intellectuals and political elites imagine Europe and their place in the world, articulate an entirely distinct vocabulary of belonging and exclusion. Discussing their writing provides an opportunity to challenge the construction of the idea of “Europe”

From Bonehead to @realDonaldTrump : A Review of Studies on Online Usernames

In many online services, we are identified by self-chosen usernames, also known as nicknames or pseudonyms. Usernames have been studied quite extensively within several academic disciplines, yet few existing literature reviews or meta-analyses provide a comprehensive picture of the name category. This article addresses this gap by thoroughly analyzing 103 research articles with usernames as their primary focus. Despite the great variety of approaches taken to investigate usernames, three main types of studies can be identified: (1) qualitative analyses examining username semantics, the motivations for name choices, and how the names are linked to the identities of the users; (2) experiments testing the communicative functions of usernames; and (3) computational studies analyzing large corpora of usernames to acquire information about the users and their behavior. The current review investigates the terminology, objectives, methods, data, results, and impact of these three study types in detail. Finally, research gaps and potential directions for future works are discussed. As this investigation will demonstrate, more research is needed to examine naming practices in social media, username-related online discrimination and harassment, and username usage in conversations.Peer reviewe