Combining translation into the second language and second language learning : an integrated computational approach

This thesis explores the area where translation and language learning intersects. However, this intersection is not one in the traditional sense of second language teaching: where translation is used as a means for learning a foreign language. This thesis treats translating into the foreign language as a separate entity, one that is as important as learning the foreign language itself. Thus the discussion in this thesis is especially relevant to an academic institution which contemplates training foreign language learners who can perform translation into the foreign language at a professional level. The thesis concentrates on developing a pedagogical model which can achieve the goal of fostering linguistic competence and translation competence at the same time. It argues that constructing such a model under a computerised framework is a viable approach, since the task of translation nowadays relies heavily on all kinds o

Computer Assisted Language Learning. 13(2): 167-182 An ESL Writer ’ Collocational Aid

Collocation is one of the most difficult aspects in second language learning, but has been largely neglected by researchers and practitioners. A questionnaire survey shows the advanced Chinese learners ’ collocational ability in English to be significantly inferior to that of native speakers. Our research attempts to correct this problem by developing an on-line correcting program which is able to detect some collocational errors in the learner ’ English writing and offer examples of standard collocations from a large corpus for reference. The system is based on two kinds of corpora: a Learner Corpus which is used for the study of known collocational errors, and a Reference Corpus which is used to extract standard English collocations. The system also makes use of a Dictionary of Synonyms derived from WordNet to discover the potential collocational errors in learner ’ input, as well as a Paraphrase Database gathered from the learners themselves to help diagnose un-collocational learner phrases. Altogether, it is hoped that the result of this research not only produces a usable on-line collocational aid, but also demonstrates a simple and efficient way of using learner corpora and reference corpora to support CALL software design. 1

Corpus Linguistics Research Trends from 1997 to 2016: A Co-Citation Analysis

Corpus linguistics is one of the fastest growing areas of linguistics because of its interface with neighboring academic disciplines and the data-processing capability of a large amount of empirical linguistic data. This study reviews research trends from the last two decades within the corpus linguistics fields. Specifically, the study applied systematic citation analysis procedures to summarize and identify the salient research themes and publications from citation-reference data of peer-reviewed research articles published and indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) between 1997 and 2016. The co-citation analysis of 5,600 research articles and their 172,352 references indicated that, over the four time spans of five years, the corpus linguistics research articles have cited works ranging from general linguistics journal titles to specialized journal titles and individual books. In terms of the research themes of corpus linguistics, the topics of the linguistics research have rapidly changed over the time span. More recently, the development of web-based large monitor corpora and corpus analysis software has contributed significantly to the dynamic and productive interaction of research in the discipline. This may indicate the evolving and juvenile nature of corpus linguistics and its possibility of growing into a multi-disciplinary field. Although there are exceptions to all of the research patterns found in the co-citation analysis, the current study also discusses the most up-to-date research trends and the future directions of corpus linguistics