Eurocall 2009 Conference
9-12 September, 2009 | Gandia (Valencia, Spain)
Special Interes Group meetings
Five SIG meetings will take plave during the conference.
- Teacher Education SIG
- Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) SIG
- Virtual Worlds SIG
- CorpusCALL SIG
- Natural Language Processing SIG
Thursday, 10 th September 2009, 16:30 – 17:30
Room
A-30
In the wake of technological advancements CALL has undergone quite dramatic changes in pedagogical paradigms. Networked language-learning environments offering a variety of modes for communication and interaction have changed the face of the language classroom. These changes have had a profound and irreversible impact on language tutors and their perceived role(s) – in the classroom and beyond.
As a result teacher education is faced with new and ever-changing challenges that need to be defined and analysed. It has become a priority to understand the impact of CALL on teaching so as to be able to feed the reflection of pre-service and in-service teacher training. At our meeting in GandÃa the SIG will endeavour to
- establish areas of possible collaboration and research in the area of teacher education and CALL
- identify questions related to teacher training and CALL that should be explored at a European level (e.g. comparison of teacher training programmes across Europe)
- engage interest in and discuss organisation of a regional SIG workshop in 2010 (perhaps in collaboration with the CMC SIG) with the aim to define current and future research directions in teacher education and CALL/CMC.
Everybody is welcome. The contact persons for the Teacher Education SIG are: Mirjam Hauck (m.hauck @ open.ac.uk) and Nicolas Guichon (nicolas.guichon @ univ-lyon2.fr)
» Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) SIG
Thursday, 10 th September 2009, 17:30 – 18:30
Room A-30
The field of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has become a key area of research and development in CALL and it has established itself as one of the main themes of EUROCALL conferences over the past number of years. Since being founded two years ago, the CMC SIG has been very active. Two regional workshops were held in Padova , Italy (2008) and in León , Spain (2009) and publications are being planned based on the work presented at both of these events. The workshop meeting at GandÃa will involve establishing a venue for a regional workshop in 2010 and will also focus on forming teams for European project proposals. All interested members are welcome.
Website : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CMC_SIG/
The contact person for the CMC SIG meeting is: Robert O'Dowd (robert.odowd @ unileon.es)
Friday, 11 th September 2009, 16:30 – 17:30
Room A-30
Following discussions between Graham Davies (EUROCALL), Thom Thibeault (CALICO) and Randall Sadler (CALICO) it has been decided to create a joint CALICO/EUROCALL Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group (VW SIG) for teachers of modern foreign languages and English as a foreign language. CALICO has already set up a Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group, on which we can build:
http://colanmc.siu.edu/virtualworlds/
EUROCALL already has a headquarters building in Second Life, on the EduNation III island at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/EduNation%20III/9/29/22/
CALICO has now acquired the land immediately next door to the EUROCALL HQ and is in the process of building its HQ there. Thus the two HQs will form a significant joint environment in Second Life for teachers and learners of foreign languages, where meetings and classes can take place and where resources can be distributed.
We plan to hold our first joint SIG meeting face-to-face at the EUROCALL 2009 conference, Friday, 11 September 2009, 16.30-17.30. Technology permitting, we aim to invite people who cannot attend EUROCALL 2009 to meet us in the EUROCALL HQ in Second Life at the same time. Suggestions about the VW SIG's activities are welcomed.
The contact persons for the VW SIG are:
Graham Davies (EUROCALL): graham @ camsoft.force9.co.uk
Thom Thibeault (CALICO): ttbo @ siu.edu
Randall Sadler (CALICO): rsadler @ uiuc.edu
Saturday, 12 th September 2009, 10:00 – 11:00
Room A-19
The CorpusCALL SIG aims to bring together EUROCALL members interested in developing the use of corpora in research, developments and teaching.
Research on corpora and language learning has been present in EUROCALL from the very first conference in Hull in 1993, with Tim Johns and other prominent researchers in the area active in the association. The Corpus SIG began in 2003 with an introductory meeting in Limerick at the time of EUROCALL 2003.
The ReCALL Journal has also reflected and developed these initiatives. From the earliest issues, prominent researchers such as McEnery and Wilson (1997) disseminated information on developments in corpora and language learning. In 2007, ReCALL published a special issue devoted to the integration of corpora in language learning and teaching.
The SIG welcomes members who will contribute to the development of corpora in language learning in any way: research, pedagogic developments, corpora of various types (monolingual, bilingual, spoken, written, specialised, learner, multimodal). Future activities can include regional activities as well as conference papers, pre-conference workshops and research publications.
The contact person for the CorpusCALL SIG meeting is: Alex Boulton (Alex.Boulton @ univ-nancy2.fr)
» Natural Language Processing SIG
Saturday, 12th September 2009, 11:00 – 12:00
Room A-19
The EUROCALL SIG in Natural Language Processing focuses on those aspects of CALL that use techniques developed mainly in computational linguistics, with the aim of developing better, more intelligent CALL, or ICALL for short. The integration of insights from computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and research on second language acquisition is needed for CALL systems to be able to analyse language automatically and without having to predict all instances of input beforehand. This makes it possible to provide individualized feedback to learners working on exercises, to (semi-) automatically prepare or enhance texts for learners, and to automatically create and use detailed learner models.
At the SIG meeting this year, discussion points will include cooperation with our sister SIG in CALICO, and plans for EUROCALL 2010 and beyond. All EUROCALL members are welcome to attend the SIG meeting.
The contact person for the NLP SIG meeting is: Cornelia Tschichold (C.Tschichold @ swansea.ac.uk)