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Review
of 2005
The
MOGUL Project
MOGUL is a major
new proposal for exploring language
acquisition, maintenance and attrition
in a crossdisciplinary framework developed
at Heriot-Watt and in Taiwan by Mike
Sharwood Smith and John Truscott, respectively.
2005 has seen a rapid growth of international
interest in this approach folowing
publicatations and various presentations
at home and abroad in 2004. Apart from
standard and plenary conference presentations
and publications exploring various issues
within a MOGUL perspective, this year
there have been three invitations specifically
to talk about the framework: in Amsterdam
(language attrition), in Utrecht (on
phonology), and in Stockholm (near-nativeness).
These are detailed under a separate
heading.
Work
in Progress (MOGUL)
Mike Sharwood
Smith and John Truscott are currently
working on a book about MOGUL based
on a proposal submitted to John Benjamins,
Amsterdam. The completion of the first
draft is planned for the end of 2006.
I. A submission to EUROSLA 2006 is also
planned to make the January 30th deadline.
Work
in Progress (General)
The
ALLES Project
The ALLES project, which has explored the feasibilities of web-based,
NLP-driven distance learning for languages, was successfully concluded on 30th
September 2005 with the Final Review before the European Commission assessors
at Luxembourg when a full online language course in English, Spanish, Catalan
and German. was presented. The contribution of the SLRU at Heriot Watt has been
in two main areas: preparing and trialling multimedia online learning units,
and the elaboration of an approach to speech-recognition for second-language
English speakers. A presentation describing the speech-to-text solution adopted
was given to the assessors at Luxembourg, and followed by a demonstration of
the use of speech recognition for the ALLES English course by an L2 (German)
speaker .
One of the principal, and most encouraging, recommendations
of the EC Report was that the consortium should continue to exploit the
research results of the project. Work in
progress involving SLRU arising from this recommendation to date comprises:
Work
in Progress (ALLES)
1. Alles Consortium ‘Description and results of an NLP-enhanced distance language learning
system’ submission (pending) to European conference on Language Resources
and Evaluation, ELRA 2006.
SLRU have
contributed to the Abstract, submitted 10/2005, and will contribute a section
on speech-to-text to the paper
2. J. Emslie: ‘Implementing locally-installed speech recognition in distance learning
for languages’
Speech recognition for L2 speakers is inherently
problematic. This paper proposes a solution for off-shelf speech-to-text in a
skills-based distance programme. Combining elements of both speaker-dependent
and speaker-independent approaches, it entails careful management of
user-machine interaction, in particular the integration of learner speech
activity within the pedagogical structure.
Discussions are currently under way involving
former partners on the project and seeking
to find funding for developing aspects
of ALLES.
Other
Activities
Second
Language Research
The
journal, the main editorial office of
which is still based at Riccarton, continues
to experience growth. As the major theoretical
journal in Second Language Acquisition,
it is operates as a gatekeeper for the
field and publication in SLR is therefore
regarded as a prime target for aspiring
researchers in SLA; it has now moved to four issues a year
and there is no dearth of high
quality copy, presently extending into
2007, all of which means that cooperation
with the sister office in Colchester
vital: the Edinburgh and Essex offices
share the considerable burden of processing
submissions which includes, amongst
many other things, selecting and
sending the promising ones out to three
peer reviewers. The editorial board
met at the publishers (Hodder Headline)
in January to review the year and plan
the following year.
Exceprts
from the SLRU 2005 diary
April 4th.
Mike Sharwood Smith submitted evaluation of ten abstracts
as member of the scientific committee for EUROSLA 2005
conference
April 10th.
Mike Sharwood Smith invited to submit a 4000-word entry on
"Morphological and syntactic awareness" for the
Encyclopedia of Language and Education (Kluwer Academic
Publishers)
May .. Mike
Sharwood Smith externally evaluates a PhD dissertation
submitted to the University of Utrecht. The Netherlands,
entitled
Linguistic Perception of Foreign Languages.
May
4th. Jo ni Shuilleabhain gives a staff seminar entitled Hot
Potatoes
software
(for use in creating interactive Web-based exercises)
June 30. Nick
Pilcher gives a presentation to the first Higher
Education Academy Conference at Heriot-Watt entitled
'Supervising the postgraduate Chinese learner'
The
Year Ahead
MOGUL:
Work will continue of the book for John
Benjamins. Mike Sharwood Smith has received
another invitation to talk about the
project, this time in Spain (Universitat
Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana)
and also one to address the Linguistic
Circle at the University of Essex. Depending
on acceptance, a MOGUL-based paper will
be presented at EUROSLA 2006, Anatalya,
Turkey.
ALLES:
we will be seeking to develop the exploitaion
of ALLES research into in both VLE-enabled
teaching and research in LINCS. There
will be a poster prenation at ELRA 2006
if accepted (see also Work in Progress)
Other: Mike Sharwood
Smith will complete a 10,000 word
invited
chapter for the Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Vol. 5. 5 (Foreign
Language Communication and Learning)
to be published by de Gruyter.
SLRU Symposium
on Bilingualism planned
for May 2006. Organiser: Par
Kumaraswami. Speakers:
Vivian Cook (University of Newcastle), Manfred Pienemann
(University of Newcastle),
Mike Sharwood Smith and Li Wei
(University of Newcastle)
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