Workshop Report

Technology-Enhanced Language Learning

Louvain-la-Neuve (BE), November 2007 - The Kaleidoscope research group Integrated Digital Language Learning (IDILL) recently held a two-day workshop called "Optimizing the Role of Language in Technology-Enhanced Learning" at the University of Louvain (Belgium). The workshop, which brought together a wide range of people involved in Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL), also led to a road map for future research and collaboration, thereby helping to further integrate the field.




The workshop was attended by 35 participants-”researchers, educators, multimedia software producers, and publishers-”all of whom are involved in various aspects of TELL, most notably natural language processing or NLP; corpus linguistics; computer-assisted language learning; and lexicography.

Presentations were given by experts from around the world, including representatives from Europe, Asia, and the US, on such topics as computer-assisted pronunciation training, proofreading tools, language games, mobile language learning, and the future of the dictionary. Accompanying discussions fostered synergies between academics and industrial stakeholders, and by the workshop's end, a roadmap for seven future areas of collaboration had been identified:

  1. NLP-based corpus-informed error detection and feedback;
  2. New mobile learning environments: communities of use, needs, and activities;
  3. Web aggregators and filters;
  4. Use of spoken learner corpora to improve speech recognition systems;
  5. Integration and exploitation of learner corpora within Learning Management Systems (LMS);
  6. Design and collection of multilingual multimodal pedagogically relevant CEF-related corpora;
  7. Automated design of new bilingual dictionaries.

A volume on Language in Technology-Enhanced Learning: Issues, Challenges and Prospects, edited by Sylviane Granger and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, will be available in 2008.

To join IDILL or to receive a PDF version of the workshop abstracts, contact Sylviane Granger.