Workshop on NLP for computer-assisted language learning, SLTC, Lund, Sweden

SLTC workshop, October 25, 2012, Lund, Sweden

Workshop proceedings are now available online: http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp_home/index.en.aspx?issue=080

Thank you for your participation in the workshop!

Some workshop pictures

NOTE!

Don't forget, that you are required to submit to us the form of NEALT Transfer of Copyright Agreement with your final submission. Please download the form from the provided URL: http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/080/SLTC2012.pdf, fill it in, sign (by all the authors; or by the corresponding author if the others do not object), scan it and attach to the mail.

Workshop schedule

9.00-9.05 Introduction

9.05-9.30 Hrafn Loftsson Ongoing development of an NLP toolkit with potential usage in ICALL 

9.30-10.15 Poster session 1

• Lene Antonsen Improving feedback on L2 misspellings – an FST approach [pdf] [poster]
• Lisa Beinborn, Torsten Zesch and Iryna Gurevych Survey of Readability Measures for Self-directed Language Learning [pdf] [poster]
• Katarina Heimann Mühlenbock and Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis SweVoc - A Swedish vocabulary resource for CALL [pdf] [poster]
• Elena Volodina, Richard Johansson and Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis Semi-automatic selection of best corpus examples for Swedish: initial algorithm evaluation [pdf] [poster]

10.15-10.30 Coffee break

10.30-11.15 Poster session 2

• Carina Carlund, Håkan Jansson, Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis, Julia Prentice, Judy Ribeck An academic word list for Swedish - a support for language learners in higher education [pdf] [poster]
• Manny Rayner, Johanna Gerlach, Marianne Starlander, Nikos Tsourakis, Anita Kruckenberg , Robert Eklund, Arne Jönsson, Anita McAllister, Cathy Chua A Web-Deployed Swedish Spoken CALL System Based On A Large Shared English/Swedish Feature Grammar [pdf] [poster]
• Elena Volodina, Lars Borin, Hrafn Loftsson , Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir, Guðmundur Örn Leifsson Waste not, want not: Towards a system architecture for ICALL based on NLP component re-use [pdf] [poster]
• Kenneth Wilhelmsson Automatic Question Generation for Swedish: The Current State [pdf] [poster]

11.15-11.30 Discussion

Practical information before the workshop

The workshop will take place in the E building of LTH (Lunds tekniska högskola, a part of Lund university). You have a map here: http://www.ehuset.lth.se/kontakt/

The workshop room is E 1147. It is equipped with a projector and a wifi connection. Participants from Swedish universities may use their Eduroam accounts. A number of wifi vouchers will be available for the internet access for the whole conference.

The rooms will be open before the workshop starts and a member of the organizing committee will be around to show you the way, in case you arrive early.

The main conference will be in the SOL centrum (Språk oct literaturcentrum, see here http://www.sol.lu.se/), where a sandwich will be served to the participants between 12:00 and 13:00. The opening lecture starts at 13:00. The SOL centrum is about 10 minute walk from the E building of LTH. Therefore, we have been asked by the SLTC organizers to finish at 11:30 so that all the workshop participants can depart from LTH at 11:45 and get to SOL by foot. Somebody from the organization will show us the way.

Elena is the contact person.

Call for papers

Learning and teaching languages with the assistance of a computer, i.e. computer-assisted language learning (CALL), has become widespread since the early 1980s. Traditional CALL applications provide limited exercise types, along with limited ability to provide feed-back, because the exercises are static, i.e. pre-programmed, and the answers have to be pre-stored.

To try to overcome this disadvantage, some researchers have started to use techniques from the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in CALL system, i.e. supplying CALL applications with some kind of intelligence. As a result, the interdisciplinary field of Intelligent CALL (ICALL), i.e. combining NLP and CALL, has emerged over the past 20 years or so.

There is an array of NLP resources and tools potentially available for re-use in ICALL applications for Swedish as well as for many other languages equipped with NLP tools and resources, but this opportunity has so far remained relatively underdeveloped.

We welcome papers

• that describe research directly aimed at ICALL,
• that demonstrate actual or discuss potential use of existing NLP tools or resources for language learning,
• that describe ongoing development of resources and tools with potential usage in ICALL, either directly in interactive applications, or indirectly in materials, application or curriculum development, e.g. collecting and annotating learner corpora; developing tools and algorithms for readability analysis, selecting optimal corpus examples, etc.

We especially invite submissions describing work on Swedish or other Nordic languages.

Papers should be a maximum of 8-10 pages long (excluding title, references and author affiliations) and follow the ACL template http://www.acl2011.org/authors.shtml. Only pdf files are accepted.

Every paper will be reviewed by 2 members of the program committee. All accepted papers will be published in the NEALT Proceeding Series. Authors of the accepted papers will have to sign an agreement with NEALT publishers.

Important dates:

• 10 September: paper submission by email to elena dot volodina at svenska dot gu dot se
• 1 October: notification of acceptance
• 22 October: camera-ready papers for publication. You are also required to submit to us the form of NEALT Transfer of Copyright Agreement in your final submission. Please download the form from the provided URL: http://www.ep.liu.se/ecp/080/SLTC2012.pdf, fill it in, sign (by all the authors; or by the corresponding author if the others do not object), scan it and attach to the mail.

Program committee:

• Detmar Meurers, University of Tübingen, Germany
• Elena Volodina, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Hrafn Loftsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland
• Lars Borin, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Ola Knutsson, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Serge Sharoff, University of Leeds, UK
• Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
• Petter Karlström, Stockholm University, Sweden

Workshop organisation

There will be an invited speaker (Hrafn Loftsson, Reykjavik University, Iceland) as well as poster sessions

Details on place and time are provided at the conference website.

Workshop organizers

Lars Borin, Elena Volodina, Språkbanken, Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg; lars dot borin at svenska dot gu dot se, elena dot volodina at svenska dot gu dot se