We are happy to have an exciting range of workshops available at EUROCALL 2019. Workshops will run as either half-day sessions or 90-minute sessions, on Wednesday from 9.00 am to 12.15 pm.
If you would like to attend a half-day workshop on Wednesday, you will need to register. An e-mail will soon be sent to all registered participants.
Table of Contents
Half-day workshops
Language learning through gaming: Embracing changing platforms for learner interaction
— Chris McGuirk, Susanna Nocchi
There has been substantial research looking at the benefits of video games for language learners, not only in terms of communication and telecollaboration, but also in terms of motivation, socialisation of language learning and pragmatic complexity. Going forward, as video game environments become more expansive and interactive, Pegrum’s (2016) suggestion that learners tend to develop their understanding of technology at the same rate as technological development appears to be ever more accurate, and therefore as language educators, there is a pressing need to look at why students may prefer virtual learning spaces, and how this enthusiasm might be more appropriately embraced.
On that basis, this workshop offers an interesting insight into gamification from the perspective of the student. Conference delegates are invited to first take a stroll in the world of Minecraft, exploring how constructivist learning principles can be harnessed effectively using this construction-based, problem-solving game. This will be followed by exploring the social aspect of gamification, by travelling into a massive multi-player online gaming space and observing how and why students might interact within it.
Requirements
It is advisable for attendees to bring a laptop where possible, so they could join the game if they wished.
Workshop schedule
0:00-0:10: Setting up IDs, access, logging in.
0:10-0:50: Tour of the Minecraft space.
0:50-1:30: Performing a language learning task.
1:30-1:40: Setting up IDs, access, logging in.
1:40-2:10: Tour of the MMORPG space
2:10-2:40: Performing a language learning task.
2:40-3:00: Discussion of educational potential
Creating your own corpus-driven CALL materials from A-Z
— Emily Sheepy, Clinton Hendry
In this workshop, we will review strategies for creating and analyzing corpora using freely available corpus analysis software. Participants will explore resources and strategies in small groups and develop ideas on how to apply them within second language instruction and research.
Participants will gain hands-on experience exploring a corpus using three freely available tools: AntConc (Anthony, 2018), Lancsbox (Lancaster University, 2019), and Lextutor (Cobb, 2019). We will demonstrate techniques using our publicly available Simple English Wikipedia (Hendry & Sheepy, 2017), which can be found on Lextutor.ca.
We will begin by reporting on our previous projects, the Simple English Wikipedia Corpus (2017) and the American Education Research Association (AERA) corpus (2019), as examples of corpora created using freely available text databases. These projects both collect examples of authentic language that can be used for both research and pedagogical purposes. We briefly introduce those two corpora below.
The Simple English Wikipedia Corpus was created in 2016 from the user-contributed online encyclopedia Simple English Wikipedia (SEW). The SEW was created using simplified language and intended to be an accessible reference for learners of English. We analyzed the vocabulary demands of the SEW using AntConc and Lextutor using vocabulary lists. We found that the vocabulary requirements of the SEW are similar to normal Wikipedia (Hendry & Sheepy, 2017).
The American Education Research Association (AERA) corpus was created in 2018 from the AERA open access repository, which collects conference papers submitted to the AERA annual conference. We used word lists such as the Academic Word List (Browne, Culligan, & Phillips, 2013) to assess the vocabulary requirements to read submissions in each division of the AERA annual conference.
For our workshop, we will first invite discussion of sources of authentic texts that participants could collect to build their own corpora. We will then demonstrate how to use the tools available on Lextutor to clean and compile a small corpus.
We will apply simple analytical techniques to the Simple English Wikipedia Corpus using AntConc to:
– generate frequency lists,
– determine the most frequent vocabulary items in a given corpus, and
– use stop lists on the AntConc website to remove function words, comparatively common items, and Academic Vocabulary in the form of the AWL.
Next, we will produce a vocabulary profile of the corpus using tools available on Lextutor, estimate its readability, and then compare two different texts from within the corpus to determine which vocabulary items they have in common.
Last, we will explore some of the tools available as part of Lancsbox, such as the keyword tool, collocation, and colligation identification tools, to show how one can explore beyond vocabulary demands.
Participants will be invited to explore both the Simple English Wikipedia Corpus as well as their own creations. Each section will also include relevant research and examples for how to use these techniques in the classroom. The end of the workshop will be open for participants to share their own experiences and ideas of how to better use corpora for research and pedagogical purposes.
Open access versus vanity publishing: a complex case for trust
— Karine Fenix, Sylvie Thouësny
The current shift to open access is not without concerns and challenges. As stated by Christopher May in 2010, more relevant than ever, “one of the key problems with the avalanche of information that is now available to us is assessing its reliability and authority”, thus underlining the question of trust. Indeed, there exists a black market economy of publishing scams, also referred to as vanity and/or predatory academic publishers, which are everything but genuine scholarly publishing organisations – although they may very much look like it.
Johnathon Clifford coined the phrase ‘vanity publishing’ in 1959 when two American companies were widely advertising throughout the UK an offer to publish individual poems in anthologies in exchange for money (http://www.vanitypublishing.info/). Nowadays, vanity and/or predatory academic publishers are companies that charge authors a fee for publishing their research, without giving much care to the content they are actually publishing.
Building on our workshops delivered in Cyprus (2016) and Southampton (2017), we will shed light on the different aspects and options in the publication world, with a particular focus on open access and open peer review, explaining what they are and why openness is becoming inevitable to address the question of ‘trust’. More specifically, we will take a look at behind-the-scenes of the modus operandi of publication, and explore what it implies in concrete terms for authors in order to not get caught in an unethical situation.
In this workshop, we share our experience and practice of virtual collaboration with researchers from all around the world while publishing edited books. In a general sense, virtual collaboration is described by Fan, Sia, and Zhao (2012) as “a process where more than one individual work together to achieve a common goal […by means of] IT-enabled channels” (p. 3). With this in mind, virtual collaboration in research publication is most definitely relevant when working towards the quality assurance of any publication project. We also maintain that trust is the perfect defence against vanity and/or predatory academic publishing, and that, in order to gain trust, we need to move away from anonymity. In other words, we believe that an open dialogic review between publishers, editors, reviewers, and authors leads to accountability, fairness, and, equally important, politeness.
In the course of the workshop, which will be three hours in duration, participants will have plenty of opportunities to interact and reflect on the latest developments with respect to openness in publication. The aim is to build the participants’ knowledge and confidence when it comes to choosing the best possible avenue for their publications through the use of open discussion and group work. Attendees are invited to prepare questions in advance, ensuring we cover any doubts they might have had regarding the openness in and complexity of academic publishing.
References
Fan, S., Sia, C. L., & Zhao, J. L. (2012). Towards collaboration virtualization theory. PACIS 2012 Proceedings (pp. 1-8)
May, C. (2010). https://doi.org/10.1080/08109021003676417
90-minute workshops
Research methodology in CALL journals: “do.s” and “don’t.s”
— Alex Boulton, Muriel Grosbois, Catherine Caws, Jozef Colpaert, Jesús García Laborda, Ana Gimeno, Phil Hubbard, Ursula Stickler, Nobue Tanaka-Ellis
Methodology is fundamental to the quality of the science we do in CALL research and publication. It is also one of the first things editors tend to look at in any new submission, and is often crucial in reviewers’ decisions – while other parts can be rewritten, a methodological flaw can undermine an entire study. However, researchers often receive little overt in-service support in methodology, which is expected to have been acquired during their master’s and doctoral programmes. The objective of this session is not to provide such training, but to give an overview and sensitise participants to some of the major issues in this hugely complex area from the perspective of editors of CALL journals.
Following on from the successful EUROCALL publishing workshops in Southampton 2017 and Jyväskylä 2019 which were dedicated to ReCALL alone, this session brings together editors from eight of the top journals in the field of CALL: Alsic, CALICO Journal, Computer Assisted Language Learning, CALL-Electronic Journal, the EUROCALL Review, JALT-CALL Journal, Language Learning & Technology, ReCALL and System.
Following a rapid overview of CALL journals and some factors to take into consideration when deciding where best to publish a given paper, the session will be largely geared towards a series of “do.s” and “don’t.s” selected by the participating editor of each journal covering a range of topics from design to instrument to analysis, with issues relating to population samples, ethics, questionnaires, discourse analysis, ecological/longitudinal data, lab/experimental data, descriptive statistics, NHST, effect sizes, etc.
The editors will draw on their respective experience and present concrete situations based around published and unpublished submissions to their journals, reviewers’ comments and editorial decisions. The session will finish with the participants being invited to ask questions of the entire panel and to share their own individual experiences of methodology issues during research or publication. A website will be created to allow participants access to any materials before, during or after the workshop.
While research and publication are avowedly human processes with considerable room for disagreement, the overall objective is a collaborative effort to improve practice and promote good science and quality publication in CALL.
Designing e-interview research to address complexity in CALL
— Joanna Pitura
Research activity is needed to gain an insight into the new and complex realities of L2 learning in the digital age. Owing to the availability of online and mobile communication tools, research data can be collected anytime from study participants living worldwide (Salmons, 2015, p. xxvi), which offers remarkable opportunities for CALL researchers.
The aim of this session is to make workshop participants familiar with e-interview research design procedures, that can address complexity issues in CALL research and practice. Workshop participants will be guided through the process of e-interview study design and the session will cover the following aspects : (1) formulation of the purpose of the interview study, (2) adoption of pertinent theory, epistemology, methodology and method, (3) choice of online data collection methods, (4) reflection on the researcher’s position, (5) selection of ICT tools, (6) plan of study participants recruitment and (7) discussion of ethical issues (Salmons, 2015; Creswell, 2003). By the end of this session, participants will have developed a blueprint for their own e-interview CALL study.
References
Creswell, J. W. (2003). Research design : qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Second edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Salmons, J. (2015). Qualitative online interviews: Strategies, design, and skills. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
What is an LMOOC? The what, the how and the best practice
— Elena Martín-Monje, Kate Borthwick
The purpose of the workshop (90 min.) is to bring together LMOOC practitioners and enthusiasts and organise a “show and tell” session. It will be suitable for experienced LMOOC practitioners and also for novices who wish to know more.
Since the creation of the LMOOC SIG we have realised that those of us who have designed an LMOOC or acted as tutors/facilitators/content curators have diverse ideas about the instructional design, multimedia resources and tools and about what makes language learning more effective in these online courses. This workshop is designed to bring out this experience and share good practice. It will be an opportunity to explore the nature of LMOOCs and to become part of a community of practice. All are welcome!
There are three main aims in this workshop:
– To present examples of recent practice and some research in the creation of LMOOCs.
– To share good practice, tips and ideas related to LMOOCs.
– To build a database of good practice (using Google forms) to help us understand the profile of LMOOC practitioners: Who are we? What languages are the most popular ones for LMOOCs? How do we organise our LMOOCs? What is our main focus? Etc.
The workshop will involve short presentations, hands-on demos of LMOOCs, group discussion around key themes related to LMOOCs. Speakers at this event include: Elena Martin Monje, Kate Borthwick and some other members from the LMOOC SIG attending the conference.
PeerEval lets students speak more with simultaneous mini-talks
— Thomas Robb
This free mobile app, developed by the presenter, allows students to evaluate the presentations or talks of their peers in real time, making it possible for groups of students to present simultaneously. The presenters can rotate among multiple groups to practice the same short talk multiple times. Before the class session, the teacher uploads the students’ names and the evaluation criteria using a browser interface. The students download the PeerEval software onto their own mobile phone or access the html version, and evaluate their peers as they listen to the presentation. Afterwards, the teacher can download a report of all of the evaluations. Assuming sufficient WiFi receptivity, the audience will be asked to give short impromptu talks in groups of 3-5 for the listeners to evaluate using PeerEval.
Utilizing free, corpus-based wordlists & tools to teach vocabulary
— Charles Browne
This presentation will introduce four free corpus-derived word lists that the presenter helped to create, and then move on to demonstrate a large number of free online tools and resources for helping to use these lists for teaching, learning, materials creation as well as research and analysis.
Published in 2013, the NGSL or New General Service List (Browne, Culligan & Phillips) is a list of core vocabulary words for EFL learners and is a major update of West’s (1953) GSL. Based on a carefully selected 273 million word sample from the Cambridge English corpus, the 2800+ words of the NGSL offer between 90-92% coverage of most texts of general English. The NAWL or New Academic Word List (Browne, Culligan & Phillips, 2013) is derived from a 288 million word corpus of academic textbooks, lectures and texts from a wide range of sources. When combined with the NGSL, the NAWL’s 960+ core academic words provide approximately 92% coverage for most academic texts. The TOEIC Service List (Browne & Culligan, 2016) is a brand new corpus-derived list of words which occur frequently on TOEIC exams. When combined with the NGSL, the TSL’s 1000 word provide an astonishing 99% coverage of words that occur on TOEIC exams and TOEIC test-preparation materials. The Business Service List (Browne & Culligan, 2016) is based on a corpus of 64 million words of business texts, newspapers, journals and websites and when combined with the NGSL, the BSL’s 1700 words provides approximately 97% coverage of most general business texts.
After giving a brief background on how the four lists were developed, this workshop will then go on to introduce and demonstrate the large and growing number of free online tools and resources we’ve developed to help teachers, students, researchers and content developers to better utilize these lists. Resources include interactive, gamified flashcards apps for smartphones, vocabulary diagnostic tests, utilization of popular, free online learning platforms, and a wide range of vocabulary profiling tools and text creation/simplification tools. Though not required, participants will probably enjoy the workshop more if they have a smartphone, tablet or computer with an internet connection.
Let’s go to the MALL? Revisiting classroom activities and dynamics
— Alexandra Simões Andrade
This workshop is the result of a series of meetings with English teachers from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (that took place in late 2016 and throughout 2017) in order to conduct a Reflective Research regarding the use of Mobile Learning (ALLY, 2010) & (BEAL, 2017) in the English as a Foreign Language classroom in the country. At first, the surveyed teachers demonstrated lack of knowledge and/or interest as far as the use of technology in the classroom is concerned. Surprisingly for the researcher, most of the participants had either no idea of the concept of M-Learning or the benefits its use can generate when properly implemented in the (languages’) classroom. Therefore, a workshop was developed with the aim of introducing M-Learning to the groups of teachers aforementioned as an attempt to have them reflect upon their practices and the importance of using technology in the English classroom, especially taking into account the digital natives we come across in our classrooms on a daily basis. The participants were required to take their own devices with certain apps previously downloaded (QrCode Reader, Google Photos, Quizizz, Thinglink, amongst others). The researcher selected certain well-known activities and dynamics commonly used to help and facilitate the teaching-learning process, such as Jeopardy, Scavenger Hunt, and Paragraph Writing, and after reformulating them through the use of M-Learning carried them out with the teachers. As the results were extremely positive, the workshop was officially born and since then has constantly been reshaped, according to the latest trends, and presented to language teachers, as well as technology enthusiasts, throughout Brazil and parts of the world. The main purpose is to present ideas and suggestions, having participants’ active collaboration, in order to achieve innovation, creativity, and motivation in the English as a Foreign Language classroom. It goes without saying that contemporary education means transforming your teaching so that it becomes authentic and meaningful to both students and teachers. Participants are supposed to bring their own devices.
Web 2.0, virtual reality and interactive videos in foreign language teaching and learning
— Salvador Montaner Villalba, Alice Gruber
This workshop aims to explore, on the one hand, the use of the web 2.0 and, in particular, social networks in foreign language learning and, on the other hand, how to use Virtual Reality and interactive videos in foreign language teaching and learning.
Salvador Montaner-Villalba will exploit some didactic applications of the social network Twitter in English as a foreign language at both Compulsory Secondary Education and A-level. In this part of the workshop, the speaker will offer ideas on how to use Twitter in order to enhance EFL written production, bearing in mind that learners need to become aware of the need to summarize ideas since Twitter only allows users to write short sentences.
Since the use of social networks has increased notably within the last decade, the founders of Twitter created an online platform or rather an LMS with an educational purpose. “Twiducate” will also be explained as part of this first session of the workshop.
Alice Gruber will focus on the use of interactive videos and virtual reality in the foreign language classroom. Participants will be shown examples of cartoon-like interactive videos for German and English learners which help them to practise their speaking skills in a fun way. Different options with regard to VR-use in foreign language learning class will be presented and discussed (e.g. Mondly, ImmerseMe). A concrete example of a VR-lesson for university language learners will be shown. The focus is on VR-use which can be implemented by language tutors easily. During the workshop, participants will develop and try out ideas for VR-scenarios for their own classroom. We will discuss possible relevant designs and scripts for our learners.