The LCA initiated the biennial Learner Corpus Research Conferences.
Due to the uncertainties brought about by the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the LCR2021 organizing committee and the Association of Learner Corpus Linguistics have decided to postpone the sixth LCR biennial conference to 2022. The LCR conference has been rescheduled for 22-24 September 2022. We will refer to it as LCR2022.
For more info about our previous LCR conferences, see LCR2019, LCR2017, LCR2015, LCR2013, and LCR2011.
The LCA Board already welcomes proposals for the organisation of LCR2024! Please contact Susan Nacey, LCA conference officer, for further details.
The LCA also maintains a calendar of events related to learner corpus research. Please send us info about related conferences, workshops, etc via the contact form.
A one day workshop at Université de Paris, 30 Oct 2019 Olympe de Gouges Building, room 115, first floor (tbc)
Provisional programme
MORNING: discussing our results
9 00 opening N. Ballier The Ulysse PHC project : aims, data and limitations
9.20 Thomas Gaillat investigating learner micro-systems and customizing CEFR criterial features : the micro-system feature set and its regex syntax
9h40 discussion
10h30 Bernardo Stearns (tbc) and Annanda Sousa : the user interface prototype demo
We hope to deliver a docker and a github version of our user interface that allows you to paste a text, have a coffee while the text is processed and then get the probability of the text of being of a given CEFR level.
10h45 Discussion
11h 15 Andrew Simpkins : overfitting ? comparison with a graded corpus
As a preliminary step, we have tested our current User Interface with the CEFR ASAG corpus to check whether our model is biased to the A1 level.
11H30 General discussion
12 15 LUNCH BREAK (poster session at Diderot)
Poster displayed at Diderot and on a shared google drive for distant participants (titles tbc).
Thomas Gaillat : the Viz project for visualing metrics
Carlos Balhana (Cambridge) : Grammatical Error Correction and Interlanguage Event Representation
Vinogradova et al : a module for punctuation with the REALEC data
Vinogradova et al : the REALEC web interface : data, activities, technologies
Volodina et al. A System Architecture for Intelligent CALL examples of NLP approaches to Swedish
Nikolay Babakov : recommandation system for CEFR-indexed texts (from Russian to English ?)
O’Donnell et al. The concept approach to learner errors (incl details on data, NLP techiques used)
AFTERNOON: Learner corpora and beyond: collecting and interpreting learning process and product data
A blueprint is to be circulated pointing out potential future directions.
13h30 STRAND 1 Adding more metrics/NLP-based methods for error detection / problematic areas for learners
15h STRAND 2 Exploring the relation between Learner corpus annotation, language testing, and individual feedback to learners
16h30 coffee break
17h STRAND3 Should we try to link learner corpus and learning analytics research – and what is there to be gained? Ideas for Tracking Development path ? (Fuchs, Götz & Werner 2016) How to develop learner profiles based on student input?
1815 closing remarks and future plans
1830 end of the workshop
Call for participation
As a closing event of a European-funded project, we invite colleagues to share their ideas about the automatic analysis of learner corpora and how they can be applied towards interlanguage analysis, CEFR level prediction, and error detection – and extended to support individual feedback to learners and learning analytics.
The morning session will present some of the results of this French-Irish project “PHC Ulysse 2019”: the features of the EFCAMDAT corpus we used as the first step for our experiments, the methodology we developed, and our main findings. We will present our prototype of user interface for automatic detection of CEFR levels and discuss aspects such as overfitting of a model based on the French and Spanish components of EFCAMDAT. We will also discuss the shared task we held on a portion of this
We will discuss posters over lunch recapitulating some of the issues. Poster presenters are asked to send their A0 PDF to nicolas.ballier@univ-diderot.fr by Oct 15th midnight, summarizing their approach, which may include results previously presented. The afternoon functions as a round table intended to build collaborations and extensions of our project and discuss potential work packages for a follow-up project. Invited colleagues will summarize their methodologies and share their views on possible next steps.
Admission is free but registration is compulsory (on a first come, first served basis) on this webpage: https://framaforms.org/20191030-workshop-beyond-cefr-level-prediction-of-texts-in-learner-corpora-1570435104
The summary of the Ulysse PHC Project can be found here : http://www.clillac-arp.univ-paris-diderot.fr/projets/ulysse2019
Discussants at Diderot :
Taylor Arnold (University of Richmond, https://math.richmond.edu/faculty/tarnold2) is Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Richmond and has a strong interest in NLP as a data scientist and digital humanist, see https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.11099
Detmar Meurers (University of Tübingen, http://purl.org/dm) is Professor of Computational Linguistics and head of the research group on Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning there: http://icall-research.de
Contact person:
Nicolas Ballier : nicolas.ballier@univ-paris-diderot.fr
American Association for Corpus Linguistics (AACL) 2020
September 18 & 19 with workshops on September 17
Call for Papers
The 15th International American Association for Corpus Linguistics Conference (AACL2020) will take place September 18-19 2020 at Northern Arizona University. Previous AACL conferences have been held at the University of Michigan (1999, 2005), Northern Arizona University (2000, 2006, 2014), University Massachusetts-Boston (2001), IUPUI (2002), Montclair State University (2004), Brigham Young University (2008), University of Alberta (2009), Georgia State University (2011, 2018), San Diego State University (2013), and Iowa State University (2016). There will also be a pre-conference workshop day on September 17.
Check out the conference website: sites.google.com/view/aacl2020/
Plenaries:
Laurence Anthony, Waseda University
Shelley Staples, University of Arizona
Stefanie Wulff, University of Florida
Main conference general program
Call for papers
We invite contributions relating to all aspects of corpus linguistic research, application, or methods. There are four categories of proposals (full papers, posters, panels, and pre-conference workshops). All proposals will be peer-reviewed by the conference program committee. We ask that presenters submit only two proposals as first author. The conference will feature three thematic streams in the general program. The thematic streams are as follows:
- Linguistic analyses of corpora as they relate to language use (e.g., register/genre variation, lexical and grammatical variation, language varieties, historical change, lexicography)
- Application (the use of corpora in language teaching and learning, as well as other applied fields such as testing and legal research)
- Tools and methods (corpus creation, corpus annotation, tagging and parsing, corpus analysis software)
Submission categories:
Full papers
Consisting of a 20-minute talk followed by 5 minutes for questions and discussion. Submissions should present completed research where substantial results have been achieved. (Work in progress should be submitted as a poster abstract.) Abstracts should be 300 words (maximum), excluding the word count for references.
Posters
Posters can present either results of completed research or work in progress. We especially welcome poster abstracts that (a) report on innovative research that is in its early phases, or (b) report on new software or corpus data resources. Abstracts should be 200 words (maximum), excluding the word count for references.
Panels
Panels during the main conference offer an opportunity to group related papers together to allow for extended discussions. Proposals for panels should include the abstracts for the individual presentations (300 words max), together with an introductory abstract (200 words max) introducing the overall goals of the panel. Panels will be allocated time slots up to a maximum of 2 hours. Please specify the desired length of time for the panel.
Pre-conference Workshops
Half-day pre-conference workshops will take place on Thursday Sept 17. Abstracts for submission (max. 300 words) should include a complete description of the half-day workshop (max time 3 hours).
Submission guidelines:
Submit abstracts to aacl@nau.edu by January 30, 2020.
Cover page: Author(s) name(s); Affiliation; Contact information; Title; Submission Category and thematic stream
Abstract page: Submission category; Title; Abstract
Format: MS Word or PDF (the latter is necessary if the abstract contains specialized font)
A virtual conference, under the aegis of the Learner Corpus Association
The Learner Corpus Association (LCA) is an international association which aims to promote the field of learner corpus research and provide an interdisciplinary forum for all the researchers and professionals who are actively involved in the field or simply want to know more about it.
This event offers a great opportunity for MA and PhD students to present their (in-progress) results, share ideas, receive feedback from senior researchers in the field, and further develop their professional networks. Senior researchers are welcome as delegates, helping to ensure the high quality of the event and foster the careers of Early Career Researchers.
LCA supports the compilation of learner corpora (i.e. electronic collections of written and/or spoken language produced by foreign/second language learners) in a wide range of languages and the design of innovative methods and tools to analyze them. It seeks to link up learner corpus research to second language acquisition theory, first language acquisition theory and linguistic theory in general and to promote applications in fields including foreign language teaching, language testing and natural language processing (automated scoring, spell- and grammar-checking, L1 identification).
Twitter handle: @lcrgradconf
6th LEARNER CORPUS RESEARCH CONFERENCE
DEADLINE EXTENSION
The extended deadline for submission is 3 February 2022 !!
The International Conference for Learner Corpus Research (LCR 2022) will be held at the University of Padua (Italy), at the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies (www.disll.unipd.it) on 22-24 September, 2022.
Its aim is to bring together researchers, language teachers and software developers with a common interest in the use of learner corpora for research on second language acquisition, as well as for the enhancement of language pedagogy and language assessment. The LCR2022 Conference aims to showcase the latest developments in the field of learner corpus research regarding the description of learner language and the design of innovative methods and tools to analyse it.
The conference will feature keynote lectures, full paper presentations, work in progress reports, poster presentations, software demonstrations and a book exhibition. Pre-conference workshops are also planned.
The language of the conference is English.
Keynote speakers
The following keynote speakers have confirmed their participation in the conference:
– Silvia Bernardini (Università di Bologna, Italy)
– Anke Lüdeling (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
– Hilary Nesi (Coventry University, England)
Submissions
All topics related to learner corpus research based on any language are welcome. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Language for Academic Purposes;
- Language for Specific Purposes;
- Language Teaching, Assessment and Testing;
- Learner corpus-based SLA studies;
- Corpora as pedagogical resources;
- Multimodal learner corpora;
- Software for learner corpus analysis;
- Corpus-based translation studies;
- English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI);
- English as a Lingua Franca (ELF);
- Data mining and other explorative approaches to learner corpora;
- Statistical methods in learner corpus studies.
Abstracts
Abstracts, written in English, should be between 600 and 700 words (excluding a list of references) and should provide the following:
– clearly articulated research question(s) and its/their relevance;
– the most important details about research approach, data and methods;
– (preliminary) results and their interpretation.
Abstracts will be submitted through EasyChair. The extended deadline for submission is 3 February 2022 23 January 2022. Abstracts will be reviewed anonymously by the scientific committee. Notification of the outcome of the review process will be sent by 31 March 2022.
Competition for papers by PhD students
There will be a competition for best paper presentation by a PhD student. If you are a PhD student, an LCA member, and present a single-authored full paper you can take part. Remember to indicate that you are interested when submitting your abstract in EasyChair.
There will also be a competition for the best poster. This is open to all poster presenters. You should also remember to indicate that you are interested when submitting your abstract.
Further information
Further information is available on our webpage: www.maldura.unipd.it/lcr-2022/
The LCR 2022 organising committee
- Erik Castello (University of Padua)
- Katherine Ackerley (University of Padua)
- Caroline Clark (University of Padua)
- Francesca Coccetta (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
- Marta Guarda (Eurac Research, Bolzano)
- Carla Quinci (University of Padua)
- María Belén Díez Bedmar (Universidad de Jaén)
Contact: LCR2022pd@gmail.com