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- Convenors:
-
Takako Aikawa
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Marcella Mariotti (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Alessandro Mantelli (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
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- Stream:
- Japanese Language Education
- Location:
- Torre B, Piso 3, T14
- Sessions:
- Thursday 31 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to urge teachers to re-think the design of our language pedagogy. The first two panelists demonstrate the rapid advancement of language technology for language learning. The third panelist discusses how teachers can survive technology and make a difference for language education.
Long Abstract:
The goal of this panel is to urge language teachers to re-think the design of our language curriculum and pedagogy while exploring innovative learning activities for the next generation. To this end, we first introduce two types of learning applications that are under development. The first application, presented by the first panelist, is designed to enhance the receptive skills of reading and listening. This application can expose learners to various types of content about the target language and its culture. Further, it can deliver such content through different interconnected media (e.g., photos; videos; audio; etc.). Here, three fundamental areas of inquiry for continuous improvement of web-based application will be addressed: 1) user data gathering, 2) multi device usability, and 3) maintainability and sustainability.
The second application, presented by the second panelist, is designed to enhance the productive skill of writing. This application can not only identify the mistake(s) that a learner makes when writing a sentence, but it can also provide meaningful feedback to the learner. This application utilizes the grammar knowledge crowdsourced from Japanese language teachers and natural language processing (NLP) technology. We will demonstrate what types of grammar rules have been acquired through this crowdsourcing and explain how these rules are being fed into the application's system, using NLP.
Our presentation of these two types of applications will demonstrate that technology has advanced enough to enhance not only learners' receptive skills but also productive skills, which are considered to be much more challenging to learn.
The third panelist will discuss how language teachers can 'survive' technology and 'make a difference' for language teaching. She will analyze a European case study to show how rapid advancement of new technologies might drive toward the de-standardization of teaching, the professionalization of teachers, and critical education. She will address a big shift coming in the teacher's' role in the classroom and the fundamental role of language teachers as "citizenship educators."
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 31 August, 2017, -Alessandro Mantelli (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Paper short abstract:
JALEA (JApanese LEArning) is a new e-Learning system inspired by the hypermedia dictionary of Japanese grammar BunpoHyDict (Mariotti 2008). I will discuss some characteristic features of JALEA and demonstrate how JALEA can use authentic interconnected video and images for language learning.
Paper long abstract:
JALEA (JApanese LEArning) is a new e-Learning system inspired by the hypermedia dictionary of Japanese grammar BunpoHyDict (Mariotti 2008). In Japanese language pedagogy, BunpoHyDict approach is still very innovative for its focus on personal navigation and discovery as well as the integration of authentic, interconnected video and images. However, it raises some fundamental questions:
1. How can data related to learner navigation be gathered to improve the learner experience?
2. How can data be usable through different devices (e.g., pc, tablets, smartphones, etc.)
3. How can a project be maintainable and sustainable as it grows exponentially due to the constant updates of authentic materials?
JALEA project addresses the above three questions as follows:
In JALEA:
#1: Student data is gathered and analyzed by separating program code from data with a database oriented approach.
#2: To allow the usage of different devices, JALEA has been designed with a responsive technology, which allows content size and element position to change in accordance with the window or screen size.
#3: The JALEA application follows the principle of SOC (Separation of Concern) to allow maintainability and sustainability: it offers a layer accessible to the learner (frontend), and a layer accessible to the maintainers to add content and media (backend). Moreover, to allow for easier content management, several components have been automatized. For example:
• Automatic hyperlinks: the maintainer wraps the content with grammar-like tags that are automatically converted into hyperlinks.
• Automatic text parsing and kana->romaji auto conversion: the 'Mecab' morphological analyzer has been implemented side by side with a custom dictionary that permits users to control and correct the parsing process when needed.
• Text-to-voice automatic and hybrid conversion: the text is converted into voice but the operator can set parameters like character voice, intonation and pitch, and can native speech file uploaded.
Takako Aikawa (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Paper short abstract:
"AI Teacher" is an innovative and interactive language learning tool, and it can provide real-time corrections for students' grammatical errors. This paper discusses AI Teacher's characteristic features. It also reveals an intriguing fact about how language teachers correct students' errors.
Paper long abstract:
This paper purses the following two goals: (i) exploring how we can utilize language technology for language teaching and (ii) promoting the importance of linguistic training for language teachers.
First, we tackle the question of how we can utilize technology (e.g., natural language processing [NLP]) for language teaching. To this end, we present a system called "AI Teacher", which is currently under development. The AI Teacher is designed to detect students' grammatical errors and correct them automatically, using NLP. In order to acquire Japanese grammar rules, we crowdsourced a data set that consists of 12,000 error<->corrected pair sentences, such as (1) below from Japanese language teachers.
(1) [error]この本は、高いだと思います。 [corrected]この本は、高いと思います。
We successfully analyzed these data with the help of NLP, and extracted a large number of grammar rules for the AI Teacher's system. Here, we explain what types of grammar rules we have acquired from the data.
Our second goal is to address the question of whether we correct our students' errors consistently. This question arose when examining the crowdsourced data, mentioned above. In examining the pair sentences such as (1), we found that there was a wide range of variance in teachers' corrections of students' grammatical errors. We provide qualitative as well as quantitative analyses of our data. We particularly investigate the question of what linguistic factors would trigger such variance among language teachers, and why.
This paper not only showcases the AI Teacher (an innovative and interactive language learning tool) but it also highlights potential collaboration area(s) between technology and language teachers. Through the discussion of teacher variance, the paper also sheds new light on the field of teacher training.
Marcella Mariotti (Ca' Foscari University of Venice)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I discuss how language teachers can 'survive' technology and 'make a difference' for language teaching. I aruge that the rapid advancement of new technologies can drive toward the de-standardization of teaching, the professionalization of teachers, and critical education.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses one question: how can the language teacher 'survive technology' development and 'make a difference'?
As paper 1 and paper 2 of the present panel will show, IT development of online self-learning urges language teachers to re-think their role in classrooms and the aims of foreign language pedagogy. Previous research (Hosokawa, Otsuji, Mariotti 2016; Sato 2016) offers a valid base to consider language learning as a meaningful 'place' (ba) for
"citizenship" formation. How can language teachers harness rapidly advancing technology to become "citizenship educators"?
By analyzing a case study of a zero beginner level class in a European university ("Practice Research: Action Research Zero"), we will present data to discuss the following two crucial points from the perspective of critical language pedagogy:
1. While technology can surely enhance learners' motivation and acquisition processes (e.g. JALEA, Reading Tutor, FluentU), it still lacks feedback on the content production process as a result of human interaction.
2. When we consider language acts as a means of expressing one's identity, focusing, in so doing, on the learners' micro-level, it will become clear that checking grammar errors cannot be considered the aims of teachers anymore.
IT development will allow language teachers to finally have the opportunity and 'new duty' to be educators who can 'make a difference', facilitating discussions and dialogues based on authentic content, such as learners' histories and worldviews, carrying out a concrete de-standardization of language teaching, the professionalization of teachers, and critical education (Freire 1970).