Research in Intelligent Computer-Aided Language Learning (ICALL) integrates natural language processing into a computer-aided language learning environment. For such research to be innovative, successful and sustainable, it arguably needs to combine linguistic modeling, second language acquisition research (learner and activity modeling), and pedagogical insights from foreign language teaching (instruction modeling) with representations and computational linguistic algorithms capable of integrating the information from these models.

The current state of the art in the various relevant fields seems favorable for interdisciplinary ICALL research. Complementing the focus on communication and culture in foreign language teaching since the 60s, second language acquisition research since the 90s has clearly established that awareness of language categories, forms and rules---and thus linguistic modeling and the processing needed to identify those properties---is important for an adult learner to successfully acquire a foreign language. At the same time, most research groups currently lack the interdisciplinary orientation, background, or ties needed to develop and combine the linguistic and learner/cognitive modeling with computational processing, and to develop and test intelligent tutoring systems as part of real-life language teaching.

The IICALL workshop and the pre-workshop courses are intended to foster exchange and in-depth discussion of these interfaces of ICALL.

PRE-WORKSHOP COURSES

The courses on Dec 14-16 will be held by three leading researchers in the area of ICALL and its interfaces:

• Kathleen McCoy (ICICLE, U. Delaware), on NLP and Learner Modeling for ICALL
• Susan Bull (U. Birmingham), on Open Learner Models
• Eckhard Bick (VISL, Southern Denmark U.), on ICALL in support of Language Awareness

WORKSHOP

The workshop on Dec 17 will consist of 20+8 minute presentations, selected from the submitted abstracts.

You are invited to submit one-page abstracts describing research related to ICALL. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Learner and/or instruction models for ICALL
• ICALL tools to promote language awareness
• Activity design for ICALL systems
• Transferability of SLA research results to an ICALL setting
• ICALL to collect data for SLA research
• Evaluation of ICALL tools in foreign language teaching settings
• Integration of ICALL into foreign language teaching curricula
• ICALL system architecture
• Re-use of NLP resources for ICALL
• NLP techniques for ICALL
• Feedback generation in ICALL

Discussions of work in progress are welcome - PhD students and other young researchers are particularly encouraged to submit their work.

• Format: one page abstract (plus references/figures)
• Submit the abstract in PDF format to both of the organizers:
  Luiz Amaral
  Detmar Meurers
• Deadline for submissions: Monday, November 20
• Notification of acceptance: Friday, November 24
• Workshop takes place on: Sunday, December 17

The event will be held at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Participation in the workshop and the pre-workshop courses is free.

We are grateful to the Ohio State College of Humanities and the Department of Linguistics for financial support under the Targeted Investment in Excellence initiative for the Cross-disciplinary study of Language.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Please direct any questions as well as the abstract submissions to the IICALL 2006 organizers:

Luiz Amaral (amaral.1@osu.edu)
Detmar Meurers (meurers.1@osu.edu)

Event web site: http://purl.org/net/iicall