Human Language Technology for Language Learning (HLT4LL)

Stellenbosch, South-Africa, 11-12 November 2013
An interdisciplinary symposium on the contribution of Human Language Technologies to the future of Language Learning

Participation is free of charge.

– Programme
– Accepted Papers
– Call for Papers

Keynote Speakers
Nick Ellis [www-personal.umich.edu/~ncellis/NickEllis/Home.html]
Maxine Eskenazi [www.cs.cmu.edu/~max/]
John Nerbonne [www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/]
Mathias Schulze [www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~mschulze/]
Isabel Trancoso [www.l2f.inesc-id.pt/wiki/index.php/Isabel_Trancoso]

The symposium will consist of three parts:
1. 11 Nov.: informative meeting for a general audience, keynotes by experts, and demonstrations of software
2. 12 Nov.: workshop for researchers, with keynote presentations by experts
3. a ‘round table’ of experts

On 12/11/2013, there will be a video conferencing link between Stellenbosch and two remote sites – Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) or KU Leuven KulaK (Belgium). On 11/11/2013 there will be no video conferencing link, and you can only attend in Stellenbosch. (for venues, see below)

Registration and participation are free of charge. However, only a limited number of attendees can be accommodated, so please register as soon as possible.

If you have an HLT4LL demo that you would like to present on Monday afternoon at the meeting in Stellenbosch, please send an email to HLT4LL@let.ru.nl, and start the subject line with : “HLT4LL demo : “.

Objectives
The objectives of the HLT4LL symposium are:
1. to obtain an overview of the state-of-the-art of HLT for LL by bringing together experts;
2. to inform a broader audience on the state-of-the-art, challenges and opportunities of HLT-based LL
3. to gather information on needs, requirements, and expectations and to receive feedback from the field on (the use of) current applications, possible ways of optimizing them and suggestions for future developments.

The HLT4LL 2013 symposium will address the possibilities and challenges of using human language technologies (HLT) for language learning (LL) (HLT4LL). We define HLT4LL as any use or integration of language and speech technology to structure, facilitate (support) and evaluate the language learning process. To fully acknowledge and address the complexity of this interdisciplinary domain, the symposium aims to bring together representatives from various but related research fields: language and speech technology, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics (learner and bilingual corpora), data-driven language learning, (second) language acquisition, language pedagogy, computer assisted language learning (CALL), educational technology, semantic web, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction (HCI/CHI), etc.

This symposium is intended to provide a state-of-the-art overview of this interdisciplinary domain for people from academia, educational institutions, industry, as well as for policymakers.

We are considering inviting presenters to submit full-length papers after the workshop, which may be published in a special issue of an authoritative, interdisciplinary and international journal in the field.

International scientific committee
We would like to thank the members of the ‘international scientific committee’ for reviewing the abstracts :
Alex Boulton, Cornelia Tschichold, Detmar Meurers, Elena Volodina, Frederik Cornillie, Hans Paulussen, Isabel Trancoso, Jacques Koreman, Louis ten Bosch, Luiz Amaral, Markus Dickinson, Martin Russell, Mathias Schulze, Maxine Eskenazi, Nick Ellis, Oscar Saz, Pascual Pérez-Paredes, Peter Wood, Sylvie Thouësny, and Thomas Niesler.

Organizing committee
1. Helmer Strik (coord.) & Catia Cucchiarini (CLST, Dept. of Ling., Radboud University, The Netherlands)
2. Febe de Wet (Stellenbosch University & CSIR Meraka Institute)
3. Frederik Cornillie & Piet Desmet (ITEC, KU Leuven Kulak & iMinds, Belgium)

Venues

STIAS Wallenberg Centre, 10 Marais Road, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Radboud University, Erasmus building
Radboud Honours Academy, video conference room 0.07
Erasmusplein 1, 6525 HT Nijmegen, the Netherlands

KU Leuven Kulak
Building C, room C613
Etienne Sabbelaan 53, 8500 Kortrijk, België
www.kuleuven-kulak.be/en/about-kulak/route_en

Acknowledgements
In cooperation with CLSCLST, and the European LLP projects GOBL & DigLin.

This project is financed by the Nederlandse Taalunie and the Department of Arts and Culture of the Government of the Republic of South Africa as part of their cooperation on language and speech technology.