ROGER

EUROCALL 2019 – CALL and Complexity was organised from 28 to 31 August 2019, in the framework of the EUROCALL event series (European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning) and hosted by the UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium:

More information about it here.

Dr Madalina Chitez represented West University of Timisoara, Romania, and presented the research paper (co-authored with Dr Loredana Bercuci): Data-driven learning in ESP university settings in Romania: multiple corpus consultation approaches for academic writing support.

Abstract:
Corpora are valuable technology-supported learning resources to be used by the autonomous language learners or during teacher-guided lessons. This study explores the potential of corpus consultation approaches for the improvement of the ESP students’ academic writing skills. We investigated the effects of three types of data-driven learning (DDL) activities in a sample group of 29 first-year and second-year students majoring in Geography for Tourism at a Romanian university, consisting of writing tasks supported by: a learner corpus (LC), a native-speaker corpus (NSC), and a web-based corpus (WBC). The research methodology involves the combination of quantitative and qualitative data, extracted from pre- and post-intervention corpus analyses, with the results of a learner-satisfaction questionnaire. The findings indicate a significant differentiation in the complexity of the lexico-grammatical features used by learners in consequent intervention stages and a better integration of L2-related academic writing strategies into their written productions. The study yields first conclusions on the integration of computer-processed language databases in DDL strategies for ESP learners in the Romanian university context.

More impressions here (Twitter).

As a result of the participation, the UVT team was invited to participate in the group CorpusCALL, dedicated to corpus-supported computer-assisted language learning studies.

Publication:

The article presenting the main results of the conference paper was published as:

Chitez, M. & Bercuci, L. (2019). “Data-driven learning in ESP university settings in Romania: multiple corpus consultation approaches for academic writing support”. In:  F. Meunier, Van de Vyver, J.; Bradley, L. & Thouësny, S. (Eds). (2019). CALL and complexity – short papers from EUROCALL 2019. Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.38.9782490057542