The Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS will be hosting a two-day workshop on ‘Learner corpus based approaches to second language acquisition’ on 31 March – 1 April, 2017.
As recently put by Myles (2015), “second language researchers have been rather slow in taking advantage of learner corpora and their associated computerised methodologies (…), and LCR (Learner Corpus Research) is not always fully informed by SLA research, making collaboration between the two fields sometimes more of a wish rather than a reality”. The main objective of the workshop is to bring together SLA and LCR specialists to examine the usefulness of learner corpus data for second language research and to assess the relevance of SLA theory for learner corpus design and analysis.
We are pleased to announce that the following speakers have already accepted our invitation to give a talk at the conference:
– Dora Alexopoulou (University of Cambridge)
– Sylviane Granger (Université catholique de Louvain)
– Tania Ionin (University of Illinois)
– Fanny Meunier (Université catholique de Louvain)
– Florence Myles (University of Essex)
– Jeanine Treffers-Däller (University of Reading)
– Nina Viyatkina (The University of Kansas)
– Stefanie Wulff (University of Florida)
The event will mainly be structured around invited presentations but we have a limited number of slots for additional presentations. We therefore welcome contributions which focus on one or more of the following research directions:
– address SLA research questions with the help of learner corpus data and corpus linguistic techniques
– test key constructs in SLA theory on the basis of learner corpus data
– carry out a learner corpus study and compare results with findings from previous SLA studies that relied on more experimental techniques
– adopt a mixed method approach that involves learner corpus data as one of the data type used
– revisit previous LCR studies in the light of SLA theory
We particularly like the idea that the workshop’s organization could serve as a springboard for more active collaboration between SLA and LCR specialists. We therefore strongly encourage collaborative proposals.
Abstracts (max. 500 words + references) should specify how the paper will contribute to the theme of the workshop. It should also provide a clear outline of the aim of the paper including clearly articulated research question(s), some details about research approach and methods and (preliminary) results. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail to both magali.paquot@uclouvain.be and B.S.W.LeBruyn@uu.nl , before 11 April 2016.
Further info about the workshop will be posted on the event’s website later in 2016: https://sites.google.com/site/learnercorporameetsla/
Papers presented at the workshop will be published in an edited volume provisionally titled “Learner Corpora in Second Language Acquisition”. We are currently in contact with an international publisher for this matter and will keep you informed.
Venue
University Utrecht, The Netherlands
Schedule:
Abstract: 11 April 2016
Notification: 3 June 2016
Workshop: 31 March – 1 April 2017
Submission of articles: 30 August 2017
Best regards,
Dr. Bert Le Bruyn (Universiteit Utrecht)
Dr. Magali Paquot (Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, Université catholique de Louvain)
Convenors of the workshop