In February 2004, Chinese Ministry of Education launched a teaching reform featuring the integration of the computer and networking in College English learning to stimulate students’ motivation and to improve their communicative competence. Up to now, Chinese CALL is still in infancy. This article reviews the CALL literature and identifies some common concerns for CALL initiative. The article f...

This paper describes the development of an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) system for learning Arabic. This system could be used for learning Arabic by students at primary schools or by learners of Arabic as a second or foreign language. It explores the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for learning Arabic. The learners are encouraged to produce sentenc...

The goal of this thesis is to explore how foreign language learning can be facilitated through the use of intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) based on natural language processing (NLP) methods. ICALL was provided in the form of a task-based dialog system that gives corrective feedback.We investigated how different parameters of the interaction affect the learning progress. B...

Learning a second language is a challenging endeavor, and, for decades now, proponents of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) have declared that help is on the horizon. As documented not only in the CALICO Journal over its 25-year history but also in other scholarly venues, research has demonstrated the value of CALL. Nevertheless, despite the fact that textbook publishers expend signifi...

This paper is a report on the findings of a study conducted concerning the features offered by web-based Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) courses. A comparison of the currently available features of websites offering online European Language courses was carried out and analyzed. Following this, an online questionnaire was used to solicit information that current and potential users of su...

This update to Garrett (1991), “Technology in the Service of Language Learning: Trends and Issues,” explores current uses of technology to facilitate the teaching and assessment of second languages. In this article, I discuss the changes that have taken place over the last 18 years regarding selected topics from the 1991 article, including the relationship between pedagogy, theory, and technolo...

BACKBONE is a European LLP/Languages project (1) (Jan 2009 Feb 2011), whose overall objective is to provide foreign language teachers in CLIL settings with innovative language learning solutions. To achieve this goal, pedagogic corpora of spoken interviews are combined with corpus-related e-learning activities in blended learning scenarios. The seven BACKBONE corpora contain video interviews in...

あらまし 音声認識・合成に関する技術はこの十年ほどの間に大きな進歩を遂げており,言語学習支援 (CALL) システムに関しても,発音の自動評定や模擬会話訓練などの新たな可能性を広げている.音声分析・認識・合成 技術を利用した CALLには,音韻的な観点と韻律的な観点がある.非母語話者の音声を正確に区分化・認識しな がら,そこに含まれる誤りを検出するためのモデル化には多くの課題がある.本論文では,これらの課題と現在 の方法論に関して概観を行う.まず,発音学習支援における音韻的な発音評定と誤り検出に関して,音声認識技 術に基づく方法について述べる.統計的なアプローチの定式化を行い,非母語話者の音響・発音レベルのモデル 化について述べる.次に,継続長や強勢・トーンなどの韻律的なモデル化と評価について述べる.更に,テキス ト音声合成,分析合成,モーフィングなどの音声合成技術の利用についても述...

Instructional grammar is often used in Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) and the grammatical error detection is an important feature. However, it is not an easy task in Chinese language. There is no delimiter separating consecutive words in Chinese sentences. Word segmentation is a process in which proper word boundaries are identified. Before syntactic parsing of a Chinese sentence, w...