While primary studies on technology-mediated informal foreign language (FL) learning are increasingly popular, research synthesis on self-directed FL learning in incidental, out-of-class contexts are scarce. Therefore, this article seeks to address this gap in the literature through a qualitative research synthesis (QRS) on language learning in…

Artificial intelligence (AI) for supporting second language (L2) writing processes and practices has garnered increasing interest in recent years, establishing AI-mediated L2 writing as a new norm for many multilingual classrooms. As such, the emergence of AI-mediated technologies has challenged L2 writing instructors and their philosophies…

The Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) states that people learn better and comprehend more when words and pictures are presented together. The potential for English language learners to increase their comprehension of video through the use of captions, which graphically display the same language as the spoken dialogue, has been…

Thanks to natural language processing technologies, computer programs are actively being used not only for holistic scoring, but also for formative evaluation of writing. CyWrite is one such program that is under development. The program is built upon Second Language Acquisition theories and aims to assist ESL learners in higher education by…

A classifier which is capable of distinguishing a syntactically well formed sentence from a syntactically ill formed one has the potential to be useful in an L2 language-learning context. In this article, we describe a classifier which classifies English sentences as either well formed or ill formed using information gleaned from three different…

Second language learners are faced with the challenging task of remembering many new words. Exactly how learners are supposed to accomplish that task is disputed. Research on lexical processing that has been carried out in cognitive psychology showed that rehearsing words in expanded patterns, that is, with a delay between each rehearsal, leads to…

This paper presents a "didactic triangulation" strategy to cope with the problem of reliability of NLP applications for computer-assisted language learning (CALL) systems. It is based on the implementation of basic but well mastered NLP techniques and puts the emphasis on an adapted gearing between computable linguistic clues and didactic features…

This article presents the concept development, research programming, and learning design of a lexical processing web application, Virtual Vocabulary, which was developed using theories in both cognitive psychology and second language acquisition (SLA). It is being tested with first-year students of German at the University of Victoria in Canada,…

In examining the titles of this year's conference presentations, the author noticed quite a few papers that focus on learner-specific issues, for instance, papers that address learning styles, learner needs, personality and learning, learner modeling and, more generally, pedagogical issues that deal with individual learner differences in…

Computer technology improves the process of SLA by providing access to an ample amount of input within a communicative context in which participants can engage in synchronous and asynchronous conversations (Payne & Whitney, 2002; Sykes, 2005). This research project aims to investigate the role of alignment in learning a second language within the…

Error diagnosis in ICALL typically analyzes learner input in an attempt to abstract and identify indicators of the learner's (mis)conceptions of linguistic properties. For written input, this process usually starts with the identification of tokens that will serve as the atomic building blocks of the analysis. In this paper, we discuss the…

This paper presents a new version of Robo-Sensei's NLP (Natural Language Processing) system which updates the version currently available as the software package "ROBO-SENSEI: Personal Japanese Tutor" (Nagata, 2004). Robo-Sensei's NLP system includes a lexicon, a morphological generator, a word segmentor, a morphological parser, a syntactic…

This paper discusses several design issues in the development of a new online Japanese textbook, called "Robo-Sensei: Japanese Curriculum with Automated Feedback". When it is completed, the new online textbook will present a full Japanese curriculum. It extends a previously published online software program, "Robo-Sensei: Personal Japanese Tutor"…

A crucial question for automatically analyzing learner language is to determine which grammatical information is relevant and useful for learner feedback. Based on knowledge about how learner language varies in its grammatical properties, we propose a framework for reusing analyses found in corpus annotation and illustrate its applicability to…

"QuickAssist," the program presented in this paper, uses natural language processing (NLP) technologies. It places a range of NLP tools at the disposal of learners, intended to enable them to independently read and comprehend a German text of their choice while they extend their vocabulary, learn about different uses of particular words,…