Ongoing European Projects

 

COST project - European Cooperation in Science and Technology (CA19102)

“Within the next 10 years, many millions of people will be ... wearing relatively unobtrusive ... devices that offer an immersive and high-resolution view of a visually augmented world" (Perlin 2016: 85). This is the ‘human-machine era’, a time when our senses are not just supplemented by handheld mobile devices, but thoroughly augmented. The language we see, hear and produce will be mediated in real time by technology. This has major implications for language use, and ultimately language itself. Are linguists ready for this? Can our theory, methods, and epistemology handle it? LITHME has two aims to prepare linguistics and its subdisciplines for what is coming; and to facilitate longer term dialogue between linguists and technology developers. How will pervasive augmentation technology affect language in areas such as international law, translation, and other forms of language work? What will this mean for how people identify with specific languages? Could increasing reliance on real-time language technologies actually change the structure of language? Longer term, could developments in brain-machine interfaces serve to complement or even supersede language altogether? Linguistics would be far stronger for robust technological foresight, while developers would benefit from better understanding potential linguistic and societal consequences of their creations. Meanwhile LITHME would shine a light on the ethical implications of emerging language technologies. Inequality of access to technologies, questions of privacy and security, new vectors for deception and crime; these and other critical issues would be kept to the fore. LITHME would equip linguists and stakeholders for the human-machine era.

Areas of Expertise

● Languages and literature: Translation and interpretation ● Languages and literature: Linguistics: formal, cognitive, functional and computational linguistics ● Languages and literature: Use of language: form, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, lexicography, terminology● Languages and literature: Second language teaching and learning ● Languages and literature: Databases, data mining, data curation, computational modelling ● Language ● Artificial Intelligence ● Human-machine interfaces ● Virtual Reality ● Augmented Reality:

https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA19102

Contact person: fanny.meunier@uclouvain.be

 

 

Erasmus + KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for school education

The present project aims to use the expertise of an international consortium in the field of German as a foreign and official language to develop, implement and evaluate learning scenarios that provide in-service and pre-service teachers with pedagogical support for collaborative and learner-centered teaching in present-day heterogeneous classes. Joining expertise in a transnational consortium of this kind will make an essential contribution to the national curricula involved (in particular to the systematic improvement of their teaching quality) and will thus meet the special needs of German in the different countries. The project sets for itself the following objectives:

• Promoting and supporting a comprehensive approach to language teaching and learning, capitalizing on the diversity of today’s increasingly multilingual classrooms.

• Supporting synergies with research and innovation activities and promoting new technologies as incubators and drivers of improvements in language and culture pedagogy.

The project combines both the expertise of academic partners with proven experience in language teaching research, teaching materials design and development, and in- and pre-service teacher training (Universities of Bozen, Antwerp, Louvain, Poznan and Gothenburg), as well as the practice-oriented profile of the Belgian German Teachers’ Association and school partners representing the different teaching contexts targeted in the project. This will contribute to support the development, evaluation and dissemination of the learning scenarios through integration into the relevant professional networks and the numerous associated schools and institutions, safeguarding the transfer between theory/research and practice. The project plans the following activities:

• Validation of the specific needs of the target groups (pupils, teachers, etc.) in terms of relevant topics and formats for the learning scenarios as assessed before the start of the project.

• Creation of an extensive pool of learning scenarios for the teaching of German in schools, with a focus on the use of new media. Translation of a limited set of learning scenarios into other relevant foreign languages (French, English, Dutch, Italian) for greater impact on the different school contextes.

• Creation of an electronic platform that allows easy access to the manuals and best-practice examples and enables teachers to collaborate, e.g. in a professional learning community.

• Design and implementation of a training programme that not only prepares teachers and potential multipliers to the implementation of the learning scenarios but also supports them through appropriate coaching.

• A scientifically based evaluation in light of quality requirements to ensure recognition of the project results at the practical, technical and institutional level.

Contact person: ferran.sunermunoz@uclouvain.be

Erasmus + KA226 - Strategic Partnership in the field of Higher Education

 

 

LINGU@NUM is a 2-year European-funded Strategic Partnership in the field of Higher Education (KA226) that aims at promoting innovative practices for language teaching and learning through the relevant use of digital technology, as well as supporting learners and teachers in developing their digital literacy.

The research and development project is based on the socio-interactional approach - as an extension to the action-oriented approach (Council of Europe, 2001) - and the use of real-world tasks (Ollivier & e-lang project team, 2018), which complement the typology established by the CEFR and applied linguists (Council of Europe, 2001; Nunan, 2006). These tasks are carried out on participative sites (e.g.: TripAdvisor) and allow learners to develop their language and (inter-)cultural competences as well as their critical digital literacy/citizenship.

The project will provide two training modules specifically aimed at language teachers focusing on how to design and implement (in online or hybrid mode) task-based language learning units incorporating digital technology. Finally, the project will include a guide on how language learners can contribute to participatory websites in the target language in the “digital wilds” (Sauro & Zourou, 2019) and, in doing so, develop their language skills as well as digital literacy and citizenship.

Contact person: ferran.sunermunoz@uclouvain.be

www.linguanum.eu

 

 

Erasmus + KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for school education

The TEMPLATE project aims at strengthening the professional competence profile of pre- and in-service teachers who want to fully implement the recommendations of the Council of Europe for the use of plurilingual approaches in (foreign) language education.

Teachers have to face the increasing need to cope with the changing landscape of the teaching profession for plurilingual education and the management of technology mediated teaching practices: on the one hand they have to teach in classes where there are different L1s, on the other hand they are required to integrate those languages in a plurilingual approach and make use of technology where and when it can potentially add value. In order to fulfill these requirements teachers need a specific training in comprehensive approaches that take into account different aspects related to their profession in the 21st century.

The main target group of the project are teachers involved in FL teaching, CLIL activities and project-based learning. They will be involved in a training that integrates the pedagogical aspects with the content knowledge and the digital tools (TPACK model) that might be effectively applied in class in an innovative framework that will set the bar high in terms of innovative practices and teacher training programmes across Europe.

The activities proposed through an internet platform and a set of webinars will strengthen the profile of the teaching profession enhancing the teachers’ pre- and in-service education and professional development; they will support teachers in developing innovative teaching methods, especially to promote competence-oriented teaching and learning in FL and CLIL education; they will enhance the teachers’ digital literacy and promote the use of ICT (with particular reference to Computer-Assisted Language Learning CALL) as a good practice to approach plurilingualism.

Furthermore, the findings of related SLA research will be made accessible to teachers by promoting researcher-teacher collaboration and teacher-research, and by involving teacher educators.

This approach will bridge the gap between research on the acquisition, learning and teaching of plurilingualism and the actual teaching practice.

The project will involve the following participants:

- local schools and collaboration with regional school offices

- in-service teachers (involved in teacher design teams)

- pre-service teachers (university students designing tasks as part of their course activities or as key content of their final thesis/course project)

Contact person: fanny.meunier@uclouvain.be