Natural Language Processing for Computer-assisted Language Learning

NLP4CALL2024 : Natural Language Processing for Computer-assisted Language Learning

25-26 Oct 2024 Rennes (France)

Description of the workshop

The workshop series on Natural Language Processing for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (NLP4CALL) is a meeting place for researchers working on the integration of Natural Language Processing and Speech Technologies in CALL systems and exploring the theoretical and methodological issues arising in this connection. The latter includes, among others, insights from Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research, on the one hand, and promote the development of “Computational SLA” through setting up Second Language research infrastructure(s), on the other.

The intersection of Natural Language Processing (or Language Technology / Computational Linguistics) and Speech Technology with Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) brings “understanding” of language to CALL tools, thus making CALL intelligent. This fact has given the name for this area of research – Intelligent CALL, ICALL. As the definition suggests, apart from having excellent knowledge of Natural Language Processing and/or Speech Technology, ICALL researchers need good insights into second language acquisition theories and practices, as well as knowledge of second language pedagogy and didactics. This workshop invites therefore a wide range of ICALL-relevant research, including studies where NLP-enriched tools are used for testing SLA and pedagogical theories, and vice versa, where SLA theories, pedagogical practices or empirical data are modeled in ICALL tools.

The NLP4CALL workshop series is aimed at bringing together competencies from these areas for sharing experiences and brainstorming around the future of the field.

We welcome papers:

- that describe research directly aimed at ICALL;

- that demonstrate actual or discuss the potential use of existing Language and Speech Technologies or resources for language learning;

- that describe the ongoing development of resources and tools with potential usage in ICALL, either directly in interactive applications, or indirectly in materials, application or curriculum development, e.g. learning material generation, assessment of learner texts/responses, individualized learning solutions, provision of feedback;

- that discuss challenges and/or research agenda for ICALL;

- that describe empirical studies on language learner data.

This year, a special focus is given to systems relying on AI trained for ICALL tasks. This includes, but not only, fine tuning Large Language Models (LLMs) and supervised-learning methods based on learning analytics. Issues related to data in SLA and learner corpus such as collection and feature extraction are also welcome.

Submission information

Authors are invited to submit long papers (8-12 pages) alternatively short or demo papers (4-7 pages), page count not including references. We will be using the NLP4CALL templates for the workshop this year.

Final camera-ready versions of accepted papers will be given an additional page to address reviewer comments.

You may also find the links to the Latex and Word templates from 2023 here:

https://spraakbanken.gu.se/forskning/teman/icall/nlp4call-workshop-series/nlp4call2023#submission

Papers should describe original unpublished work or work-in-progress. Papers will be peer-reviewed by at least two members of the program committee in a double-blind fashion. All accepted papers will be collected into a proceedings volume to be submitted for publication in the NEALT Proceeding Series (Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings) and, additionally, double-published through the ACL anthology, following experiences from the previous NLP4CALL editions.

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