by sheila_admin | Jun 29, 2012 | Linguistics, Technology & TEFL
At its simplest, Computational Linguistics (or CL) is all about trying to create a computer which uses language in the same way as a human does. The Holy Grail would be a human having a conversation with a computer but thinking they were talking to a another human....
by sheila_admin | Jun 28, 2012 | Technology & TEFL
Authoring is the term used to describe the ability to change the content in a CALL computer program. For example, some off-the-shelf CALL programs come supplied with a bank of questions in English. However, these may not quite be suitable for a class in terms of level...
by sheila_admin | Jun 28, 2012 | Technology & TEFL
AntConc is a freeware concordancer and is very useful for searching through large swathes of texts to look for patterns of usage and so on. As an example, the screenshot on the right shows a concordance search for the word, word. The program has searched through a...
by sheila_admin | Jun 25, 2012 | Technology & TEFL
Rosetta Stone is the name of proprietary piece of software for language learning. The name comes from the Rosetta Stone, a large carved stone from Ancient Egypt with a single text in 3 languages which was used as an aid to translation. The principle of the Rosetta...
by sheila_admin | Jun 17, 2012 | Lesson Plans & Activities, Technology & TEFL
In an Action Maze students are put in a difficult situation and they need to decide what to do next. Often they’ll be given a few options to choose from. As a result of their choice, the students are then faced with the next situation in the story and with other...