Heritage Language 2 Consortium

A strategic partnership for the study of Portuguese in multilingual settings

Tag: Tübingen

HL2C Seminar: Joana Moscoso (Native Scientist) and Julia Schiefer (Tübingen), Exploring the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach programme for migrant students

March 22, 2022 /

We are excited to announce our next HL2C seminar, taking place on Thursday 31st March 2022, from 3pm to 4pm (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Joana Moscoso (Native Scientist) and Julia Schiefer (Tübingen)

Title:

Exploring the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach programme for migrant students

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Inspiring ethnic minority and migrant students to pursue higher education or careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) challenges many European countries. This target group often underperforms in STEM subjects due to various reasons, including specific linguistic and educational needs. We will present the results of a randomized controlled trial testing the impact of an innovative science outreach program, which connects migrant students with scientists of the same linguistic and cultural background. The Native Scientist project (www.nativescientist.com) follows a science and language integrated learning approach bringing together real-world STEM professionals and migrant students to discuss science topics and science careers in the students’ heritage language. The interaction between scientists and students happens through workshops whose effectiveness has been studied for both the students and the scientists. We observed increased attainment value, intrinsic interest, self-concept, and intention to future participation in science, and increased intrinsic interest and self-concept of ability for the students’ heritage language immediately after the workshop. We also identified a range of challenges and benefits for participating scientists. Overall, results indicate a positive effect of the workshops and that it is possible to foster migrant students’ motivation for science through their participation in a science outreach program

HL2C YouTube Channel now online!

March 11, 2022 /

HL2C YouTube Channel now online

It is a pleasure to announce that the HL2C YouTube Channel is now up and running. We are using this channel to share video content of activities involving the Consortium and its constituent partner institutions.

You can access our channel by clicking this link.

We grateful to the speakers of our HL2C Seminar Series for their stimulating talks and for agreeing to share the recordings with the wider heritage language and second language community. Thank you also to Luiz Amaral, who suggested the creation of this channel, and to Sophie Bennett for editing the videos and co-managing the channel.

We hope you enjoy the YouTube Channel!

 

HL2C/SLLAT Seminar: Xiaobin Chen (Tübingen): AISLA – An intelligent agent for second language English learning in real-life contexts

February 2, 2022 /

Another exciting HL2C seminar will take place on Wednesday 9th February from 12 noon to 1pm GMT (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenter:

Xiaobin Chen (Tübingen)

Title:

Aisla—An intelligent agent for second language English learning in real-life contexts (Joint talk with Lancaster’s SLLAT Group.)

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Aisla, a project funded by the German Ministry of Education, aims at developing an Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) system for training spoken English within real-life contexts. The system features design principles of Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), naturalistic speech interaction with AI-powered conversation agents, and live adaptive feedback with Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies. In this talk, the Aisla team will present the design principles of ICALL language learning tasks, describe the Aisla system architecture, and demonstrate the current state of a mobile app implementing the above-mentioned features. We will also talk about the outlook of the project and the unique opportunities the Aisla system may offer to second language acquisition research.

PhD scholarship: Natural Language Processing and SLA

January 26, 2022 /

We are delighted to announce the a three-year PhD position, co-supervised by Professor Amália Mendes (University of Lisbon), Professor Detmar Meurers (University of Tübingen), and Professor Patrick Rebuschat (Lancaster University). It would be great if you could circulate the announcement within your networks.

PhD scholarship: Natural Language Processing and Second Language Acquisition

Applications are invited for a three-year PhD position in Natural Language Processing applied to foreign language learning and teaching at the Linguistics Center of the University of Lisbon (CLUL).

The deadline for applications is February 28, 2022. For additional information, including salary and application details, please visit:

https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/733640

The aim of the PhD project is to research, develop and evaluate a digital tool supporting the acquisition of Portuguese as a Foreign or Heritage language. The work can build on the existing ICALL approaches developed at the University of Tübingen for English and German (http://icall-research.de). The goal is to support learners in selecting texts that support noticing of key target structures and provide practice opportunities. The computational linguistic analysis can build on recent findings about linguistic structures that are acquired late by heritage speakers of Portuguese and include an empirical validation in the context of the network maintained by the Camões Institute across the globe.

The PhD project will be co-supervised by Professor Amália Mendes (University of Lisbon), Professor Detmar Meurers (University of Tübingen), and Professor Patrick Rebuschat (Lancaster University). The successful applicant will be integrated in the Heritage Language Consortium (HL2C), a strategic partnership between six European universities and the Camões Institute, a branch of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further details on the HL2C can be found on our website:

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/heritage-language/.

For questions, email us at:
Amália Mendes amaliamendes@letras.ulisboa.pt
Detmar Meurers detmar.meuers@uni-tuebingen.de
Patrick Rebuschat p.rebuschat@lancaster.ac.uk

Hector Foundation pledges 19M EUR to support educational research at Tübingen

December 4, 2021 /

The Hector Foundation has 19M EUR of funding to support empirical educational research at the University of Tübingen.

This significant funding will go towards the strengthening of the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, one of the HL2C founding institutions.

The Hector Institute was founded in 2014 with a generous endowment from the Hector Foundation. The grant will help to strengthen the institute’s international visibility in the long term and secure its position as one of Germany’s leading educational research institutions.

Close to 80 scientists work at the Hector Institute, where they investigate and empirically validate the quality of educational offerings and educational processes.

Professor Ulrich Trautwein, Director of the Hector Institute, said: “Education is the most important resource we can pass on to the next generation. The generous grant will enable a new generation of scientific studies that will help to understand and improve educational processes.”

For more information, please see the press release. For more information, please visit the Hector Institute website or see the video below.

 

HL2C Seminars 2021-2022

September 15, 2021 /

It’s a pleasure to share the program of this year’s HL2C seminar series with you. We might still not be able to travel as easily as before, but in the meantime, we can meet digitally on a regular basis. 

Our program: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/heritage-language/seminars/ 

The program for 2021/2022 is not finalized yet, but we are excited about how it is taking shape. As you will see, there will be a mix between internal (HL2C) and external speakers, early-career and more senior researchers. The sessions will cover a wide range of themes (second and heritage language acquisition and teaching, bilingualism, etc.), different languages and populations of interest, and a variety of approaches (quantitative and qualitative), fully reflecting the broad interests of the HL2C member institutions. While most talks focus on research, we are also inviting other stakeholders (policy makers, non-profits, etc.) to do presentations. 

How to attend: All talks will take place via Microsoft Teams. We will circulate the link via the HL2C mailing list one week before the talk and send a reminder one day before the talk. To join the mailing list, please click here.

Talks will be delivered in English. The sessions should last one hour – about 40 minutes of talk, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Some of the talks will be recorded and made available for viewing via the mailing list.

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