Integrating eye tracking, computational and learner corpus methods to develop second language pedagogical resources
PRIN 2017
Decades of corpus-based analyses of language production have revealed the centrality of the phraseological dimension in both native and non-native language usage. However, this dimension of linguistic complexity has not received the same attention as the lexical or syntactic ones.
Existing measures are still too simple to account for the complexity of the phraseological dimension of language and are basically constructed on the two notions of diversity, the range of phraseological units used in a text, and sophistication, the property of using uncommon phraseological units.
As a result, the aim of this project is twofold:
- to define a measure of phraseological complexity through the combination of offline (corpora and Natural Language Processing techniques) and online (eye tracker) data and provide a computational validation of the measure
- to integrate the results of the phraseological complexity analysis into the fields of Italian L2 syllabus and test design
By the end of the project, we will be able to characterize different proficiency levels in terms of phraseological complexity, thus filling in a crucial gap in second language acquisition research and providing best practices for assessing and testing phraseological competence in light of the CEFR levels.
Università per Stranieri di Perugia (capofila)
Stefania Spina (Principal Investigator)
Giuliana Grego Bolli
Valentino Santucci
Luciana Forti
borsisti: Angela Scerra, Fabio Zanda
Sapienza Università di Roma
Maria Roccaforte (Associated Investigator)
Sabine Koesters Gensini
Giovanni Luciani
Università degli Studi di Perugia
Alfredo Milani (Associated Investigator)
Valentina Poggioni
Simonetta Pallottelli
WP1: management and lauch of the project (months 1-36)
Unit responsible: UnistraPG - Prof. Stefania Spina
Units involved: all.
Aims: management and launch of the project (months 1-36), launch of the project (months 1-3), state of the art report (months 1-5)
WP2: towards the construction of the corpus (months 3-9)
Unit responsible: UnistraPG - Dr. Valentino Santucci
Units involved: UniPG and UnistraPG
Aims: selection of the framework for the syntactic parsing (months 4-9), transcription of the texts (months 3-8)
WP3: construction, computational treatment and analysis of the corpus (months 9-15)
Unit responsible: UniPG - Prof. Alfredo Milani
Units involved: all
Aims: construction, tagging and parsing of the corpus (months 9-12), extraction and analysis of the data (months 13-15)
WP4: elaboration of phraseological complexity measures (months 16-26)
Unit responsible: UnistraPG
Units involved: all
Aims: elaboration of phraseological complexity measures (months 16-24), formulation of combined measures based on both corpus and eye-tracking data through machine learning methodologies (months 22-26)
WP5: eye tracking study (months 6-24)
Unit responsible: UniRoma1 - Dr. Maria Roccaforte
Units involved: all
Aims: State of the art on studies conducted on measuring textual complexity with eye tracking data (months 6-9), construction of an experiment (months 10-15), explorative study with the eye tracker (months 10-15), evaluation of computational and corpus-based measures of phraseological complexity through eye tracking data (months 16-24)
WP6: creation syllabus and test (months 25-34)
Unit responsible: UniRoma1
Units involved: all
Aims: creation of a phraseological syllabus linked to the CEFR levels of proficiency (months 27-34), construction of a phraseological proficiency test (months 25-26), computational validation of phraseological complexity measures (months 25-26), administration of the phraseological proficiency test (months 27-28).
WP7: exploitation and dissemination of results (months 13-36)
Unit responsible: UnistraPG
Units involved: All
Aims: exploitation and dissemination of results (months 13-36), organization of an end-of-project conference (months 18-36)
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Kick-off meeting - Perugia, 12-13 febbraio 2020
- Day 1 - Università per Stranieri di Perugia
| Ora | Titolo |
|---|---|
| 11:00-11:30 | Saluti, benvenuto e presentazione di ciascuno dei partecipanti |
| 11:30-12:45 | Rilettura critica del progetto e indicazioni terminologiche |
| 12:45-13:15 | Visita guidata di Palazzo Gallenga |
| 13:15-15:00 | Pranzo |
| 15:00-17:00 |
Sessioni tematiche - Approcci teorici alla fraseologia in campo acquisizionale e glottodidattico - Aspetti metodologici dell’analisi della fraseologia attraverso i corpora - Aspetti metodologici dell’analisi della fraseologia attraverso eye-tracking - Aspetti metodologici dell’analisi della fraseologia attraverso il NLP |
| 17:00-17:30 | Caffè |
| 17:30-18:00 | Output del progetto: sillabo e valutazione |
| 18:00-19:00 | Discussione |
- Day 2 - Università degli Studi di Perugia - Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica
| Ora | Titolo |
|---|---|
| 9:00-9:30 | La nozione di complessità e di complessità fraseologica |
| 9:30-11:30 | Discussione |
| 11:30-12:00 | Caffè |
| 12:30-13:30 |
Calendario delle attività future e ruoli rispettivi. Agenda del primo anno e definizione dei WP Saluti conclusivi |
| 13:30 | Pranzo |