Judith Knapp

A Review of Intelligent CALL Systems

Computer-assisted language learning is a research field which explores the use of computational methods and techniques as well as new media for language learning and teaching. Recently, an increasing number of language learning systems began to adopt Artificial Intelligence techniques. This paper provides an overview about intelligent computer-assisted language learning. The most advanced systems have been investigated and classified along five dimension: supported languages, Artificial Intelligence techniques, language skills, language elements, and availability. The paper concludes with a discussion about outstanding problems that need further research in order to exploit the full potential of intelligent technologies in language learning envoronments.

Supporting teachers as content authors in intelligent educational systems

Intelligent Educational Systems (IESs) need large amounts of educational content that is typically not provided by the creators of these systems. In this paper we discuss a new approach for authoring practical IESs where core authoring is done by professional design teams, while the educational content is mainly developed by teachers who use the system in their classes. The major bottleneck of this approach is the lack of intelligent authoring support tools that allow regular teachers to author intelligent content that an IES needs in order to perform its functions. As a contribution to solving this problem, we present our recent work on authoring support for an adaptive vocabulary acquisition system, ELDIT. The paper describes the ELDIT system, the needs and challenges of language content authoring by teachers, and the two authoring support components that we have developed for two essential kinds of language learning content: illustrative examples and educational texts.

A Web-Based Language Learning System

We present an ongoing research project which aims at developing an electronic vocabulary learning system for the German and the Italian language. The system consists of an extensive dictionary, a collection of exercises, text units, a tandem-feature and an electronic tutor which guides the learner through a systematic vocabulary acquisition process. To ensure maximum effectiveness of the learning process, modern psycholinguistic methods are applied along with new media and technologies including adaptive hypermedia.

Multiple use of content in a Web-based language learning system

Content creation for a language learning system is a time-consuming, laborious, and expensive task. An important part of content in a language learning system is the illustrative content, namely example sentences. We discuss a solution to reuse illustrative content in a Web-based language learning system for the German and Italian languages. Our approach explores fully the potential of hypertext, which allows building complex networks of small pieces of learning material. A first evaluation shows promising results.