backbone corpora for content & language integrated learning

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BACKBONE Corpora for Content & Language Integrated Learning Progress Report Public Part

BACKBONE – Corpora for Content & Language Integrated Learning

Project information

Project acronym: BACKBONE

Project title: Corpora for Content and Language Integrated

Learning

Project number: 143502-2008-LLP-DE-KA2-KA2MP

Grant agreement number: 2008-4465/001-001

Sub-programme or KA: KA 2: Languages

Project website: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/backbone

Reporting period: From 010109

To 301109

Report version: 1

Date of preparation: 15 Dec 2009

Beneficiary organisation: University of Tübingen

Project coordinator: Kurt Kohn

Project coordinator organisation: University of Tübingen

Project coordinator telephone

number:

+49 7071 29 72377

Project coordinator email address: [email protected]

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. © 2008 Copyright Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency. The document may be freely copied and distributed provided that no modifications are made, that the source is acknowledged and that this copyright notice is included.

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Executive Summary

This report addresses language teachers and teacher educators in secondary, higher and vocational education with a focus on content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and e-learning. The overall project objective is to offer language teachers and teacher educators in CLIL settings pedagogic corpus and e-learning solutions involving authentic, subject-specific spoken interviews. With its “do-it-yourself” orientation, BACKBONE seeks to provide for lesser taught languages as well as regional, socio-cultural and subject-related varieties. More specific project objectives include

creation of pedagogically annotated and enriched web-based corpora of video-recorded interviews in English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Turkish and English as a Lingua Franca;

development of pedagogically designed tools for corpus transcription, annotation and search;

pedagogic evaluation of the BACKBONE approach, corpora and tools in Moodle-enhanced CLIL courses in secondary, higher and vocational education;

dissemination of the BACKBONE results and outcomes with a special focus on online dissemination support and a European BACKBONE conference;

exploitation of the BACKBONE results and outcomes through teacher training workshops and an online exploitation service.

The project consortium consists of 8 partners from 7 European countries: France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Spain, Turkey and UK: 6 HE institutions, 1 VE institution and 1 consultancy company. Together they represent CLIL-specific language teaching needs and pedagogical experience, linguistic and computational know-how, pedagogic evaluation competence, as well as dissemination and marketing expertise. The methodological approach combines desk studies and empirical research, software and website development, e-learning design and blended language learning (BLL) implementation, corpus compilation, evaluation studies, workshop and conference organisation. Major project results achieved in the first project year include an empirical “fields & needs” analysis of pedagogic scenarios, learning objectives and CLIL topics, a report on corpus-enhanced language learning and teaching approaches, 90% of pedagogic corpus tool development, 70% of pedagogic corpus creation, publications and conference presentations, and a project website for project management, pilot course support, and dissemination. In the second project year, tool development and corpus creation will be completed. The main thrust of work will focus on the pilot courses and the corresponding teacher education and support measures. Towards the end of the second year, dissemination events and exploitation support will receive maximum attention. Project website: http//:www.uni-tuebingen.de/backbone

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Table of Contents

1 PROJECT OBJECTIVES .................................................................................... 5

2 PROJECT APPROACH ...................................................................................... 7

3 PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS ................................................................. 9

3.1 Pedagogic research ................................................................................................................................. 9

3.2 Pedagogic corpus tool development .................................................................................................... 10

3.3 Pedagogic corpus creation .................................................................................................................... 13

4 PARTNERSHIPS .............................................................................................. 16

5 PLANS FOR THE FUTURE .............................................................................. 17

6 CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICIES ................................................................. 18

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1 Project Objectives

Pedagogically neglected languages and varieties include lesser taught languages, regional, socio-cultural and subject-related varieties of more frequently taught languages, as well as English as a Lingua Franca. Teaching of these languages and varieties is handicapped by a lack of published language learning materials that matches the required thematic specialization. Since content and language integrated learning (CLIL) constitutes an educational practice strongly shaped by thematically specialized language varieties and lingua franca usage, teachers of CLIL experience these same shortcomings and challenges: How is it possible to support CLIL in its various thematic manifestations and thus to make use of the motivating potential of language learning with authentic contents? At the same time, important synergy effects are created when CLIL is combined with e-learning. Considering the power of the internet for providing rich content resources as well as supporting communication and collaboration, e-learning seems to be a natural environment for CLIL-based activities. The BACKBONE project addresses the pedagogic content needs and challenges of language teachers and teacher educators in secondary, higher and vocational education with regard to a pedagogic integration of CLIL and e-learning. The overall project objective is to offer “do-it-yourself” e-learning solutions that involve authentic, subject-related spoken interviews based on a pedagogic corpus approach. More specific project objectives concern pedagogic research, pedagogic corpus tool development, e-learning implementation, pedagogic corpus creation, pedagogic piloting and evaluation, dissemination and exploitation. This involves in particular

to carry out an empirical “fields & needs” analysis of pedagogic scenarios, learning objectives and CLIL topics, a research study on corpus-enhanced language learning & teaching, as well as pedagogic evaluation studies of the BACKBONE corpus tools, corpora and courses [pedagogic research];

to consolidate and extend existing open source corpus tools for interview transcription, collaborative corpus annotation and management, management of enrichment resources, and online search [pedagogic corpus tool development];

to design and implement a Moodle platform combining a course area with an area for continuous teacher support [e-learning implementation];

to compile, annotate and enrich web-based corpora of video-recorded interviews in English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Turkish, and English as a Lingua Franca [pedagogic corpus creation];

to design Moodle-based pilot courses to evaluate and explore the pedagogic potential of the BACKBONE approach in various manifestations of CLIL in secondary, higher and vocational education [pedagogic piloting & evaluation];

to promote the BACKBONE approach and outcomes emphasizing awareness raising and distribution of the BACKBONE corpora in secondary, higher and vocational education, with a special focus is on a final European BACKBONE conference [dissemination];

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to ensure long-term impact and sustainability in the educational “market” through teacher training workshops in all partner countries and implementation of an online BACKBONE service [exploitation];

Primary users of the BACKBONE approach are learners and teachers in CLIL settings in secondary, higher and vocational education. Secondary users are teacher educators in these areas. Both groups of users are directly involved in the project through the pilot courses, which are monitored by project partners specializing in CLIL-related language learning & teaching as well as in language teacher education. The impact and benefit is twofold: Language learners experience the motivating potential of corpus-based content and language integrated learning (CLIL); they explore the possibilities of e-learning (in blended learning contexts) with regard to learner autonomy, authenticity and collaboration; and they are enabled to further develop their ICT/media competences. Teachers are given the opportunity of an authentic experience to extend their pedagogical and technological competences. Continuous teacher support ensures seamless integration of backbone activities within their familiar teaching approach.

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2 Project Approach

In BACKBONE, methodological research and development decisions are strongly influenced by pedagogical considerations. Incorporating Widdowson’s (1990, 2003)1 imperative of pedagogical mediation, the project emphasizes the fundamental need for a thorough pedagogic conceptualisation of the entire corpus creation and deployment process. For this reason, our pedagogic “fields & needs” analyses and our research reports on the theoretical-methodological foundations of corpus-based language learning and teaching assume a key role in the overall methodological approach.2 Informed by these studies, BACKBONE proposes a “do it yourself” pedagogic corpus approach that empowers teachers to collaborate in the creation and pedagogical deployment of authentic content for web-based language learning and teaching in specialised CLIL contexts. Content-wise, BACKBONE addresses the constraints and needs of pedagogically neglected languages & varieties in CLIL settings. The approach is applied to 7 languages representing 3 areas of neglect: “lesser taught” (Polish, Turkish), “regional & socio-cultural” (English, French, German, and Spanish), and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). For each of these languages and varieties, a corpus of video-recorded spoken interviews with speakers from different walks of life (e.g. occupation, social class, region, dialect) is compiled. Our decision for pedagogic mediation has far-reaching implications throughout all levels of corpus design and creation. Pedagogic mediation begins with the actual interview recordings, in particular the selection of speakers, topics, and interview set-up settings. For the BACKBONE interviews, we analysed language course programmes and materials in secondary, higher and vocational education to identify a range of relevant, CLIL-specific themes. We also talked to teachers who would later be interested in taking part in the pedagogic evaluation. The interview recording approach is not a sophisticated one. The main purpose is to get the interviewee to relax and talk; conversational interaction is not in the foreground. The imperative of pedagogic mediation also thoroughly influences corpus tool development. The “engine” of the BACKBONE pedagogic corpus approach is an ensemble of corpus tools that are created and adapted to support pedagogic corpus annotation and enrichment, and online pedagogic corpus search. Key features are designed with the pedagogic purpose in mind and thus differ from descriptive corpus tools in important respects. BACKBONE tool development builds on open source products available from the European Minerva project SACODEYL (2005-08).3 The development focus in BACKBONE is on further consolidation and 1 Widdowson, H.G. (1990). Aspects of Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP; Widdowson, H.G. (2003). Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: OUP. 2 also see Braun, S. (2007). Integrating corpus work into secondary education: From data-driven learning to needs-driven corpora. ReCALL, 19, 307-328; Hoffstaedter, P. & K. Kohn (2009). Real language and relevant language learning activities: insights from the SACODEYL project. In A. Kirchhofer & J. Schwarzkopf (Eds.), The Workings of the Anglosphere. Contributions to the Study of British and US-American Cultures. Trier: WVT, 291-303. 3 see http://www.um.es/Sacodeyl [accessed 10 Dec 2009]; also see Widmann, J., Kohn, K. & Ziai, R. (2008). The SACODEYL search tool: exploiting corpora for language learning purposes. In Frankenburg-Garcia, A. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 8th Teaching and Language Corpora Conference, 3-6 July 2008, Lisbon. Lisbon: Associação de Estudos e de Investigação Cientifíca do ISLA-Lisboa, 321-


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the integration of additional pedagogically desirable features suggested by insights gained from the pedagogic research studies. Beyond corpus design, creation and search, the pedagogic orientation of BACKBONE also extends to the pedagogic embedding of corpus-based learning materials and activities in e-learning and e-teaching contexts. Guiding pedagogic principle is the integration of “focus on form” activities within an overall collaborative communication environment. To support and combine these two complementary task and activity types, BACKBONE uses the free-of-charge authoring software Telos Language Partner4 and the open source e-learning platform Moodle5. Exploration and evaluation of the pedagogical potential and added value of the BACKBONE corpora is carried out in specially designed pilot courses implemented in 5 language learning settings: (a) regular foreign language classes in secondary and/or higher education integrating culture and language learning; (b) bilingual subject classes (e.g. biology, geography, history) in secondary education with incidental foreign language learning; (c) LSP courses in higher education integrating foreign language and special subjects; (d) community interpreter courses in higher education; and vocational foreign language classes in further education. In addition to publications and conference contributions, the project’s dissemination and exploitation strategy builds on open web access to the BACKBONE pedagogic corpora and learning materials, “sand box” courses on the project’s Moodle site, and accompanying teacher workshops in the various partner countries. Close integration of all teacher training activities with real courses that are part of the regular school programme are highly desirable. To ensure transparent and efficient management, the project work flow is organized in 5 phases: “preparation”, “beta”, “consolidation”, “piloting”, and “final”. Each of these phases is clearly specified in terms of key activities, mile stone results and events, and key performance indicators. A PDSA cycle (“plan” – “do” – “study” – “act”) is implemented to accompany these phases and to facilitate continuing internal and external project evaluation.

327; Pérez-Paredes, P. & Alcaraz-Calero, J.M. (2009). Developing annotation solutions for online data driven learning. ReCALL 21/1, 55-75. 4 Kohn, K. (2008). Telos Language Partner: DIY authoring for content-based language learning. In A. Gimeno (Ed.), Computer Assisted Language Learning: Authoring Tools for Web-Based CALL. Valencia: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 157-174. 5 http://www.moodle.org


3 Project Outcomes & Results

The project outcomes and results achieved by the end of the first year of the project fall into four categories: pedagogic research reports, pedagogic corpus tool development, pedagogic corpus creation, and e-learning support. While corpus tool development and corpus creation are key objectives of the project, pedagogic research ensures that the entire BACKBONE approach and all project work are clearly focused on the pedagogic needs and purposes of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and e-learning. Tool development and corpus creation will be finished by the end of February 2010 and will feed into the implementation of the BACKBONE pilot courses. The BACKBONE e-learning support is designed to be part of a blended learning approach. It is implemented on the BACKBONE Moodle site, where it offers a space for the BACKBONE pilot courses along with an area for teacher support and collaboration. BACKBONE e-learning support will be available beginning of 2010. All public project outcomes and results including a selection of interviews will be made available on the project website. At the end of the project, the BACKBONE corpora can be publically accessed through the BACKBONE online search interface. BACKBONE website: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/backbone

3.1 Pedagogic research Pedagogic research in BACKBONE involves and combines three task dimensions: (a) an empirical “fields & needs” analysis to ensure a sound pedagogic contextualization of the project, (b) a state-of-the-art study about the theoretical-methodological foundations of a corpus-enhanced language learning & teaching approach, and (c) the formative and summative pedagogical evaluation of the BACKBONE tools, corpora and courses. Dimensions (a) and (b) have been covered in the first project year. The reports are publicly available on the project website.

(a) “Fields & needs” analysis The purpose of the BACKBONE pedagogical “fields & needs” analysis was to obtain an overview of the institutions running the BACKBONE pilot courses and the pedagogical environments in which the pilot courses will be run. A questionnaire approach was used to collect information about the types of institutions and their technological infrastructure, and the teaching needs and approaches that the pilot courses should take into account. The overall aim was to ensure that the corpora and the learning activities created in the BACKBONE project are relevant for the teachers and learners who participate in the pilot courses. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The field analysis section focused on the institutional frameworks, technological infrastructures and pedagogical preferences. The needs analysis section focused on the communicative situations and related learning needs and objectives. The picture that emerges from the completed questionnaires is that the regulations, circumstances and preferences of the pilot course institutions and teachers, and the needs and proficiencies of the learners are very different across the different

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institutions. Differences can be found in the learning objectives, the ways in which the classes are structured and taught, and in the length of time that is available to pilot the corpora. Although the needs of the learners are different, they can all profit from CLIL-related e-learning solutions and are thus clearly within the target range of BACKBONE.

(b) State of-the-art study: “Corpus-enhanced language learning & teaching” The results from the state-of-the-art study are presented in two report parts. Part 1: “Spoken multimedia corpora for student-centred corpus exploration” takes a research perspective and looks at the theoretical and methodological foundations of the pedagogic application of corpora. Starting from a review of the recent research literature, the report argues for a pedagogic corpus approach that reaches out beyond the mere pedagogic application of descriptively motivated corpora, but rather requires pedagogic corpora to be designed from a pedagogic vantage point in the first place. Using examples from the ELISA corpus, a spoken multimedia corpus of professional English [http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/elisa], the report continues to illustrate how corpus-based work in the classroom can be expanded beyond the conventional methods of ‘data-driven learning’. This way, it provides a valuable orientation for corpus development in BACKBONE. Report part 2: “Using pedagogic corpora for form and communication integrated learning” specifies prototypical corpus-based learning tasks and activities that can serve as a model for the creation of language learning resources in BACKBONE. Topic oriented learning activities include listening/reading comprehension supported by multimedia learning modules, topic driven explorations of the corpora, as well as thematic internet explorations (WebQuests) using the corpus materials as an opener or starting point. Language oriented activities focus on vocabulary, grammar and communicative functions, and also on spoken discourse and regional and social varieties. It is shown how the various modes and functions of the BACKBONE search interface can be used in Moodle for creating suitable exercises that combine a focus on form with a ´focus on communication.

3.2 Pedagogic corpus tool development BACKBONE tool development concerns transcription, annotation and enrichment, online search, and e-learning. Pedagogic mediation is a constitutive development principle. Since the interviews are intended for learning contexts, the Transcriptor tool employs an orthographical notation including punctuation, which is slightly adapted to rendering spoken discourse. A few pre-defined mark-up codes are used to specify, e.g., breaks, truncations, alternatives, or comments. Fillers, repetitions, and hesitation phenomena are only accounted for if considered to be meaningful. The Annotator tool applies to short transcript sections, which are annotated in a drag & drop fashion with categories deemed relevant for pedagogic purposes by the annotator-teacher, e.g. thematic, grammatical, lexical, and textual categories, and CEFR level specification. Words or phrases in a section that fit a certain category can be marked. The aim of annotation is not a classificatory one. The categories are rather meant to support pedagogic search; they can be defined by the annotator and thus tailored to capture the pedagogic potential of each individual corpus.

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Fig. 1: BACKBONE annotation

In addition, enrichment resources in the form of ready-made learning modules and instructions for communicative and collaborative learning exploration are managed via a Virtual Resource Pool (VRP) and linked to interview sections. The resources themselves are stored in the VRP in a virtual fashion, i.e. with their web address and a short description. Teachers can then go through the listed resources, select the ones they need and drop them into a Resource Sheet (similar to a shopping cart). As part of the annotation procedure, they can then create a link from interview sections to relevant Resource Sheets. The annotated and enriched interviews are accessed by teachers and learners in an online search interface offering 5 pedagogically motivated search modes: ‘Browse’, ‘Section search’, ‘Word search’, ‘Co-occurrence’, and ‘Lexical lists’. In ‘Browse’, entire interviews can be viewed and listened to, which facilitates contextualisation and discourse authentication. ‘Section search’ presents the corpus’s annotation category tree and is used to search for individual interview sections that comply with a specified combination of thematic and linguistic annotation categories; words and phrases that satisfy one of these categories can be highlighted. ‘Word search’ produces concordances; and ‘Co-occurrence’ lists sections that contain a number of specified words in free distribution. These two lexical search modes can be combined with selecting annotation categories, thereby limiting the search scope to sections that deal with a certain topic, demonstrate certain grammatical properties, or belong to a preferred CEFR level. ‘Lexical lists’ displays occurring words and annotated words & phrases for the entire corpus or selected categories along with frequencies and access to concordances. While substantial parts of these corpus tools are available from the SACODEYL project, major extensions have been addressed and achieved in BACKBONE. Beyond necessary consolidation improvements, these extensions include in particular including in particular collaborative and simultaneous corpus annotation,

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web-based corpus management, a web service for the integration of enrichment resources, a lexical pattern search support, as well as alignment of formats for video streaming and download of sound files.

Fig. 2: BACKBONE section search

Fig. 3: BACKBONE word search (concordances)

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Fig. 4: BACKBONE co-occurrence search

3.3 Pedagogic corpus creation The BACKBONE suite of pedagogic corpora consists of 7 sub-corpora of video-recorded interviews: English, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Turkish as well as French, German, Polish, Spanish and Turkish manifestations of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF). English is covered by 50 interviews: 25 British and 25 Irish; all the other languages are represented with 25 interviews; the ELF corpus contains a total of 50 interviews, with 10 interviews for each of the base languages French, German, Polish, Spanish and Turkish. The interviews have an average length of 10 minutes. Pedagogic annotation refers to thematic, linguistic and CEFR characteristics; pedagogic enrichment concerns ready-made language learning materials and instructions for exploratory and communicative tasks. Typical topic areas covered in the BACKBONE corpora emphasize a regional perspective and include culture, world of labour, urban and rural life, social issues, health and social security, education, environment, government and politics. Each language corpus tries to strike a balance between the range of topic coverage, difficulty level and the thematic requirements of the partners who will be using the corpus in their BACKBONE pilot course. The following summary accounts give an idea of the spread of topics dealt with across the interviews in the various corpora. The British English interviews were recorded in selected regions in the UK including the counties of Surrey (Guildford), Somerset (Bristol, Cleeve, Martock and Taunton), Devon (Plymouth) and the West Midlands (Birmingham). In addition, the content of some of these interviews focused on other parts of the country (e.g. Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire). The participants came from a range of different professional backgrounds: two speakers who are involved in a tourist attraction in Plymouth, the Managing Director of a science park and the Director of Traded Services at the University of Surrey, a manager of a nursing home and a senior nurse at a special care baby unit, the Managing Director of Surrey Sports Park, a web designer and virtual learning specialist, a translator, a tango teacher, a specialist

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in the field of audio description for visually impaired people, an administrator at a performing arts school, a wedding planner, a lawyer, a marketer for a law firm, and the Director of Research, Business and Innovation at the University of the West of England in Bristol. The Irish English interviews were recorded in selected regions in Ireland including the counties of Cork, Tipperary, Kerry, Dublin, Laois, Roscommon, Clare and Mayo. The participants came from a range of different professional backgrounds including teachers from primary, secondary and third level education, a community dietician, a PHD student, a boat club caretaker, a taxi driver, a jewellery shop assistant, a research and development officer, a recruitment consultant, various sports players and enthusiasts, a keen historian, an amateur singer, a homebrew wine entrepreneur, twin brothers: a civil servant and a glass factory worker, an administrator for the University of Limerick language centre, the manager of the Garda Racial and Intercultural Office, the assistant director of Pavee Point-a Traveller’s rights organisation, a Product Development Officer for Failte Ireland, and last but not least a farmer. Even though most of the French interviews were recorded in the Jura region, the people selected for the interviews came from different parts of France or French

speaking areas: Jura, Bresse, Paris, Lorraine, Provence, and Africa. The interviewees came from a wide range of different professional backgrounds including trainers in a business school, students of Medicine, Politics, and Business Administration, a salesman, a retired Post Office inspector, a chief accountant, a webmaster, an IT engineer, and the President of a Football Association. The German interviews were recorded in different regions and cities in Germany including southern Germany (Lake Constance area, Swabia and Baden), the Rhine-Ruhr area, northern Germany (Dithmarschen/Schleswig-Holstein), and Berlin. One interview was recorded in Austria (Vienna). The Interviewees came from a wide range of different professional backgrounds: teachers from primary, secondary, vocational, and higher education, a city councilor, members of the Green Party, a general practitioner and an anesthesiologist; engineers from the automotive industry, a director from a tourist office, the owner of a delicatessen shop; a fisherman and owner of a fishery from lake Constance, people working in the area of nature conservation and animal-welfare, an artist working on an interactive exhibition for a seal center, and last but not least a German writer. For the Polish corpus, the speakers come from central Poland and they all speak the standard language but they represent different professional backgrounds. We

focused on the topics which are connected to different types of business. We interviewed e.g. an owner of a computer shop, an interpreter, and a staff member from the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development who also explained some issues

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of the regional politics or the principals of the financial support of the EU. We also interviewed some representatives of professions connected with radio and television who explained the nature of their work; so in these interviews appear e.g. a television journalist and a make up artist. We also recorded interviewees talking about some social topics as sexual minority, icons of pop culture or extraordinary hobbies. The Spanish corpus contains interviews with speakers of different regions: Aragon (Zaragoza), Andalusia (Jaen, Seville, Granada), Cantabria (Celis, a small villaje near Santander), Castilla-La Mancha (Albacete), Comunidad Valenciana (Alicante), Galicia (La Coruña), and Region of Murcia (Murcia). The professional background of the participants is also very diverse, as we interviewed: a top researcher; an ex-lawyer; teachers from primary, secondary and tertiary education; an NGO volunteer; a doctor; a librarian; a sportswoman; an ex-worker of a quality control laboratory; a folklore specialist; two young entrepreneurs; a telemarketer; a bio-farmer; a first year university student; a confectioner; and a clerk, among others. They cover a very wide range of topics ranging from those directly related to their professional lives to other issues more closely related to culture (traditions, typical food from their region), the environment (deforestation, lack of water), local and central institutions, or tourism (medical tourism, tourist attractions). As Turkish is one of the two pedagogically neglected languages included in BACKBONE, the Turkish interviews involved only people speaking standard Turkish. Even though the interviews were recorded in Kayseri, a Central Anatolian city, and the people selected for the interviews were born and raised in different regions in Turkey, they all had standard or near standard accents. Excpet for a few of the speakers, they mostly had university level education, and thus were able to speak standard Turkish well. They came from a variety of professional and social backgrounds including a housewife, an insurance expert, two computer engineers and a programmer, a dentist, a librarian, two mechanical engineers, two directors of education, a science teacher, a pharmacis, two architects, a florist, a catering manager, a shop owner, a medical doctor, a lawyer, a banker, an optician, a project administrator and a hairdresser. The ELF corpus consists of interviews with non-native speakers of English in France, Germany, Poland, Spain and Turkey. As a guiding principle, the interviewees use English in their work environments or privately on a more regular basis. It is also important that they feel comfortable using English in front of a camera. Thematically, the ELF interviews cover topics similar to the native speaker corpora.

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4 Partnerships

The BACKBONE consortium consists of 8 partners from 7 European countries (France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Spain, Turkey and UK); and it involves 6 HE institutions, 1 VE institution and 1 consultancy company. Together they represent key competences and expertise required for the successful completion of the project. This concerns in particular the following areas:

CLIL-specific language teaching needs and pedagogical approaches; corpus linguistics, web design and software development; multimedia and web content authoring; language pedagogy, e-learning and blended language learning; language teacher education; pedagogical evaluation; dissemination and marketing; European project management.

In BACKBONE, the multi-country partnership has a natural and immediate European added value. Only in such a partnership is it possible to create the required multi-language corpora and to explore their pedagogic potential in different European manifestations of CLIL in secondary, higher and vocational education. Working together in a European partnership makes it necessary to negotiate between culturally diverse pedagogic settings. In particular with regard to designing and implementing e-learning solutions, this creates a significant challenge – and a great advantage. Partnerships with external groups and institutions are forged to spread the word and to create sustainable exploitation initiatives. Regarding cooperation with other European projects, association links already exist with the LLP projects AVALON, icEurope and PELLIC, and with the Comenius network WIDE MINDS. Links to professional networks in language learning and teaching include ICC - The International Language Network, the Centres d’Étude des Langues (Chambres de Commerces et d’Industrie) in France, the Arbeitskreis der Sprachenzentren (AKS) in Germany, the company-based information network ERFA Wirtschaft Sprache, and the Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP).

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5 Plans for the Future

To achieve the project objectives, the work that remains to be carried out in the second year of the project includes the following tasks: (1) Finalization of currently ongoing activities in connection with corpus tool development and corpus creation by February 2010. This concerns in particular

(a) consolidation of the corpus management functions based on feedback from the annotation process and preparation of the pilot courses,

(b) integration of a multi-tier function to enable annotator/teachers to show and hide selected tiers of annotations,

(c) completion of the BACKBONE search interface with the corpus management functions and consolidation of the video streaming solution,

(d) pedagogic annotation of the BACKBONE interview corpora and creation of corresponding learning materials (enrichment resources),

(e) completion of the Moodle-based BACKBONE e-learning platform. (2) Implementation and pedagogic evaluation of Moodle-based BACKBONE pilot courses for different CLIL settings and target languages:

(a) regular foreign language classes with a combined focus on culture and foreign language [secondary and/or higher education],

(b) bilingual subject classes focusing on subject learning in the foreign language [secondary education],

(c) language for academic purposes courses focusing on the foreign language in relation to academic subjects [higher education],

(d) community interpreter courses focusing on specialized foreign language communication [higher education],

(e) vocational foreign language classes focusing on the foreign language in relation to vocational subjects [further education].

Target languages include English, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Turkish. (3) Implementation of online teacher development & accompanying measures on the BACKBONE e-learning platform, including in particular support documents, ready-made learning materials, instructions for e-learning activities, model course units as well as facilities for networking and collaboration. (4) Pedagogic assessment and evaluation of the BACKBONE tools, corpora and pilot courses. (5) Dissemination of all BACKBONE outcomes and results including in particular the implementation of a dissemination area on the project website for online dissemination support and a final European BACKBONE Workshop. (6) Exploitation measures and activities to ensure long-term impact and sustainability including in particular implementation of an exploitation area on the project website for online exploitation support and organization of BACKBONE teacher workshops in different European countries.

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6 Contribution to EU policies

BACKBONE makes a significant contribution to the objectives of the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP). With its focus on the lesser taught languages Polish and Turkish, regional & socio-cultural varieties of English, French, German and Spanish, as well as European manifestations of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), this concerns in particular the promotion of language learning and linguistic diversity. As the project cuts across secondary, higher and vocational education, it also contributes to the promotion of European cooperation between different sub-programmes (Comenius, Erasmus, and Leonardo). In terms of LLP 2008 priorities, the project’s focus on a pedagogic corpus approach aiming at content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is clearly directed to motivate language learners and to enhance their capacity for language learning through the learning authentication of real-life themes and subjects. Of the Lisbon Education & Training Progress Indicators it is in particular the effectiveness of language teaching [LIS-A3] which is addressed. With its pedagogic corpus approach that enables teachers to provide their learners with targeted learning opportunities for autonomous, authenticated and collaborative language learning in e-learning-enhanced blended learning contexts, BACKBONE offers a great potential for independent practice and thus opportunities for the individual learner’s self-study potential. The project quite explicitly addresses Lisbon Key Competence “Communication in foreign language learning” [KC2]: On the basis of authentic interview corpora, it supports the combination of form-focused language practice with online communicative interaction & collaboration in e-learning settings. With its emphasis on lesser taught languages, regional & socio-cultural varieties and English as a Lingua Franca, the project contributes to the LLP Horizontal policy of promoting awareness of the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity within Europe. Since BACKBONE has a strong component of corpus and e-learning tool development, complementarity with other policies exists in particular in the area of ICT.

backbone corpora for content & language integrated learning

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