Online translators for L2 writing: a comparison of student and teacher perspectives

This short paper reports on the preliminary findings of a study into the use of Online Translators (OTs) by university language students. Students of Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish and their teachers responded to comparative surveys on their respective use and evaluation of OTs for L2 writing in formal language learning contexts. Findings indicate that teachers have little awareness of the range of strategies students apply when using OTs as writing tools. Concerns of OT misuse for cheating or as a replacement for language learning seem largely unfounded. Students, however, perceive a lack of guidance for the appropriate use of OTs. Preliminary findings suggest that teachers need to review their assumptions about students’ OT practices and that both students and teachers would benefit from technical and pedagogical OT training.

Informal language Practices via Digital Technology

The main contention of this chapter is to dig into ICT-based serendipitous activities that second language (L2) learners perform beyond formal curriculum. It is based on an idea that juxtaposition of formal and informal language learning, under the auspices of ICT, broadens the ecology of learning and thus contributes to learners' overall proficiency. Nevertheless, formal language learning continues to be disconnected from practices that take place outside the classroom in hyperspaces, and the language uptake obtained from informal electronic involvement generally goes unnoticed. The chapter undertakes this missing proficiency and suggests implications to bridge or at least narrow the gap between formal and informal learning. It familiarizes teachers, parents, and course designers with today's learners' experiences of learning that occur after structured lessons. It implies that informal ICT-enabled practices should be fostered as supplementary and complementary to the formal instruction.

Robust separations in inductive inference

Results in recursion-theoretic inductive inference have been criticized as depending on unrealistic self-referential examples. J. M. Bārzdiņš proposed a way of ruling out such examples, and conjectured that one of the earliest results of inductive inference theory would fall if his method were used. In this paper we refute Bārzdiņš' conjecture.We propose a new line of research examining robust separations; these are defined using a strengthening of Bārzdiņš' original idea. The preliminary results of the new line of research are presented, and the most important open problem is stated as a conjecture. Finally, we discuss the extension of this work from function learning to formal language learning.