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The ability to objectively quantify the complexity of a text can be a useful indicator of how likely learners of a given level will comprehend it. Before creating more complex models of assessing text difficulty, the basic building block of a text consists of words and, inherently, its overall difficulty is greatly influenced by the complexity of underlying words. One approach is to measure a word's Age of Acquisition (AoA), an estimate of the average age at which a speaker of a language understands the semantics of a specific word. Age of Exposure (AoE) statistically models the process of word learning, and in turn an estimate of a given word's AoA. In this paper, we expand on the model proposed by AoE by training regression models that learn and generalize AoA word lists across multiple languages including English, German, French, and Spanish. Our approach allows for the estimation of AoA scores for words that are not found in the original lists, up to the majority of the target language's vocabulary. Our method can be uniformly applied across multiple languages though the usage of parallel corpora and helps bridge the gap in the size of AoA word lists available for non-English languages. This effort is particularly important for efforts toward extending AI to languages with fewer resources and benchmarked corpora. [This paper was published in: "AIED 2021," edited by I. Roll et al., Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021, pp. 77-87.]

Due to recent unrest around the world, the number of refugees has increased dramatically in the last decade. In order to meet the needs of this population, host countries have had to quickly adapt to provide these refugees with basic needs. One such need is to have quality education for refugee children. The aim of this paper is to compare the policies of educational inclusion in Germany and Turkey that have accepted a large influx of refugees. Our findings suggest that both the German city-state of Hamburg and Turkey have made major strides over the past ten years to accommodate and provide for refugee children's educational needs. We list some of the policies that have led to greater inclusion and accessibility for refugee children in mainstream education. Key findings from the comparative document analysis show that although the two countries are distinguished by different levels of income and development, both have similarities in terms of (1) providing compulsory education for all children, (2) the delay in preparing and applying policy-based legislations for refugee education, and (3) the main activities such as additional language support and teacher training for the purpose of social inclusion of refugee students. Furthermore, both countries have had similar challenges such as the necessity of improvements in second language instruction and teacher training, thus highlighting the need for refugee education-oriented global solutions for the host countries. We recommend continued efforts to include multiculturally rich school curriculums to create educational settings that feel inclusive and comfortable for refugee children. [For the complete Volume 20 proceedings, see ED622631.]

There is no doubt that Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and mobile mediated communication are linked as technology continues to transform the way we communicate with each other. Campbell (2019) analyzed how mobile communication evolved into portable devices to form a complete system of mobile media, reshaping the fabric of our social lives via 'sociality' and 'spatiality'. In this short paper, we would like to offer a brief overview of the diverse oral presentations which took place in the joint CMC and MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) Special Interest Group (SIG) symposium at the online conference this year. This short paper will introduce various online apps which are available for free in both computer-based and mobile versions and can be adapted to foreign language learning in various ways. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

Playing games on mobile devices has become an integral part of younger generations' lives. Mobile games foster, among other things, deep concentration. This paper reports on design guidelines derived from observations of six elementary school pupils' engagement over a six-week period during an after-school reading club program. Each meeting consisted of three activities as well as reading text on the Microsoft immersive reader on an iPad, and playing a competitive reading game app, 'Henry rennt', which are both designed to support reading. Pupils were engaged in informal conversation with the researchers about both applications, and the authors informally observed the pupils' engagement with the apps and each other. Patterns of engagement and comments from pupils informed the design of a new reading app. This work reports these general patterns and concludes with new research areas to pursue as a result, including the impact of: social setting on playing, in-game teaching with avatars on engagement, and speed as a measurement of skill mastery. Finally, the applicability of children's engagement patterns is validated with adult students of German as a second language who used the app. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

This paper summarises the contributions to EuroCALL's CorpusCALL SIG Symposium for the year 2020. In line with this year's EuroCALL conference theme, 'CALL for widening participation', the Symposium centred around the theme of "Data-driven learning for languages other than English." This paper gives a brief overview of developments and challenges when using Data-Driven Learning (DDL) to teach French, German, Italian, and Spanish. As research suggests, a DDL approach has been effectively utilised to teach these languages. However, there are differences in available DDL resources and corpora for the respective languages that are appropriate for language teaching. The main challenges for future developments are also discussed. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

Over the past few years, language teaching has progressively evolved from teacher-fronted classroom settings to more complex, learner-centered scenarios, allowing learners to explore authentic contents, work collaboratively, and create sophisticated and socially relevant products. In addition, these processes foster language learning, increase learner engagement, and support the acquisition of competences such as critical thinking and democratic competence. In spite of these positive results, previous research has not always suggested efficient ways to properly manage classroom interaction and potentially enhance learning outcomes. Against this backdrop, this paper explores the potential of cooperation scripts as a means to leverage collaborative work and classroom interaction in complex learning scenarios. In this paper, we report on the first phase of an intervention study that was conducted with 17 university learners of German at the B2-C1 level. Survey results show that most of the students found the addition of the cooperation script to be beneficial when engaging in a complex, game-based scenario. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

The ability to spell correctly is a fundamental skill for participating in society and engaging in professional work. In the German language, the capitalization of nouns and proper names presents major difficulties for both native and nonnative learners, since the definition of what is a noun varies according to one's linguistic perspective. In this paper, we hypothesize that learners use different cognitive strategies to identify nouns. To this end, we examine capitalization exercises from more than 30,000 users of an online spelling training platform. The cognitive strategies identified are syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and morphological approaches. The strategies used by learners overlap widely but differ by individual and evolve with grade level. The results show that even though the pragmatic strategy is not taught systematically in schools, it is the most widespread and most successful strategy used by learners. We therefore suggest that highly granular learning process data can not only provide insights into learners' capabilities and enable the creation of individualized learning content but also inform curriculum development. [For the full proceedings, see ED615472.]

This paper contributes to a better understanding of the affordances of gamification in Foreign or Second Language (FL/L2) education, specifically in the context of a secondary school. An Exploratory Research (ER) was conducted, aiming to examine how gamification affects secondary school learners' experience in the FL/L2 classroom. A six-week technology-assisted gamified mobile language course for German as a Foreign Language (GFL), called MISSION BERLIN, was developed, implemented, and evaluated. Data collection methods include semi-structured focus group interviews with all students, an online survey and Moodle logs. Results indicate that there are certain game elements that are more useful in a mobile Moodle environment than others, and that structure and duration of the course, as well as technical issues, influence the students' learning experience. The paper concludes with suggested improvements and final considerations for the implementation of a gamified mobile course for FL/L2 learning. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED590612.]

This reflective practice paper presents an excerpt of the outcome of a telecollaboration project between two tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Finland. Twenty-six intermediate students of German in the two countries used a Facebook-group to write about given topics which were part of their final assessment. The posts were a combination of video uploads, audio recordings, and writing which is in line with the multimodal meaning-making theory (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). The task design was guided by O'Dowd and Ware's (2009) three-layer approach design. The study investigates how students perceive the collaboration using the Facebook group and how the multimodal approach helps the students to develop their digital literacies. The data collected for the study included a mixed-methods approach with pre- and post-questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and Facebook logs. Results show that students learned more about each others' culture and improved their German at the same time. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED590612.]

This article reports on an autoethnography by two authors who analysed the interrelationship of their experiences as foreign language learners, educators, and researchers. Both participant-researchers had taken advantage of the accessibility of online learning resources to learn new languages, had incorporated digital tools into their teaching practices, and had researched how technology could be used as a learning aid for students inside and outside the classroom. In this collaborative autoethnography, they turned the research lens upon themselves and each other to develop understandings of the way their experiences as language learners and researchers impacted upon their teacher cognition and teaching practices. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

The Year Abroad (YA) is one of the most valuable parts of our language degree programmes. Here we discuss some of the elements that constitute the assessment Nottingham Trent University students carry out to earn a YA diploma. More specifically we compare the two elements (blog and dossier) that we think contribute most to reflective practice, by analysing examples from students of French, German, and Spanish. Although at this point the analysis remains impressionistic, we compare which of these two elements helps students to reflect more deeply and meaningfully while achieving the YA objectives. The main findings indicate that both types of text help students to reflect on their experience and consequently to develop their Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). Notably, the use of the target language does not appear to determine the level of reflection while the intended audience plays an important part in the style and accessibility of students' work. [For the complete volume, "Perspectives on the Year Abroad: A Selection of Papers from YAC2018," see ED603732.]

When organising TeleCollaboration (TC) encounters at primary or secondary schools, especially technological and organisational complexity, alongside pedagogical issues, plays an essential role in the degree of success of the exchanges. Within the European TeCoLa project, pilot experiences have been organised using innovative but 'simple' technologies, like Padlet or Voki to more demanding and complex ones like 3D virtual worlds in OpenSim. The present paper presents the experiences of three pilot exchanges differing in complexity and reports on learners' experiences.[For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

The benefits of peer interaction, support, and feedback in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for Languages (LMOOCs) are well documented, but there has been little research on peer correction in MOOCs. Classroom-based research suggests that peer corrective feedback has significant potential for language development, but it also identifies a number of conditions for the feedback to be effective, notably a 'positive classroom atmosphere'; this may be hard to achieve on a MOOC, with its diverse cohort and large number of participants. Our mixed-method study reveals participants' conflicting expectations of learning from their peers on the one hand and actively contributing to their peers' learning on the other. Most participants believe they are not competent to provide helpful corrective feedback, and some think that the expectation to correct creates unwanted pressure and hinders communication. This paper encourages MOOC educators to address the challenge of creating a culture of learning through meaningful interaction whilst also finding ways of exploiting the opportunities offered by constructive peer correction. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

New technologies are changing the way of learning foreign languages. However, one of the main challenges for software developers and mobile assisted language learning designers remains the creation of learning environments for students' language immersion in and outside the classroom. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a VR-based mobile app called "Let's date!." The app enables Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) A1 level German language learners to interact with an immersive environment and to practise several language skills. The results have proven that the use of 360° videos based on realistic situations and combined with a conversational agent is suitable to reinforce students' foreign language competencies. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

This work-in-progress study focuses on the implementation of digital media into the Russian language classroom at secondary schools in the German-speaking countries of Austria, Germany, and the trilingual region South Tyrol. The data were collected in a mixed-methods procedure: quantitative data from online questionnaires and qualitative data from face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with teachers and learners of Russian. The data from the online-surveys were analysed with descriptive statistics and that of the interviews with qualitative content analysis. The results from the online-surveys illustrate the kinds of digital devices that are employed, the frequency of their use, and the purposes digital media are intended to fulfil in the Russian language classroom. Another finding concerns the teachers' digital literacy, suggesting that only half of the Russian teachers can create online language learning tasks. The paper closes with implications for pre- and inservice teacher education and future research. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

Papers included in this volume are: "The Muted Voice of Immigrant Workers;""The Situation of Foreign Workers in Sweden"; "Situation of Foreign Workers in the Federal Republic of Germany"; "Teaching German to Immigrant Children"; "Using Language Typology in Contrastive Studies"; "On Determining Developmental Stages in Natural Second Language Acquisition"; "Ordering Adult Learners According to Language Abilities"; "Some Remarks on Foreigner Talk"; "Some Minimal Requirements for the Teaching of Language to Foreign Workers"; "What Language Does the Immigrant Need?"; "What May Be the Use of Linguistics?"; "The Role of Phonetics in Language Teaching"; "Failure of a Language Transfer System Based on the Ideology and Models of Learning of the Country of Production"; "Teaching German to Turkish Migrants in West Berlin"; and "What Kind of Research Do We Need?" Other papers include "Semilingualism and the Education of Migrant Children as a Means of Reproducing the Caste of Assembly Line Workers"; "Verbal and Non-Verbal Communicative Behaviour of Turkish and Greek Workers"; "The Linguistic Development of Immigrant Children in Sweden"; "The Educational Problems of Finnish Immigrants in Sweden"; "What Foreign Workers Think About..."; and "What Kind of Research Do We Need? Some Remarks on Research Politics and Research Morals." (MSE)

Papers are presented from a colloquium on the teaching of German in the United Kingdom. Following an introduction by C.V. James, the following papers on the schools are presented: "A General View" by M. Lodge; "A Regional View" by R. Sheppard and G. Turner; "As the Teacher-Trainer Sees Them" by A. Hornsey; "Problems of Organisation" by J. Campbell; "An LEA Perspective" by D.M. Sidwell; and "The Adviser's View" by K. Emmans. Papers on higher education include: "The Universities" by J.L. Flood; "Polytechnics and Similar Institutions" by R. Oldnall; and "The Role of the Language Centre" by G. Seidmann. Papers on further education, commerce, and industry include: "Further Education Colleges" by J. Coutts and "Commerce and Industry" by E.V. Lee. Papers on teacher training include "The Education and Training of Graduate Teachers" by C.V. Russell and "Colleges of Education" by C. Fox. Papers on issues in methodology include: "Teaching Children of Moderate Ability" by D. Richards; "The Importance of Accuracy" by P. Newmark; and "The Compleat Germanist" by J.T. Smith. Papers on publishing and the media include: "The Provision of Teaching Materials for German" by G.D. Morley; "Problems and Prospects in Publishing" by R. Sawers; "The Contribution of the BBC (Schools) by A.A. Wolff; and "New Developments in Broadcast Language Teaching (Further Education)" by E. Baer. Papers on educational visits and exchanges include: "The Study of German in the United Kingdom: The Exchange Factor" by J. Platt and "The Centre for British Teachers in Europe Limited" by T.L. Marsters. (SW)