• Full-time (100%) PhD fellowship for one year, renewable (max. 4 years)
• Start date: October 2024

The main objective of the PhD project will be to use the method of Comparative Judgment to explore whether the theoretical construct of ‘phraseological complexity’ (Paquot, 2019) is reflective of collective understandings of the linguistic phenomena we wish to measure with such a construct. The project will centre around two main objectives: (1) test empirically whether reliable human judgments of phraseological complexity are attainable (both at the level of multi-word units and at the text level); (2) explore the degree to which various automated measures of phraseological complexity align with human judgments of phraseological complexity, which is to be understood as our ‘gold standard’ to assess construct validity.

For more information about phraseological complexity, the method of Comparative Judgment and the use of human judgments to validate constructs, see:

• Kyle, K., Crossley, S. A., & Jarvis, S. (2021). Assessing the Validity of Lexical Diversity Indices Using Direct Judgements. Language Assessment Quarterly, 18(2), 154‑170. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434303.2020.1844205
• Paquot, M. (2019). The phraseological dimension in interlanguage complexity research. Second Language Research, 35(1), 121–145. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658317694221
• Paquot, M., Rubin, R. & Vandeweerd, N. (2022). Crowdsourced Adaptive Comparative Judgment: A community-based solution for proficiency rating. Language Learning 72(3), 853-885. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lang.12498

Qualifications and expected profile

The candidate will meet the following qualifications:

• Master degree in (Applied) Linguistics or Natural Language Processing
• Excellent record of BA and MA level study
• Excellent oral and written English (minimum level: C1)
• Excellent analytic skills
• Knowledge of corpus linguistic techniques is a requirement
• Knowledge of statistics and R is an asset
• Autonomy, sense of teamwork, ability to listen and analyse needs, responsiveness
• Willingness to live in Belgium and to travel abroad (to attend international academic conferences)

 Conditions of engagement

This doctoral fellowship is subject to the following conditions:

• The contract will initially be for one year, three times renewable, with a total of four years.
• The candidate receives a doctoral fellowship grant (starting at approx. EUR 2400 net per month) and full medical insurance.
• This position requires residence in Belgium for the duration of the mandate. 
• Applicants from outside the EU are responsible for obtaining the necessary visa or permits, with the assistance of UCLouvain staff department.

Application

Application deadline: 1 September 2024

The application file should include :

• a cover letter in English, in which you specify why you are interested in this position and how you meet the job requirements outlined above;
• a curriculum vitae in English;
• a concise academic statement in English, in which you outline your expectations about and plans for graduate study and career goals;
• a copy of BA and MA diplomas and degrees;
• a copy of your master thesis and academic publications (if applicable);
• the names and full contact details of two academic referees.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (in situ or via video conferencing) in the second half of September 2024.

Applications (as an email attachment) and inquiries should be addressed to Dr. Magali Paquot (<magali.paquot@uclouvain.be>)

Cet article PhD fellowship at the intersection of corpus linguistics, second language acquisition and language testing est apparu en premier sur Magali Paquot.

The position is part of a large multidisciplinary project that aims to investigate socio-cognitive conflicts in online educational platforms via the prism of several theoretical frameworks from the humanities and social sciences: “MOOCresearch2.0: A mixed-method and multidisciplinary approach to socio-cognitive conflicts in online educational platforms” (Prof. M. Frenay, Prof. F. Lambotte, Dr. Magali Paquot & Prof. V. Swaen). (Open) online education poses a variety of challenges for higher education, one of which is how to foster social interactions and induce beneficial socio-cognitive conflicts to promote learning in an environment where interactions are primarily written and asynchronous. In educational research, socio-cognitive conflicts are considered essential for progress and learning to take place: they are differences in point of view that are socially experienced and cognitively resolved. As put by Darnon, Buchs, & Butera (2002, p. 140), “confrontation with a partner creates a double imbalance. This imbalance is both social (inter-individual) because it is a discrepancy between two persons, and cognitive (intra-individual) because it makes each individual doubt about his/her own answer. (…) In order to coordinate the different points of view, a cognitive work emerges from this socio-cognitive conflict, leading to a more elaborate level of reasoning” (see https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc/cecl/moocresearch2-0.html for more info).

Online education is becoming increasingly popular but is mainly offered in English. Research in bilingual education and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has shown that new disciplinary concepts are not acquired as well in the foreign language as in the first language. This is especially true for concepts that cannot be directly observed or related to what learners already know, and which comprehension largely relies on linguistic mediation (e.g. Babault & Markey, 2001), and for students with lower foreign language proficiency who find it almost impossible to describe disciplinary concepts in English (e.g. Airey, 2009). Studies have also shown that results of evaluative tasks performed in a foreign language are largely dependent on L2 proficiency (Ventura, 2016). If we transpose these findings to online education, and MOOCs more particularly (as they aim to increase access to education, cf. Rohs & Ganz, 2015), it seems particularly important to investigate whether non-native speakers find in discussion forums a place where to check comprehension, ask for clarification, and discuss concepts in social interactions.

The main objective of the PhD project will be to investigate the effect of language status (native speaker vs. learner) and language proficiency on negotiation of meaning and the unfolding of socio-cognitive conflicts in asynchronous forum discussion boards. The following questions will guide the research programme:

• To what extent are non-native speakers present on forum discussions? What role do they take? How does this compare with native speakers’ presence and assumed roles?
• To what extent do non-native speakers negotiate meaning with a view to resolve a misunderstanding due to language problems vs. content-related and cognitive problems?
• To what extent do non-native speakers take part in the richer content-based interactions that can potentially give rise to socio-cognitive conflicts and learning?
• To what extent does language proficiency impact non-native speakers’ online presence, the range of roles they assume, the type of discussions they are involved in, and the types of posts they write?

To answer the research questions, the candidate will rely primarily on techniques from corpus linguistics and natural language processing.

Job description:

The candidate will work under the supervision of Magali Paquot (CECL, Institute for Language and Communication). The candidate will be affiliated to the Institut Langage et Communication (ILC, UCLouvain) and be a member of the CECL.

The PhD candidate will also be working in a multidisciplinary environment with other researchers from the Social Media Lab (https://www.socialmedialab.be/), the Interdisciplinary Research Group in Socialisation, Education and Training (GIRSEF, https://uclouvain.be/fr/chercher/girsef), the Center on Consumer Relations and Responsible Marketing (CERMA, https://uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/lourim/cerma) and the Centre for Natural Language Processing (CENTAL, https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/ilc/cental).

Activities that the candidate will perform include:

• develop and implement (i) theoretical concepts in line with the focus of the research project and (ii) appropriate methodological procedures for investigating these concepts;
• extract relevant data from MOOC platforms with appropriate computational and NLP techniques (note that the PhD candidate will be expected to help other members of the team with data extraction and structuring)
• conduct analyses of forum posts by L1 and L2 speakers of English;
• interpret the results of the analyses and report on the project in conference presentations and academic publications;
• by the end of the four-year term, submit and defend a PhD dissertation based on the project.

Requirements and profile:

–    Master degree in (Applied) Linguistics or Natural Language Processing, with a master thesis on a topic relevant to the project (note: a degree in English Linguistics is an asset, not a requirement);

–    excellent record of BA and MA level study;

–    excellent command of English,

–    good command of French is an asset but not required 

–    excellent and demonstrated analytic skills;

–    knowledge of corpus-linguistic techniques is a requirement

–    knowledge of statistics and statistical software is an asset;

–   programming skills in Perl or Python are also an asset (if no expertise in programming, the candidate should be willing to learn Python during the first year);

–    excellent and demonstrated self-management skills, ability and willingness to work in a team;

–    willingness to live in Belgium and to travel abroad (to attend international academic conferences, etc).

Terms of employment:

–    the contract will initially be for one year, three times renewable, with a total of four years.

–    the candidate receives a doctoral fellowship grant (starting at approx. EUR 1982 net per month) and full medical insurance.

–    the position requires residence in Belgium, preferably in or near Louvain-la-Neuve

–  applicants from outside the EU are responsible for obtaining the necessary visa or permits, with the assistance of UCLouvain staff department.

Application Deadline: Review of applications will begin on 1 August 2020, and continue until the position is filled

Please include with your application:

• a cover letter in English, in which you specify why you are interested in this position and how you meet the job requirements outlined above;

–    a curriculum vitae in English;

• a concise academic statement in French or English, in which you outline your expectations about and plans for graduate study and career goals;

–    a copy of BA and MA diplomas and degrees;

–    a copy of your master thesis and academic publications (if applicable);

–    the names and full contact details of two academic referees.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (in situ or via video conferencing) in the second half of August 2020.

Applications (as an email attachment) and inquiries should be addressed to:

Dr. Magali Paquot                                                     

Centre for English Corpus Linguistics

Université Catholique de Louvain

Email: magali.paquot@uclouvain.be

Cet article PhD fellowship in Corpus Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition est apparu en premier sur Magali Paquot.

The Centre for English Corpus Linguistics has an opening for a PhD fellowship for a total period of four years, starting as of October 2018 (later is also a possibility).

The position is part of the UCLouvain FSR-funded research project Particle placement and genitive alternations in EFL learner spoken syntax: core probabilistic grammar and/or L1‐specific preferences? (Promotor: Dr. Magali Paquot). The project stems from collaborative work between the promotor, Prof. B. Szmrecsanyi (KU Leuven) and Dr. J. Grafmiller (University of Birmingham) (e.g. Paquot, Grafmiller & Szmrecsanyi (2017)).

The PhD student will investigate the extent to which English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners share a core probabilistic grammar (cf. Bresnan, 2007) with users of first and second language varieties of English by analyzing variation in grammatical constraints on the particle placement alternation (for transitive phrasal verbs) and the genitive alternation in corpora of EFL learner spoken language. Methodologically, the candidate will build on annotation guidelines developed by Szmrecsanyi, Grafmiller and colleagues to describe the predictors that may influence speakers’ choice governing the alternations; s/he will also be expected to use a range of variationist analysis techniques.

Job description:

The research project is a joint venture between the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics (CECL) at the UCLouvain and the Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL) group at the KU Leuven. The candidate will be affiliated to the Institut Langage et Communication (ILC, UCLouvain) and will also prepare a joint UCLouvain-KU Leuven PhD in Linguistics.

Activities that the candidate will perform include:

• develop and implement (i) theoretical concepts in line with the focus of the research project and (ii) appropriate methodological procedures for investigating these concepts;
• conduct corpus-based analyses of L1 and L2 writing and spoken samples;
• interpret the results of the analyses and report on the project in conference presentations and academic publications;
• carry out a research stay at the University of Birmingham (to work in close collaboration with Dr. J. Grafmiller too);
• by the end of the four-year term, submit and defend a PhD dissertation based on the project.

Requirements and profile:

–    Master degree in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Language & Literature, Natural Language Processing or in Language Learning and Teaching;

–    excellent record of BA and MA level study;

–    excellent command of English.

–    excellent and demonstrated analytic skills;

–    ability to work with common software packages (including MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint);

–    basic knowledge of corpus-linguistic techniques is a requirement

–    knowledge of statistics and statistical software is an asset;

–   programming skills in Perl, Python or R are also an asset;

–    excellent and demonstrated self-management skills, ability and willingness to work in a team;

–    willingness to live in or near Louvain-la-Neuve and to travel abroad (for short-term research stays and to attend international academic conferences).

Terms of employment:

–    The contract will initially be for one year, three times renewable, with a total of four years.

–    The candidate receives a doctoral fellowship grant (starting at approx. EUR 1900 net per month) and full medical insurance.

–    The candidate will be expected to apply for a FNRS position after the first year.

–    The position requires residence in Belgium.

–  Applicants from outside the EU are responsible for obtaining the necessary visa or permits, with the assistance of UCLouvain staff department.

Application Deadline: Review of applications will begin on 20 August 2018, and continue until the position is filled

Please include with your application:

• a cover letter in English, in which you specify why you are interested in this position and how you meet the job requirements outlined above;

–    a curriculum vitae in English;

• a concise academic statement in English in which you outline your expectations about and plans for graduate study and career goals;

–    a copy of BA and MA diplomas and degrees;

–    a copy of your master thesis and academic publications (if applicable);

–    the names and full contact details of two academic referees.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (in situ or via video conferencing) in September 2018 (or later).

Applications (as an email attachment) and inquiries should be addressed to:

Dr. Magali Paquot

Centre for English Corpus Linguistics

Université Catholique de Louvain

Email: magali.paquot@uclouvain.be

References

Bresnan, J. (2007). Is syntactic knowledge probabilistic ? Experiments with the English dative alternation. In S. Featherston and W. Sternefeld (eds). Roots: Linguistics in Search of its Evidential Base. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 75-96.

Paquot, M, Grafmiller, J. & B. Szmrecsanyi (2017).Particle placement alternation in EFL learner speech vs. native and ESL spoken Englishes: core probabilistic grammar and/or L1-specific preferences? Paper presented at the 4th Learner Corpus Research Conference, 5-7 October 2017, Bolzano, Italy.

Cet article PhD fellowship in Corpus Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition est apparu en premier sur Magali Paquot.

The position is part of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO)-funded research project entitled Lexicogrammatical complexity: a missing construct in L2 research. The project is supervised by Alex Housen (VUB), with Magali Paquot (UCLouvain) as cosupervisor.

The project is concerned with the complexity and learning difficulties that arise at the lexicon-grammar interface in the process of second language acquisition, with a focus on Dutch as a second/foreign language.

Job description:
The research project is a joint venture between the Center of Linguistics at the VUB and
the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics (CECL) at the UCLouvain. The candidate will
be affiliated to the Center of Linguistics (CLIN) at the VUB and the Centre for English
Corpus Linguistics (CECL) at the UCLouvain, and will prepare a joint VUB-UCLouvain
PhD in Linguistics.

Activities that the candidate will perform include:

• develop and implement (i) theoretical concepts in line with the focus of the research project and (ii) appropriate methodological procedures for investigating these concepts;
• conduct corpus-based analyses of L1 and L2 Dutch writing samples;
• interpret the results of the analyses and report on the project in conference
  presentations and academic publications;
• by the end of the four-year term, submit and defend a PhD dissertation based on the project.

Requirements and profile:
– Master degree in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Language & Literature, Natural
Language Processing or in Language Learning and Teaching, with a master thesis on
a topic relevant to the project;
– excellent record of BA and MA level study;
– excellent command of Dutch, very good command of English. Knowledge of French
is an asset;
– excellent and demonstrated analytical skills;
– ability to work with common software packages (including MS Word, Excel and
PowerPoint);
– knowledge of inferential statistics and statistical software (e.g. SPSS, R) is an asset;
– basic knowledge of corpus-linguistic techniques is a requirement;
– programming skills in Perl or Python are also an asset;
– excellent and demonstrated self-management skills, ability and willingness to work in
a team;
– willingness to live in or near Brussels and to travel abroad (for short-term research
stays and to attend international academic conferences).

Terms of employment:
– the contract will initially be for one year, three times renewable, with a total of four
years;
– the candidate receives a doctoral fellowship grant (starting at approx. EUR 1900 net
per month) and full medical insurance;
– the position requires residence in Belgium, preferably in or near Brussels;
– applicants from outside the EU are responsible for obtaining the necessary visa or
permits, with the assistance of the International Office of the VUB.
New Application Deadline: 31 August 2017
Please include with your application:
– a cover letter in English, in which you specify why you are interested in this position
and how you meet the job requirements outlined above;
– a curriculum vitae in English;
– a concise academic statement in Dutch, in which you outline your plans for graduate
study and career goals;
– a copy of BA and MA diplomas and degrees;
– a copy of your master thesis and academic publications (if applicable);
– the names and contact details of two academic referees.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview (in situ or via video conferencing) in
August and/or September 2017.

Applications (as an email attachment) and inquiries should be addressed to:
Prof. dr. Alex Housen                                                        Dr. Magali Paquot
Dept. of Linguistics and Literary Studies (LIST)         Centre for English Corpus Linguistics
Vrije Universiteit Brussel                                                  Université Catholique de Louvain
Pleinlaan 2                                                                           Place Blaise Pascal 1, bte L3.03.31
B-1050 Brussels, Belgium                                                 B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Email: alex.housen@vub.be                                             Email: magali.paquot@uclouvain.be

Cet article PhD fellowship in Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Université Catholique de Louvain (UC Louvain) est apparu en premier sur Magali Paquot.