featured stories

Free language learning and cooking app now available

Dear colleagues

Here is information on the new Linguacuisine web app, which is now ready for use, as well as an invitation to our London event in September. Please forward to anyone you think might be interested and I hope you will be able to add your own favourite recipe to the system!

Free Language Learning and Cooking App Now Available

For anyone interested in languages and food!

The free Linguacuisine web app helps you learn a language while you’re cooking a meal! Choose a foreign language and a delicious recipe from that country. Then your own smartphone or tablet will speak to you in the foreign language and talk you through all of the stages of cooking the recipe in your own kitchen. If you can’t understand, just press a button to get a photo or video explaining what to do. When you’ve finished, eat the food you’ve cooked and learn something about the culture of the country. Linguacuisine has a range of recipes now available for language learning from around the world at https://linguacuisine.com/app/

We now have recipes available in: English, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Quechua, Chinese and Korean.

You can also use the free recipe builder app so that you can upload your own favourite recipe in your own language. That means that anyone anywhere in the world will be able to watch videos and listen to audios of you guiding them through cooking your recipe and learning your language! Use your own smartphone or tablet to make recordings of yourself and upload them using our user-friendly software to create your own recipe.

You can also join our worldwide online community so you can rate and discuss other people’s recipes and post information, stories and photos. They can do the same for your recipe, so it’s a good way to make friends in other countries.

So Linguacuisine is a really fun way to learn about foreign languages, cultures and cuisines and you get to eat what you produce. You can also tell other people around the world about your own cooking, language and way of life. You learn foreign words better when you are physically touching food and cooking utensils and using them to prepare food. When you are cooking, you involve all of your senses in the learning experience – touch, smell and taste as well as hearing and seeing. So this is multi-modal and multi-sensory language learning. This is task-based language learning with a real product at the end of it and is intended to improve international understanding and communication.

Linguacuisine is available now for all devices, smartphones, tablets and computers from our website, where the online community will also be located https://linguacuisine.com/

The Linguacuisine app is the end result of a 10-year collaboration between computing scientists and linguists at Newcastle University. The Linguacuisine project is a collaboration between Newcastle University, Action Foundation (UK), Hellenic Open University (Greece), Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy) and the Workers’ Educational Association (UK). It is funded by an Erasmus+ KA2 Strategic Partnership grant of €324K.

 

For Teachers

The Linguacuisine app can be used for foreign language lessons, but also for cookery lessons and cross-curriculum projects. Students can use the app to cook and learn in the kitchen at home as well as at school.

The app is a good way of preparing students for a foreign trip as it helps engage them with the cuisine, culture and language in advance. Students can also write their own recipes in their own language, informing people abroad about their culture and cuisine.

It is also an excellent way of getting learners to communicate with learners in other countries. Video links have been available for some time, but Linguacuisine means that learners in different countries can do enjoyable shared activities together, cooking recipes from the other countries whilst learning about the other language and culture.

Digital skills can also be developed by using the ‘recipe builder’ authoring software.  This was co-authored with learners and designed to develop a wide range of digital skills using the DIGCOMP 2.1 framework; it has been shown to be successful in improving learner competence.

 

For Professionals working with Migrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers

The Linguacuisine app was co-designed with a group of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from Action Foundation, Newcastle, UK and seeks to help them in two ways. Firstly, immigrants to a country can cook the recipes to learn about the language, cuisine and culture of their host country and help their integration. Secondly, immigrants can produce their own recipes in their own language using the recipe builder software, so they are able to have a voice and so people in their host country are able to learn something about their life prior to arrival here. A number of recipes currently on Linguacuisine have been produced by migrants in the UK.

 

For Catering Professionals

Chefs and other catering staff who are travelling to work abroad can introduce themselves to the language, culture and cuisine of their destination country by using the Linguacuisine app. They can also increase their repertoire and employability by trying recipes from around the world and improving relevant language skills.

Chefs can also produce their own recipes in their own language or English using the recipe builder software. Their recipes can then be tried out by users anywhere in the world. Users can post feedback about the recipes and rate the recipes, so chefs can gain an international reputation and increase their own job opportunities.

 

Invitation to London Event

Please come to our free London dissemination event in Europe House on 11 September. An invitation is attached and you can book a place on
https://linguacuisine.eventbrite.co.uk

Try out the app, cook a recipe and learn a new language!

Contact us at linguacuisine@gmail.com or email paul.seedhouse@ncl.ac.uk

in featured stories

Revista Nebrija: Section on emotion, emotional intelligence and language

The Nebrija Journal of Linguistics Applied to Language Teaching publishes blind peer-reviewed contributions in French, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.  The next issue will have a special section on Emotion, emotional intelligence and language and will be published by Kris Buyse (University of Leuven / Nebrija University) and Jean-Marc Dewaele (University of London) in November 2018. We ask that you communicate to your fellow associates the call for research papers as reported in https://revistas.nebrija.com/revista-linguistica/announcement.

Important dates:

  • Paper Submission Due: August 20, 2018
  • Review Notification: September 30, 2018
  • Publication Date: November 2018
in featured stories

Call for nominations: TIRF James E. Alatis Prize 2019

Background
TIRF – The International Research Foundation for English Language Education – established the TIRF James E. Alatis Prize for Research in Language Policy and Planning in Educational Contexts in 2015 to honor the contributions TIRF Trustee Emeritus James E. Alatis made to the field as an outstanding educator and leader.

A prize of $500 will be awarded for an article or chapter published in English and dealing with some aspect of language policy or planning in educational contexts. Submissions may be articles published in scholarly peer-reviewed journals or peer-reviewed chapters in edited books.

 

2019 Prize
For the 2019 prize, we invite nominations of outstanding articles or chapters that were published during calendar years of 2017 or 2018. TIRF will only consider publications nominated by someone other than the author(s) of the published work. Individuals may only nominate one article/chapter per competition year. An author may have only one article/chapter under review per competition year. TIRF Trustees are ineligible to be nominated for the Alatis Prize. Papers that have appeared in TIRF publications, for example, chapters in the TIRF-Routledge Global Research on Teaching and Learning English series, may not be nominated.

Submissions will be reviewed based upon the quality of the work and its potential impact on the field of language policy and planning in educational contexts. The research may be country- and language-specific or country- and language-general. Reviewers will consider the degree of sophistication and/or innovation of the methodology used as well as the paper’s implications for policy formation and/or change. Each study will be assessed for the salience of the research question(s) asked, the appropriateness and rigor of the research methods used, and the significance of the paper’s contribution to knowledge within the field of language policy or planning in educational contexts. Studies using any appropriate analyses – quantitative, statistical procedures for data gathering and data analyses, qualitative/descriptive research approaches, or mixed approaches – will be considered.
Specific nomination procedures are given below. Nominations should be submitted no later than August 31, 2018 electronically through TIRF’s website at https://www.tirfonline.org/research-grants/doctoral-dissertation-grants/application-submission-area/.

 

Important Dates

  • May 1, 2018: Call for nominations is released
  • August 31, 2018: Nomination deadline
  • December 1, 2018: Awardee notified
  • TBD: Awardee recognized during 2019 TESOL Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA

 

Nomination Procedures

  • Nominators must include a cover page as a PDF document that provides:
    • Nominator’s name, title, affiliation, and email address
    • Name(s) and title(s) of the author(s), affiliation(s), and email address(es)
    • A one- to two-paragraph statement regarding why the article/chapter deserves to receive the Alatis Prize (maximum 200 words)
    • Complete APA citation of the article/chapter
  • Submit a PDF of the complete published article/chapter
  • All files uploaded to TIRF’s website must be submitted as PDFs.
  • Nominations will be submitted electronically via TIRF’s website . If possible, only one file should be uploaded. No more than two files may be uploaded per nomination – one cover page and one article or chapter.
    • When uploading a file, be sure to select “TIRF James E. Alatis Prize” from the “Submission Type” drop-down menu.
  • Acknowledgement of the receipt of a nomination will be sent to the email address of the nominator within five businesses days after the file is uploaded.
  • Late submissions will not be accepted.
  • In the case of co-authored papers, the $500 prize will be sent to the lead author with the expectation of the monies being shared with the co-author(s).
  • The deadline for nominations is 11:59pm Pacific Time on August 31, 2018.
  • Write to info@tirfonline.org with any questions.
in featured stories / Research

Launching the AILA Affiliates Tandem Initiative

AILA national affiliates embody traditions and represent cultures of doing, promoting, and supporting research and teaching, for example by the way they organize conferences, award academic leadership, and interact with their individual members. Experiencing these traditions and cultures across affiliates’ biotopes and boundaries can challenge routines, inspire us to think out of the box and foster mutual learning.

in AILA Long-term Activities / featured stories / Tandem Initiative