The emergence of digital storytelling and multimedia technology in improving Greek language teaching and learning： Challenges versus limitations

Greek schools are witnessing widening gaps between traditional definitions and applications of literacy, which include reading, writing and speaking in terms of exercises from school textbooks and contemporary literacy practices like digital storytelling, interactive multimedia use and online communications. Language and literacy teachers of primary education are called upon daily to bridge these contradictions through pedagogical and textual choices they make in classroom teaching. This paper reports an experimental study with children of the fifth grade at public Greek schools to apply modernist literacy approaches involving digital storytelling and online communication in improving language skills. The paper analytically presents the didactic examples of a thematic union within the framework of the Greek curriculum and the alternative assessment for the experimental teaching on digital technologies among mother tongue learners. The findings have implications for teacher＇s and student＇s education and also for the integration of a pedagogical-technological content of curriculum within the continuing debate of being culturally and equally literate in today＇s education.

Om:One tool for many (Indian) languages

Many different languages are spoken in India, each language being the mother tongue of tens of millions of people. While the languages and scripts are distinct from each other, the grammar and the alphabet are similar to a large extent. One common feature is that all the Indian languages are phonetic in nature. In this paper we describe the development of a translit- eration scheme Om which exploits this phonetic nature of the alphabet. Om uses ASCII characters to represent Indian language alphabets, and thus can be read directly in English, by a large number of users who cannot read script in other Indian languages than their mother tongue. It is also useful in computer applications where local language tools such as email and chat are not yet available. Another significant contribution presented in this paper is the development of a text editor for Indian languages that integrates the Om input for many Indian languages into a word processor such as Microsoft WinWord?. The text editor is also developed on Java? platform that can run on Unix machines as well. We propose this transliteration scheme as a possible standard for Indian language transliteration and keyboard entry.

Universal Digital Library—Future research directions

This paper starts with a description of the present status of the Digital Library of India Initiative. As part of this initiative large corpus of scanned text is available in many Indian languages and has stimulated a vast amount of research in Indian language technology briefly described in this paper. Other than the Digital Library of India Initiative which is part of the Million Books to the Web Project initiated by Prof Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon University, there are a few more initiatives in India towards taking the heritage of the country to the Web. This paper presents the future directions for the Digital Library of India Initiative both in terms of growing collection and the technical challenges in managing such large collection poses.

科技辅助第二语言教学研究趋势及其对国际中文教育的启示

In recent years,the enabling role of technology has been widely recognized in second language teaching and learning.Using a co-word analysis approach,this study aims to present the state-ofthe-art current literature in technology enhanced language learning.The analysis results show that most popular research themes from 2010 to 2020 are CMC,L2 writing,teacher education,L2 motivation,students’attitudes,SLA,L2 vocabulary learning,L2 reading,EFL,and L2 learners.Compared with these key themes,publications on technology enhanced teaching Chinese as a foreign language focus more on the investigation of the effectiveness of the use of latest technologies such as smart phones,virtual reality,intelligent tools,and gamification.Based on the findings of these investigations,the latest developments in these areas are synthesized and presented accordingly.In addition,newly-emerged key themes about the co-word analysis are also reported and their contributions to future investigations is briefly discussed.The implications for future research in technology enhanced teaching Chinese as a foreign language is also discussed.

SPECIAL ISSUE： LANGUAGE STUDIES AND METHODS FROM THE CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE Influence of Language Technologies on Language Life and Social Development

In the course of historical development, language media have advanced from sound waves to light waves to electronic waves, adapted in each case to a diversity of contexts and a variety of communicative tools. Over time, languages have enriched their vocabulary, grammar and expression, with resultant progress in language function. Language technology has exerted a significant influence on language life and even on the development of society. As humanity steps into the age of online media, ＂language apparatus＂ has improved markedly, as has language life. Taken with the development of new media language, this presents new challenges to contemporary linguistics.