NEWSLETTER 17-25, OCTOBER
Here are the upcoming webinars of the week. You can find the details and registration below. Hope you find them useful for your professional development.
Webinar 1: LSPPC Webinars: "Can OpenAI write as rhetorically as humans do? A discourse study of human- and ChatGPT-generated research article abstracts in Applied Linguistics"
Date: Friday, 18 October 2024
Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm HKT (UTC/GMT + 8)
Speakers: Becky S. C. Kwan, Thomas H. T. Chan, Belinda W. S. Ko, Chris Y. H. Kwan
Session Details:
Since its release by OpenAI in 2022, ChatGPT has shaken up the entire world. With claims that it can replace humans in performing various writing tasks, a new line of research has emerged to examine the extent to which ChatGPT can generate human-like research articles. Results of the studies have so far been mixed, with some pointing to high degrees of similarity while some showing notable differences. The inconclusive findings are attributable to the various evaluation methods employed, some of which involve human-judgement that relies on expert intuition while some adopt detection methods that untrained automatic or machine-learned algorithms with parameters focusing on different linguistic features. The various methods have their own strengths and pitfalls, but one common issue that stands out is that their evaluation parameters rarely reflect scholarship in the field of English for Research and Publication Purposes (ERPP) that forms the bedrock of current research writing instruction. Hoping to address this theoretical lacuna in the existing studies and exploring what the field of ERPP can offer, we employed a discourse analytic approach to evaluate ChatGPT-generated article abstracts by tapping into theory of rhetoric in research communication and existing empirical findings about the rhetorical move structures of human-generated abstracts. Our data comprise abstracts of articles published in applied linguistics journals and those generated by ChatGPT. The results reveal noticeable differences between the two corpora. In this webinar, we will elaborate some of the observations and draw implications for future evaluation studies. We will also share thoughts for critical instruction in ERPP in contexts where students are allowed to use ChatGPT.
Register here: https://cityu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpcuGorDsjG9wkaP8OZBFWZS5Wuz12mFs3#/registration
Webinar 2: American English Live: "Building Feedback Literacy to foster Long-term Student Autonomy"
Date & Time: October,23 2024 8:00-9:00 am ET / 1:0-2:00 pm ET
Speaker: Stephanie Rummel
Session Details:
American English Live: Teacher Development Series 21 presents a webinar called "Building Feedback Literacy to foster Long-term Student Autonomy". If interested, here is the link you can register.
Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/H1ifw9HWEe
Webinar 3: CERCLL: “Overcoming Challenges and Barriers in Virtual Exchange”
Arizone State University presents Fall series of free professional learning webinars for language educators. The webinars are free to attend, but participants must register in advance. Participants who attend these events live can request a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours of continuing education for each webinar they attend. In addition, live attendees will be contacted after each webinar with information about how to apply for a digital badge.
Here is one upcoming webinar presented by Robert O’Dowd (Universidad de León, Spain).
Date and time: Wednesday, October 23, 2024, 08:00 PM in İstanbul
Speaker: Robert O’Dowd
Session details:
Forms of online collaborative learning, such as Virtual Exchange and Blended Mobility, are becoming increasingly popular in foreign language education. Virtual Exchange (VE) refers to the numerous online learning initiatives and methodologies which engage learners in online collaborative learning and interaction with partners from different cultural backgrounds as part of their study programmes. Blended Mobility combines stages of online collaboration with short periods of physical mobility. Although VE has been employed in foreign language education for over 25 years, it has received much greater attention since the recent COVID-19 pandemic and many practitioners are exploring its potential to develop foreign languages learning, intercultural competence and global citizenship in their classrooms (Porto, 2018; Ramirez, 2019; Trapé, 2018). In this presentation I will use key publications from the literature to explore how VE and Blended Mobility can promote foreign language learning as well as global citizenship. I will also outline how VE and Blended Mobility can be integrated effectively into foreign language programmes. Finally, I will reflect on the challenges educators face as we try to use this activity to deal with issues of diversity and inclusion and to establish equitable relationships with partners from other countries.
Register here: https://arizona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NcGqqhtcSKG7hvjRyHUMGQ#/registration