Dossier 2024: Language and cultural education through digital technologies

Organizers: Eduardo Viana da Silva (University of Washington/EUA), Kleber Aparecido da Silva (Universidade de Brasília/Brasil), Ana Cristina Biondo Salomão (UNESP – Araraquara/Brasil).

Dates:

until 04/30/2023: send a abstract between 100 and 250 words about the proposal that will be developed in the article to the organizers' emails: kleberunicamp@yahoo.com.br, evsilva@uw.edu and ana.salomao@unesp .br.

until 05/07/2023: Abstract authors will receive a response by email from the organizers assessing the pertinence of the proposal to the call.

until 08/31/2023: Submission of the complete article through the submission system of the Texto Livre journal, following the guidelines available at: https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/textolivre/about/submissions

 

Call:

Digital technologies have mediated language teaching more intensely in the last three decades through virtual exchanges and telecollaboration (e.g., MIT Cultura and Teletandem Brasil), use of apps (e.g., Duolingo, Babel, HelloTalk), digital dictionaries (eg. Wordreference and Priberam), online translation systems (e.g., Google translator), online courses (e.g., Coursera), among other digital tools and programs. 

In 2006, Teletandem Brasil - http://www.teletandembrasil.org/ - developed by the São Paulo State University (Unesp) began its virtual activities conducted by Skype (Telles 2006). In the United States, the first linguistic and cultural exchange project mediated by computers probably started in 1997 with Projeto Cultura - http://cultura.mit.edu/ - from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including synchronous and asynchronous programs in English, French, Russian, Spanish, and German, among other languages. It was not, however, until the COVID pandemic that the process of digital technologies applied to language teaching accelerated significantly.

In the call for papers for this special edition of Texto Livre journal, we propose the submission of articles that deal with linguistic and/or cultural education mediated by digital technologies. Papers may focus on various topics related both to language teaching and to cultural aspects of language teaching. Below there is a list of possible topics:
 
- Learning and teaching through virtual resources (synchronous and/or asynchronous);
- The role of virtual exchanges in additional language learning: Teletandem, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), telecollaboration, etc.;
- The use of digital tools to assist in language teaching (online apps and dictionaries, translation tools, or automatic corrections, such as Grammarly); c
- The role of digital media in language teaching;
- The use of digital translators, such as Google Translator and artificial intelligence platforms, such as ChatGPT, in language learning;
- Virtual reality and the use of avatars and metaverse in language teaching;
- Artificial intelligence and the possibilities of producing videos, tutorials, etc., in language education;
- Teaching languages for specific purposes in a virtual environment, such as Portuguese for health professionals or Portuguese and STEM/Cybersecurity;
- The use of online platforms for managing language courses, such as Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle;
- Educational resources on open platforms, such as electronic language books available online;
- Language teacher training in the context of new technologies;
- Language policies for the expansion and inclusion of new technologies in language teaching.
- Reflections and theoretical and methodological advances regarding linguistic and cultural education mediated by digital technologies.