CALLIDUS- Computer-Aided language learning

With the Callidus project, the applicant team aims to test the thesis that corpus-based methods are helpful in foreign language teaching by examining their usefulness and design in Latin lessons at schools in Munich and Berlin as part of an intervention study. Existing corpora will be reused, further developed, and adapted to new questions. With regard to Latin teaching, there is currently no agreement on the vocabulary to be learned and how it should be taught. At present, there are only isolated links with modern foreign languages such as English or French. The use of Latin corpora is intended to counteract this “shortcoming.” The project builds on existing structures and resources, such as ANNIS and LangBank, and on the open source teaching and learning management system Moodle, which is operated by the Computer and Media Service (CMS) at Humboldt University in Berlin. Machina Callida is developing a component that not only extends the corpus query language AQL, but also establishes a connection to the Moodle system. CALLIDUS is to be modular in design and gradually tailored to specific target groups. The project is scheduled to run for three years and may be extended for a further three years.