ISPEV@L – Interfaces and Spaces in Second Language Acquisition: Teaching and Research
ISPEV@L – Interfaces des espaces physiques et virtuels pour l’apprentissage et la recherche en langues
Published on Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Abstract
The 2025 International ISPEV@L conference aims to explore the interfaces between physical and virtual spaces and new directions for second language acquisition, teaching, and research which emerge from those interfaces.
Announcement
Argument
The 2025 International ISPEV@L conference aims to explore the interfaces between physical and virtual spaces and new directions for second language acquisition, teaching, and research which emerge from those interfaces.
The LIDILE event is organised to mark the opening of The Language Space/L’Espace des Langues at Rennes 2 University, a multimodal language learning and research centre which intends to facilitate and foster interactions between language learners, practitioners and researchers, between communities and practices. It is comprised of a language resource library, an exhibition area, an immersive room, a virtual world, and a flexible space for experimental pedagogy, informal learning and creative practices.
Many new directions reflect the growing influence of open science, and developments in uses of corpora, digital tools, and artificial intelligence. Others arise from recent interest in the design and layout of learning spaces, and the influence this may have on how people meet and interact, to teach, learn and conduct research. The conference aims to bring together teachers, researchers, and language/learning centre librarians to exchange best practices and to discuss new epistemologies and ontologies related to language learning spaces.
We invite proposals for presentations, round tables, workshops and posters within the following themes:
Track 1: Physical spaces for language learning and research
Taking a spatial perspective on the environments of second language acquisition (Benson, 2021), track 1 focuses on the physical spaces (buildings and rooms) in which language teaching and learning take place at the university level. We hope to examine the links between teaching and learning experiences and the places in which they occur (Alba et al, 2020; Christou et al, 2023; Danon, 2015). What opportunities and constraints are present and what challenges and creative pedagogies arise from them? How do spatial design, furniture and equipment effect pedagogical choices and learner experience? If interactions are at the heart of language learning processes (Rivens Mompean & Macré, 2017), and if we consider “architectural space in social processes as something fundamental” (Amann, 2022), how do spaces contribute to the variety and the quality of teacher-learner and peer interactions? Whether in the context of a lesson, during open access, or in the context of informal learning, how are the uses of a space suggested by the space itself and how do users take up the possibilities offered? What if spaces invited users to adjust their representations of how languages are learned, by suggesting alternative approaches and activities which take into account, for example, embodied language, experiential learning, creative expression and social learning?
Track 2: Virtual worlds: real experiences?
Online language learning environments, programmes, and tools bring into question notions of space and territory (Benson, 2020; Guichon et al., 2022) as well as the problem of how to create presence at a distance (Jézégou, 2014). Real-world experiences are referenced in, and applied to, virtual world conceptualisation. Both experienced and novice users of virtual worlds may use terms and expressions that refer to physical experience when describing their journey in a virtual world. Such linguistic usage can be investigated in relation to questions of user embodiment and interaction between users, objects and spaces in virtual worlds. Different types of space can exist in virtual worlds, each suggesting related meanings and representations (educational escape games, virtual tutoring sessions, etc). How and what do virtual representations of physical spaces, and the arrangement of virtual spaces themselves, contribute to these new learning environments? Is the immersive potential of this kind of environment and a possible “speech-gesture co-expressivity” (Lapaire, 2013) demonstrated by users’ awareness of their presence in such spaces and, if so, how do they signal this awareness through references to movement and body? Do users of virtual worlds experience a form of embodiment in these environments, which intend to imitate the real-world, and how does this impact language learning as a form of “situated cognition” (Duthoit, 2022)?
Track 3: Physical/virtual interactions
New hybrid pedagogic and collaborative spaces prompt us to reflect on human-human and human-machine interactions. In creating new conditions of possibility, imagination and composition, these spaces raise questions of frame and diegesis. Physical/virtual interactions, similarly, occasion hybrid ergonomics, particularly within immersive rooms and their attendant gestures. Such questions touch all levels of language description and articulation (pronunciation, phonology, script generation, etc.).
Mediated interactions give rise to an innovative, phenomenological, conception of our bodily envelope and the tensions that animate it (Hansen, 2006): immobile we interact, silent we speak, unobservable we see, touchless we collide.
New textualities are encouraged by multimodality; moving from handwriting (pencil, stylus) to digital writing (keyboard, touch screen). For example, there is the question of adapting non-Latin scripts to transliteration systems or phonetic and/or orthographic transcriptions in pedagogic contexts (Haralambous, 2014; Allanic, 2017) and the underlying issue of corpus (Pinon, 2010).
How can/should our disciplines (applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, studies of gestuality, translation studies, narratology, grapholinguistics…) position themselves in relation to these new circumstances?
The conference will provide an opportunity to consider the following questions:
- What epistemologies correspond to these new realities?
- What research methodologies (hybrid discourse analyses, digital ethnographies, etc.) can account for digital environments?
- What links can be identified between learning spaces and the learning that takes place?
- What are the physical and virtual implications of a given practice?
- What advantages and flexibilities are offered by socio-technological environments and new hybrid spaces such as immersive rooms and virtual worlds?
- What roles can documentary resources and librarians play?
- What bridges can be built between university and non-university communities (participatory science, third spaces, etc.)?
- How can we include and value linguistic diversity?
- How do new conditions of physicality and virtuality affect games, artistic and cultural practices, and the body in movement?
Submission guidelines
Submission on the SciencesConf site: https://ispeval.sciencesconf.org/ (you will need to register with SciencesConf)
before 17 January 2025
In parallel to the SciencesConf, please send a copy of your submission to marie.varin@univ-rennes2.fr
When submitting, please include:
- Presenter name and institutional affiliation
- An abstract of 450 words with 5-7 keywords
- An indication of methodological approach
- Key reference works
- Your submission file extension should be: ISPEV@L_SURNAME.docx
Registration fees
- Tenured researchers: 80 euros
- Non-tenured researchers: 60 euros
- Doctoral and graduate students (not affiliated with Rennes 2): 25 euros
- Doctoral and graduate students (affiliated with Rennes 2): free
Conference languages
- French, English
Conference papers and proceedings will be in person – since we wish to explore spatial pedagogies together we have decided to favour face-to-face modalities and will not be providing hybrid or online solutions.
Key dates
- Deadline for paper and poster submissions: 17 January 2025
- Notice of acceptance: 20 March 2025
Scientific committee heads
- Franck Barbin (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
- William Kelleher (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
- Marie Varin (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
Organisational committee
- Franck Barbin (Rennes 2 University LIDILE)
- Clara Destais (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
- Fanny Hervé-Pécot (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
- William Kelleher (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
- Anne Prunet (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
- Marie Varin (Rennes 2 University, LIDILE)
National scientific committee
- Clara Destais (Rennes 2 University)
- Salam Diab-Duranton (Grenoble-Alpes University)
- Yannis Haralambous (IMT Atlantique)
- Faisal Kenanah (Caen University)
- Elisabeth Richard (Rennes 2 University)
- Adam Wilson (Lorraine University)
- Sévérine Wozniak (Lyon 2 Lumière University)
International scientific committee
- Joseph Dichy (Canadian University Dubai)
- Nelly Foucher Stenklov (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
- Uri Horesh (St Andrews University, Scotland)
- Priscilla Ringrose (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
- Jean Marguerite Jimenez (University of Calabria, Italy)
- Agata Rozumko (University of Białystok, Poland)
- Daniela Francesca Virdis (University of Cagliari, Italy)
- Cathrin Ruppe (University of Applied Sciences Münster, Germany)
Subjects
Places
- Campus Villejean
Rennes, France (35)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Friday, January 17, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- pedagogy, hybridity, space, media, virtuality
Contact(s)
- William KELLEHER
courriel : william [dot] kelleher [at] univ-rennes2 [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- William KELLEHER
courriel : william [dot] kelleher [at] univ-rennes2 [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« ISPEV@L – Interfaces and Spaces in Second Language Acquisition: Teaching and Research », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, October 30, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/12leg
