The Open-Source FLAX Language System

The Open-Source FLAX Language System

Alannah FitzgeraldShaoqun WuIan H. WittenXiaofeng Yu

The eBook of FLAX

“FLAX (Flexible Language Acquisition) is

both a vision and a tool that you can use for

language learning. The Web contains

innumerable language activities, quizzes,

and games, but they are fixed: the activities

are cast in stone and the material is chosen

by others. Our vision is to put the control

back where it belongs, in the hands of teachers and learners.”

WHO ARE WE IN THIS FLAX RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT COLLABORATION?

FLAX Language at Waikato University

http://flax.nzdl.org FLAX image by permission of non-commercial reuse by Jane Galloway

FLAX Language Project at the Greenstone Digital Library Lab,

Waikato University NZ

Professor Ian WittenFLAX Project Lead

Dr Shaoqun WuFLAX Project Lead Researcher & Developer

Research on Open FLAX Collections

http://oerresearchhub.org/

Alannah FitzgeraldOpen Fellow with OERRHFLAX Language & OpenEducation Researcher

OPEN SOURCE LANGUAGE TOOLS DEVELOPMENT

FLAX Digital

Library

Collections

Collocations

database

Glossary

Open

Educational

Resources

Google-esque Interface Designs

Designed for the non-expert corpus user, namely:

learners, teachers, subject academics, instructional designers and language resource developers.

Introducing the Wikipedia Miner Toolkit (Milne & Witten, 2013)

Building Interactivity into FLAX Language Collections

FLAX Activities Continued

Free Android Apps

FLAX Across Platforms

• FLAX Website flax.nzdl.org for hosting open online language collections• Building directly onto the Web with OER

• FLAX multilingual open-source software for download• Set up your own FLAX server online or;• Build collections offline for use on your PC

• FLAX Android app for download• Interact with game-based FLAX collections while on the go

• FLAX for MOODLE plug-in for download• FLAX for MOOC Platforms?• FLAX in conjunction with translation technologies?

DOMAIN-SPECIFIC OPEN LANGUAGE COLLECTIONS BUILDING

The eBook of FLAX

“FLAX enables teachers to build bespoke libraries very easily. It is built upon powerful digital library technology, and provides access to vast linguistic resources containing countless examples of actual, authentic, usage in contemporary text. But teachers can also build collections using their own material, focusing on language learning in a particular domain (e.g., business, law) or motivating students by using text from a particular context (e.g., country or region, common interests).”

Working with Full Texts

Wikify Your Collections

Domain-specific Collocations

We focus on lexical collocations with noun-based structures because they are the most salient and important patterns in domain-specific text.

Collocations from the English Common Law MOOC:

• verb + noun e.g. abolish judicial review

• noun + noun e.g. precedent case

• adjective + noun e.g. common law

• noun + of + noun e.g. court of appeal

Lexical Bundles

“Lexical bundles” are multi-word sequences with distinctivesyntactic patterns and discourse functions that are commonlyused in academic prose (Biber & Barbieri, 2007; Biber et al,2003, 2004).

Bundles from British Law Report Corpus (BLaRC):• noun phrase + of e.g. In the course of his• prepositional phrase + of e.g. on the part of the• it + verb/adjective phrase e.g. it is common ground that• be + noun/adjective phrase e.g. be taken into account in• verb phrase + that e.g. There is no doubt that

Lexical Bundles

Collocations Within Collections

Linking to the FLAX Learning Collocations Collection (Wikipedia, BNC, BAWE)

Good Ol’ Part-Of-Speech Tagging

References• Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2003). Lexical bundles in

speech and writing: an initial taxonomy. In A. Wilson, P. Rayson, & T. McEnery (Eds.), Corpus linguistics by the lune: A festschrift for Geoffrey Leech (pp. 71–92). Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.

• Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at . . .: lexical bundles in university teaching and textbooks. Applied Linguistics, 25, 371–405. Biber, D. (2006). University Language, A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

• Biber, D., Barbieri F. (2007). Lexical bundles in university spoken and written registers. English for Specific Purpose, 26, 263–286.

• Milne, D. & Witten, I.H. (2013). An open-source toolkit for mining Wikipedia. Artificial Intelligence, 194, 222-239.

Look Out for FLAX in April withRussell Stannard’s - Teacher Training Videos

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com

Thank You

FLAX Language Project & Software Downloads: http://flax.nzdl.org/

The How-to eBook of FLAX: http://flax-doc.nzdl.org/BOOK_OF_FLAX/BookofFLAX%20fullsize%20with%20links.pdf

FLAX Game-based Apps for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=FLAX%20TEAM&hl=en

Alannah Fitzgerald: [email protected]

Shaoqun Wu: [email protected]

Ian Witten: [email protected]

Xiaofeng (Alex) Yu: [email protected]

OER Research Hub: http://oerresearchhub.org/

TOETOE Technology for Open English Blog: www.alannahfitzgerald.org

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/AlannahOpenEd/

Twitter: @AlannahFitz