Sofie Johansson | University of Gothenburg (original) (raw)
Papers by Sofie Johansson
rapport nr.: GNS …, 2011
Co-workers in the SUF project gathered outside the Faculty of Humanities, University of Gothenbur... more Co-workers in the SUF project gathered outside the Faculty of Humanities, University of Gothenburg (Ulrika Magnusson, Julia Prentice and Emma Sköldberg are missing from the picture).
Nyanländas språkinlärning Fem delstudier om nyanländas lärande i olika kontexter Sofie Johansson ... more Nyanländas språkinlärning Fem delstudier om nyanländas lärande i olika kontexter Sofie Johansson (red.) ROSA (Rapporter Om Svenska som Andraspråk) ges ut av Institutet för svenska som andraspråk, Institutionen för svenska språket, Göteborgs universitet. Serien omfattar vetenskapliga arbeten av olika slag inom fältet svenska som andraspråk. Frågor och synpunkter är välkomna, och kan riktas direkt till författaren eller till redaktörerna: ROSA, Institutet för svenska som andraspråk, Institutionen för svenska språket, Göteborgs universitet, Box 200, 405 30 Göteborg eller på e-post: rosa@svenska. gu.se. Hit kan också bidrag för publicering skickas.
ABSTRACT This paper reports on initial efforts to compile a corpus of course book texts used for ... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on initial efforts to compile a corpus of course book texts used for teaching CEFR-based courses of Swedish to adult immigrants. The research agenda behind compiling such a corpus comprises the study of normative “input” texts that can reveal a number of facts about what is being taught in terms of explicit grammar, receptive vocabulary, text and sentence readability; as well as build insights into linguistic characteristics of normative texts which can help anticipate learner performance in terms of active vocabulary, grammatical competence, etc. in classroom and testing settings. The CEFR “can-do” statements are known to offer flexibility in interpreting them for different languages and target groups. However, they are nonspecific and therefore it is difficult to associate different kinds of competences and levels of accuracy learners need in order to perform the communicative tasks with the different CEFR levels. To address this problem a systematic study needs to be performed for each individual language, both for “input” normative texts and “output” learner-produced texts. In this project we take the first step to collect and study normative texts for Swedish. The article describes the process of corpus compilation, annotation scheme of CEFR-relevant parameters, and methods proposed for text analysis, namely statistic and empiric methods, as well as techniques coming from computational linguistics/machine learning.
In qualitative projects on ICALL (Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning), research and ... more In qualitative projects on ICALL (Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning), research and development always go hand in hand: development both depends upon the research results and dictates the research agenda. Likewise, in the development of the Swedish ICALL platform Lärka, the practical issues of development have dictated its research agenda. With NLP approaches, sooner or later, the necessity for reliable training data becomes unavoidable. At the moment Lärka's research agenda cannot be addressed without access to reliable training data, so-called "gold standard". This paper gives an overview of the current state of the Swedish ICALL platform development and related research agenda, and describes the first attempts to collect the reference corpus ("gold standard") coming from course books used in CEFR-based language teaching.
rapport nr.: Humanistdag- …, 2006
The paper describes the ongoing development of compiling and introducing a Swedish academic word ... more The paper describes the ongoing development of compiling and introducing a Swedish academic word list (SAWL), inter alia intended to be used as a lexical resource in CALL-applications in relation to higher academic studies. When it comes to language acquisition, resources like these play an important part in instructed language learning. So far, no such resource exists for Swedish. The format of SAWL has been elaborated in collaboration with the Language Support Service at the University of Gothenburg. SAWL is compiled with methods from corpus linguistics inspired by research on English academic words (Coxhead 2002). Our work includes collection and syntactic annotation of learner corpora of Swedish academic texts from a wide range of university subjects within the Faculty of Arts. The corpora are freely accessible through Sprakbanken. SAWL are designed with university students and language learners with Swedish or other linguistic backgrounds in mind. The word list and the corpora ...
CALL: Using, Learning, Knowing, EUROCALL Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 22-25 August 2012, Proceedings, 2012
Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository ... more Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository of words is considered indispensable for successful communication. CALL practitioners have experimented with various kinds of computer-mediated glosses to facilitate L2 vocabulary building in the context of incidental vocabulary learning. Intentional learning, on the other hand, is generally underestimated, since it is considered out of fashion and not in line with the communicative L2 learning paradigm. Yet, work is still being done in this area and a substantial body of research indicates that the usefulness of incidental vocabulary learning does not exclude the use of dedicated vocabulary study and that by using aids explicitly geared to building vocabularies (such as word lists and word cards), L2 learners exhibit good retention rates and faster learning gains. Intentional vocabulary study should, therefore, have its place in the instructional and learning context. Regardless of the approach, incidental or intentional, the crucial question with respect to vocabulary teaching/learning remains: which and how many words should we teach/learn at different language levels? An attempt to answer the above question was made within the framework of the EU-funded project titled "KELLY"
ExLing 2019: Proceedings of 10th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics,, Nov 1, 2019
This paper explores the role that various lexical-based measures play for differentiating between... more This paper explores the role that various lexical-based measures play for differentiating between individuals with mild forms of cognitive impairment (MCI) and healthy controls (HC). Recent research underscores the importance of language and linguistic analysis as essential components that can contribute to a variety of sensitive cognitive measures for the identification of milder forms of cognitive impairment. Subtle language changes serve as a sign that an individual's cognitive functions have been impacted, potentially leading to early diagnosis. Our research aims to identify linguistic biomarkers that could distinguish between individuals with MCI and HC and also be useful in predicting MCI.
Set in MS Word, fonts Gentium Book Basic and Linux Libertine by Kristin Hagen. Cover design by Ak... more Set in MS Word, fonts Gentium Book Basic and Linux Libertine by Kristin Hagen. Cover design by Akademika forlag & Atle Grønn. [2] fjeld, hagen, henriksen, johansson, olsen & prentice OSLa volume 9(3), 2017 project groups. Research in Norway has focused on the development of a corpus and lexical resources. A similar focus has guided the research in Sweden, as well as several ongoing research projects in pedagogical and educational topics relevant to academic language use. In Denmark, no academic corpus was available at the onset of the LUNAS project, and the main research focus in the field of academic language had previously been on education in academic English as a second language. These different perspectives are reflected in this volume of collected papers, which, as a result, consists of three different parts: one with a focus on the pedagogical challenges and educational perspectives, one with a focus on the linguistic perspectives and one more generally related to describing academic language with varying approaches. [2] this volume This volume gives a sample of ongoing research in the field of language use in Nordic academic settings. The selection of papers is based on contributions to the conference at the University of Copenhagen in May 2016. The review processes were conducted by inviting a selection of conference participants to submit a contribution to this volume. Each paper was reviewed by two expert researchers in the field. Papers with minor or moderate revision suggestions were accepted for publication. The reviewers listed in alphabetic order are:
this volume, 2012
Academic language often presents a challenge to students, both language learners and native speak... more Academic language often presents a challenge to students, both language learners and native speakers. Therefore there is a need for educational language tools such as academic vocabulary resources. To date, resources developed have mainly focussed on learners of English; similar support is not yet available for Swedish. This paper reports on three different approaches to compiling a corpus of authentic academic text material used in academic settings. The purpose is to compose an empirical basis for the construction of a Swedish academic word list which can be used in language teaching. Because we have chosen to follow the method used for the creation of The Academic Word List
Oslo Studies in Language
This paper describes the work and methods used to compile monolingual Norwegian and Swedish acade... more This paper describes the work and methods used to compile monolingual Norwegian and Swedish academic word lists as well as a merged Norwegian-Swedish list. The resulting list is discussed with respect to similarities and especially differences between the two languages, in terms of concepts such as cognates, false friends and remote friends.
LREJ special issue
We present the Kelly project, and its work on developing word lists, monolingual and bilingual, f... more We present the Kelly project, and its work on developing word lists, monolingual and bilingual, for language learning, using corpus methods, for nine languages and thirty-six language pairs. We describe the method in some detail and discuss the many challenges encountered. We have loaded the data into an online database and made it accessible for anyone to explore: we present our own first explorations of it.
Language Resources and Evaluation, 2014
We present the KELLY project and its work on developing monolingual and bilingual word lists for ... more We present the KELLY project and its work on developing monolingual and bilingual word lists for language learning, using corpus methods, for nine languages and thirty-six language pairs. We describe the method and discuss the many challenges encountered. We have loaded the data into an online database to make it accessible for anyone to explore and we present our own first explorations of it. The focus of the paper is thus twofold, covering pedagogical and methodological aspects of the lists' construction, and linguistic aspects of the by-product of the project, the KELLY database.
CALL: Using, Learning, Knowing, EUROCALL Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 22-25 August 2012, Proceedings, 2012
ABSTRACT Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich re... more ABSTRACT Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository of words is considered indispensable for successful communication. CALL practitioners have experimented with various kinds of computer-mediated glosses to facilitate L2 vocabulary building in the context of incidental vocabulary learning. Intentional learning, on the other hand, is generally underestimated, since it is considered out of fashion and not in line with the communicative L2 learning paradigm. Yet, work is still being done in this area and substantial body of research indicates that the usefulness of incidental vocabulary learning does not exclude the use of dedicated vocabulary study and that by using aids explicitly geared to building vocabularies (such as word lists and word cards) L2 learners exhibit good retention rates and faster learning gains. Intentional vocabulary study should, therefore, have its place in the instructional and learning context. Regardless of the approach, incidental or intentional, the crucial question with respect to vocabulary teaching/learning remains: which and how many words should we teach/learn at different language levels? An attempt to answer the above question was made within the framework of the EU-funded project titled “KELLY” (Keywords for Language Learning for Young and Adults Alike) presented here. The project aimed at building corpus-informed vocabulary lists for L2 learners ranging from A1 to C2 levels for nine languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian and Swedish.
This paper reports on a joint multi-disciplinary Nordic project aimed at developing three new aca... more This paper reports on a joint multi-disciplinary Nordic project aimed at developing three new academic lexical resources based on corpora consisting of texts from Swedish, Norwegian and Danish academic settings. An academic word list exists for English, but no such lists exist for the Nordic languages. Such a list would be an important resource for both L1 and L2 students in their first years of study, a period when many students struggle to cope with the demands of academia. Moreover, the word lists would be of use to students and teachers at the higher levels of secondary education. An inventory of academic words and phrases would also be a useful tool for researchers of academic language use and for test developers. The paper outlines the initial stages of work on an academic word list for Swedish. Three potential research approaches have been explored: the translation of the English list, extracting academic words from existing corpora, and the compilation of parallel academic c...
We present T-MASTER, a tool for assessing students' reading skills on a variety of dimensions. T-... more We present T-MASTER, a tool for assessing students' reading skills on a variety of dimensions. T-MASTER uses sophisticated measures for assessing a student's reading comprehension and vocabulary understanding. Texts are selected based on their difficulty using novel readability measures and tests are created based on the texts. The results are analyzed in T-MASTER, and the numerical results are mapped to textual descriptions that describe the student's reading abilities on the dimensions being analysed. These results are presented to the teacher in a form that is easily comprehensible, and lends itself to inspection of each individual student's results.
In international surveys, the results of Swedish students in natural science indicate a negative ... more In international surveys, the results of Swedish students in natural science indicate a negative trend. In TIMSS, the results have decreased between 1995-2007. The aim of the study described in this paper is to investigate the importance of language skills in the subjects of natural science, more particularly in chemistry. In order to make conclusions on students' language skills, a study on language use in grade 8 in chemistry was carried out. The study compared characteristic language features in natural science, focusing on students language related to productive skills, to language features in chemistry text books. The result of the study indicates a correlation between high-achieving students and the use of the characteristic language features.
rapport nr.: GNS …, 2011
Co-workers in the SUF project gathered outside the Faculty of Humanities, University of Gothenbur... more Co-workers in the SUF project gathered outside the Faculty of Humanities, University of Gothenburg (Ulrika Magnusson, Julia Prentice and Emma Sköldberg are missing from the picture).
Nyanländas språkinlärning Fem delstudier om nyanländas lärande i olika kontexter Sofie Johansson ... more Nyanländas språkinlärning Fem delstudier om nyanländas lärande i olika kontexter Sofie Johansson (red.) ROSA (Rapporter Om Svenska som Andraspråk) ges ut av Institutet för svenska som andraspråk, Institutionen för svenska språket, Göteborgs universitet. Serien omfattar vetenskapliga arbeten av olika slag inom fältet svenska som andraspråk. Frågor och synpunkter är välkomna, och kan riktas direkt till författaren eller till redaktörerna: ROSA, Institutet för svenska som andraspråk, Institutionen för svenska språket, Göteborgs universitet, Box 200, 405 30 Göteborg eller på e-post: rosa@svenska. gu.se. Hit kan också bidrag för publicering skickas.
ABSTRACT This paper reports on initial efforts to compile a corpus of course book texts used for ... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on initial efforts to compile a corpus of course book texts used for teaching CEFR-based courses of Swedish to adult immigrants. The research agenda behind compiling such a corpus comprises the study of normative “input” texts that can reveal a number of facts about what is being taught in terms of explicit grammar, receptive vocabulary, text and sentence readability; as well as build insights into linguistic characteristics of normative texts which can help anticipate learner performance in terms of active vocabulary, grammatical competence, etc. in classroom and testing settings. The CEFR “can-do” statements are known to offer flexibility in interpreting them for different languages and target groups. However, they are nonspecific and therefore it is difficult to associate different kinds of competences and levels of accuracy learners need in order to perform the communicative tasks with the different CEFR levels. To address this problem a systematic study needs to be performed for each individual language, both for “input” normative texts and “output” learner-produced texts. In this project we take the first step to collect and study normative texts for Swedish. The article describes the process of corpus compilation, annotation scheme of CEFR-relevant parameters, and methods proposed for text analysis, namely statistic and empiric methods, as well as techniques coming from computational linguistics/machine learning.
In qualitative projects on ICALL (Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning), research and ... more In qualitative projects on ICALL (Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning), research and development always go hand in hand: development both depends upon the research results and dictates the research agenda. Likewise, in the development of the Swedish ICALL platform Lärka, the practical issues of development have dictated its research agenda. With NLP approaches, sooner or later, the necessity for reliable training data becomes unavoidable. At the moment Lärka's research agenda cannot be addressed without access to reliable training data, so-called "gold standard". This paper gives an overview of the current state of the Swedish ICALL platform development and related research agenda, and describes the first attempts to collect the reference corpus ("gold standard") coming from course books used in CEFR-based language teaching.
rapport nr.: Humanistdag- …, 2006
The paper describes the ongoing development of compiling and introducing a Swedish academic word ... more The paper describes the ongoing development of compiling and introducing a Swedish academic word list (SAWL), inter alia intended to be used as a lexical resource in CALL-applications in relation to higher academic studies. When it comes to language acquisition, resources like these play an important part in instructed language learning. So far, no such resource exists for Swedish. The format of SAWL has been elaborated in collaboration with the Language Support Service at the University of Gothenburg. SAWL is compiled with methods from corpus linguistics inspired by research on English academic words (Coxhead 2002). Our work includes collection and syntactic annotation of learner corpora of Swedish academic texts from a wide range of university subjects within the Faculty of Arts. The corpora are freely accessible through Sprakbanken. SAWL are designed with university students and language learners with Swedish or other linguistic backgrounds in mind. The word list and the corpora ...
CALL: Using, Learning, Knowing, EUROCALL Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 22-25 August 2012, Proceedings, 2012
Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository ... more Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository of words is considered indispensable for successful communication. CALL practitioners have experimented with various kinds of computer-mediated glosses to facilitate L2 vocabulary building in the context of incidental vocabulary learning. Intentional learning, on the other hand, is generally underestimated, since it is considered out of fashion and not in line with the communicative L2 learning paradigm. Yet, work is still being done in this area and a substantial body of research indicates that the usefulness of incidental vocabulary learning does not exclude the use of dedicated vocabulary study and that by using aids explicitly geared to building vocabularies (such as word lists and word cards), L2 learners exhibit good retention rates and faster learning gains. Intentional vocabulary study should, therefore, have its place in the instructional and learning context. Regardless of the approach, incidental or intentional, the crucial question with respect to vocabulary teaching/learning remains: which and how many words should we teach/learn at different language levels? An attempt to answer the above question was made within the framework of the EU-funded project titled "KELLY"
ExLing 2019: Proceedings of 10th International Conference of Experimental Linguistics,, Nov 1, 2019
This paper explores the role that various lexical-based measures play for differentiating between... more This paper explores the role that various lexical-based measures play for differentiating between individuals with mild forms of cognitive impairment (MCI) and healthy controls (HC). Recent research underscores the importance of language and linguistic analysis as essential components that can contribute to a variety of sensitive cognitive measures for the identification of milder forms of cognitive impairment. Subtle language changes serve as a sign that an individual's cognitive functions have been impacted, potentially leading to early diagnosis. Our research aims to identify linguistic biomarkers that could distinguish between individuals with MCI and HC and also be useful in predicting MCI.
Set in MS Word, fonts Gentium Book Basic and Linux Libertine by Kristin Hagen. Cover design by Ak... more Set in MS Word, fonts Gentium Book Basic and Linux Libertine by Kristin Hagen. Cover design by Akademika forlag & Atle Grønn. [2] fjeld, hagen, henriksen, johansson, olsen & prentice OSLa volume 9(3), 2017 project groups. Research in Norway has focused on the development of a corpus and lexical resources. A similar focus has guided the research in Sweden, as well as several ongoing research projects in pedagogical and educational topics relevant to academic language use. In Denmark, no academic corpus was available at the onset of the LUNAS project, and the main research focus in the field of academic language had previously been on education in academic English as a second language. These different perspectives are reflected in this volume of collected papers, which, as a result, consists of three different parts: one with a focus on the pedagogical challenges and educational perspectives, one with a focus on the linguistic perspectives and one more generally related to describing academic language with varying approaches. [2] this volume This volume gives a sample of ongoing research in the field of language use in Nordic academic settings. The selection of papers is based on contributions to the conference at the University of Copenhagen in May 2016. The review processes were conducted by inviting a selection of conference participants to submit a contribution to this volume. Each paper was reviewed by two expert researchers in the field. Papers with minor or moderate revision suggestions were accepted for publication. The reviewers listed in alphabetic order are:
this volume, 2012
Academic language often presents a challenge to students, both language learners and native speak... more Academic language often presents a challenge to students, both language learners and native speakers. Therefore there is a need for educational language tools such as academic vocabulary resources. To date, resources developed have mainly focussed on learners of English; similar support is not yet available for Swedish. This paper reports on three different approaches to compiling a corpus of authentic academic text material used in academic settings. The purpose is to compose an empirical basis for the construction of a Swedish academic word list which can be used in language teaching. Because we have chosen to follow the method used for the creation of The Academic Word List
Oslo Studies in Language
This paper describes the work and methods used to compile monolingual Norwegian and Swedish acade... more This paper describes the work and methods used to compile monolingual Norwegian and Swedish academic word lists as well as a merged Norwegian-Swedish list. The resulting list is discussed with respect to similarities and especially differences between the two languages, in terms of concepts such as cognates, false friends and remote friends.
LREJ special issue
We present the Kelly project, and its work on developing word lists, monolingual and bilingual, f... more We present the Kelly project, and its work on developing word lists, monolingual and bilingual, for language learning, using corpus methods, for nine languages and thirty-six language pairs. We describe the method in some detail and discuss the many challenges encountered. We have loaded the data into an online database and made it accessible for anyone to explore: we present our own first explorations of it.
Language Resources and Evaluation, 2014
We present the KELLY project and its work on developing monolingual and bilingual word lists for ... more We present the KELLY project and its work on developing monolingual and bilingual word lists for language learning, using corpus methods, for nine languages and thirty-six language pairs. We describe the method and discuss the many challenges encountered. We have loaded the data into an online database to make it accessible for anyone to explore and we present our own first explorations of it. The focus of the paper is thus twofold, covering pedagogical and methodological aspects of the lists' construction, and linguistic aspects of the by-product of the project, the KELLY database.
CALL: Using, Learning, Knowing, EUROCALL Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 22-25 August 2012, Proceedings, 2012
ABSTRACT Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich re... more ABSTRACT Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository of words is considered indispensable for successful communication. CALL practitioners have experimented with various kinds of computer-mediated glosses to facilitate L2 vocabulary building in the context of incidental vocabulary learning. Intentional learning, on the other hand, is generally underestimated, since it is considered out of fashion and not in line with the communicative L2 learning paradigm. Yet, work is still being done in this area and substantial body of research indicates that the usefulness of incidental vocabulary learning does not exclude the use of dedicated vocabulary study and that by using aids explicitly geared to building vocabularies (such as word lists and word cards) L2 learners exhibit good retention rates and faster learning gains. Intentional vocabulary study should, therefore, have its place in the instructional and learning context. Regardless of the approach, incidental or intentional, the crucial question with respect to vocabulary teaching/learning remains: which and how many words should we teach/learn at different language levels? An attempt to answer the above question was made within the framework of the EU-funded project titled “KELLY” (Keywords for Language Learning for Young and Adults Alike) presented here. The project aimed at building corpus-informed vocabulary lists for L2 learners ranging from A1 to C2 levels for nine languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian and Swedish.
This paper reports on a joint multi-disciplinary Nordic project aimed at developing three new aca... more This paper reports on a joint multi-disciplinary Nordic project aimed at developing three new academic lexical resources based on corpora consisting of texts from Swedish, Norwegian and Danish academic settings. An academic word list exists for English, but no such lists exist for the Nordic languages. Such a list would be an important resource for both L1 and L2 students in their first years of study, a period when many students struggle to cope with the demands of academia. Moreover, the word lists would be of use to students and teachers at the higher levels of secondary education. An inventory of academic words and phrases would also be a useful tool for researchers of academic language use and for test developers. The paper outlines the initial stages of work on an academic word list for Swedish. Three potential research approaches have been explored: the translation of the English list, extracting academic words from existing corpora, and the compilation of parallel academic c...
We present T-MASTER, a tool for assessing students' reading skills on a variety of dimensions. T-... more We present T-MASTER, a tool for assessing students' reading skills on a variety of dimensions. T-MASTER uses sophisticated measures for assessing a student's reading comprehension and vocabulary understanding. Texts are selected based on their difficulty using novel readability measures and tests are created based on the texts. The results are analyzed in T-MASTER, and the numerical results are mapped to textual descriptions that describe the student's reading abilities on the dimensions being analysed. These results are presented to the teacher in a form that is easily comprehensible, and lends itself to inspection of each individual student's results.
In international surveys, the results of Swedish students in natural science indicate a negative ... more In international surveys, the results of Swedish students in natural science indicate a negative trend. In TIMSS, the results have decreased between 1995-2007. The aim of the study described in this paper is to investigate the importance of language skills in the subjects of natural science, more particularly in chemistry. In order to make conclusions on students' language skills, a study on language use in grade 8 in chemistry was carried out. The study compared characteristic language features in natural science, focusing on students language related to productive skills, to language features in chemistry text books. The result of the study indicates a correlation between high-achieving students and the use of the characteristic language features.
Abstract We present the Kelly project, and its work on developing word lists, monolingual and bil... more Abstract We present the Kelly project, and its work on developing word lists, monolingual and bilingual, for language learning, using corpus methods, for nine languages and thirty-six language pairs. We describe the method in some detail and discuss the many challenges encountered. We have loaded the data into an online database and made it accessible for anyone to explore: we present our own first explorations of it.