Empiricism and analytical tools for 21 Century applied linguistics

The present volume follows an open-access publication policy, offering access to the multimedia files of the plenary lectures whose authors agreed to their publication and the Language Learning special roundtable, as well as a selection of the written versions of the papers presented at the 29th International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA), 86 of which were accepted for publication after a double-blind selection process and are collected in this volume.

The 29th AESLA Conference was held on the 4-6 May 2011, under the title ‘Empiricism and analytical tools for 21st Century Applied Linguistics’. Its objective was to offer a venue for researchers in several fields of Applied Linguistics to debate on theoretical, methodological, empirical and analytical aspects as regards language description.


In this edition the main focus was to combine the empirical methodology of Discourse Analysis approaches with the critical perspective of the construction of social reality through language, with special reference to the use of new technologies applied to linguistic description and language teaching. The Conference welcomed as plenary speakers Professors Henry Widdowson (University of Vienna), Ana Mauranen (University of Helsinki),




Michael O’Donnell (Autonomous University, Madrid) and Pamela Faber (University of Granada). A Language Learning Roundtable Conference was also held, funded by the journal Language Learning, under the theme ‘Corpus Linguistics for 21st Century Language Learning’.


Communications, roundtables and posters gathered in the Proceedings were organised, as in previous AESLA Conferences, in ten thematic panels representing the different sub-areas of Applied Linguistics and corresponding to the ten research areas in which AESLA is itself organised:


● Acquisition and learning
● Corpus linguistics, computational and language engineering
● Discourse analysis
● Language for specific purposes
● Language psychology, children language and psycholinguistics
● Language teaching and syllabus design
● Lexicology and lexicography
● Pragmatics
● Sociolinguistics
● Translation and interpretation




The Conference in Numbers


The total number of participants was 333, including Plenary Speakers, members of the AESLA Board and Panel Conveners. There were 41 international participants from 21 different countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, USA, and Venezuela). 318 proposals were submitted for consideration; eventually, 200 communications, 4 roundtables, and 8 posters were accepted (rejection rate
19.5%) and 86 papers were accepted for publication (rejection rate
16.5%).




Language Learning Roundtable


Under the auspices of the Chicago-based journal Language Learning, a special roundtable was held on May 4th, ‘CORPUS LINGUISTICS FOR 21ST LANGUAGE LEARNING’. The following world-class specialists in the field of new technologies (especially computer analysis methodologies or corpus analysis) and foreign language acquisition participated in this roundtable: Tony Berber Sardinha (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, Brazil), Anna Mauranen (University of Helsinki, Finland); Lourdes Ortega (University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA); Giovanni Parodi (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile); Pascual




Pérez Paredes (Universidad de Murcia, Spain); Ute Römer (University of Michigan, USA.); Mike Scott (Aston University, UK); and Izaskun Elorza (convener, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain). This roundtable aimed at exploring the presence and development of corpus linguistics in language learning focusing particularly on the Spanish and Latin-American contexts, including Brazil.




Other special activities


On May 5th the workshop ‘Strategies for Publishing Successfully in International Journals” was held on May 5th, convened by Lourdes Ortega (University of Hawaii in Manoa, USA, Language Learning editor) and Rosa Manchón (University of Murcia, Spain, Journal of Second Language Writing editor). In the workshop they dealt with the following topics: the publication process in international journals, the adequate selection of an international journal of applied linguistics, the question of publishing in English or in Spanish, the preparation of the article for submission, the roles of author, evaluator, director and member of the Editorial Board, and also some advices for successful publishing in international journals.


Among the workshops, roundtables and panels organised, it is worth mentioning the special panel AILA EUROPE, with the participation of representatives from the following European associations: Estonian Association of Applied Linguistics (EAAL),