It is time for my annual post of the papers I selected for a module that I teach (MD9A8, the module formerly known as MD997). Previous selections are grouped here or here. The list serves as a snapshot of interesting papers published in the previous 12 months or so. I hope it is useful to others who are looking for lists of papers to read, for student selections or for anything else.

Many researchers are becoming more aware of the importance of reproducibility.Although reproducibility involves a diverse array of topics and tools, one rOpenSci package has gained considerable attention for enabling reproducible analysis pipelines in R: targets, by Will Landau.Why a targets workshop?

In university, one sees students attending lectures and labs, working together on assignments, and doing exams. But—standing still for a moment—what is the purpose of all this business? The answer involves education, in the sense that students are being educated. But what is an education, precisely? In this blog post, I will summarize my views on the matter. Some say that an education is more than professional training.

In this post, I'll publish the answers given by OpenAI's ChatGPT for the final exam of the course Concepts of Programming Languages, a course I gave in the fall semester of 2022.

It’s a New Year and so it is time to post the papers I have selected for a module that I teach on (MD9A8, the module formerly known as MD997). Previous selections are grouped here or here. The list serves as a snapshot of interesting papers published in the previous 12 months or so. I hope it is useful to others who are looking for lists of papers to read, for student selections or for anything else.

It’s well known that some languages have multiple national standards, to the point where you can take courses in either Brazilian or European Portuguese, for example. Most language instruction services seem to choose one variety per language: when I studied Portuguese at the University of Paris X-Nanterre it was the European variety, but the online service Duolingo only offers the Brazilian one.

It is an annual event on quantixed to post the papers I have selected for what is now called MD9A8 (the module formerly known as MD997 Frontier Techniques and Research Skills in Biomedicine). Previous selections are grouped here.

A few years ago I wrote about incorporating sign linguistics when I taught Introduction to Linguistics at Saint John’s University. The other course I taught most often was Introduction to Phonology. This course was required for our majors in Speech Pathology and Audiology, and they often filled up the class.

I’ve got great news! I have now released LanguageLab, my free, open-source software for learning languages and music, to the public on GitHub. I wish I could tell you I’ve got a public site up that you can all use for free. Unfortunately, the features that would make LanguageLab easy for multiple users to share one server are later in the roadmap. There are a few other issues that also stand in the way of a massive public service.

Viewers of the Crown may have noticed a brief scene where Prince Charles practices Welsh by sitting in a glass cubicle wearing a headset.  Some viewers may recognize that as a language lab. Some may have even used language labs themselves. The core of the language lab technique is language drills, which are based on the bedrock of all skills training: mimicry, feedback and repetition.