Apple Lecture 2011
2011 Thomas Cobb
How the Language Teachers of the World Built a Data-Driven Web-Based Learning Tool
Every routine on the Lextutor website started life as a reverse-engineering of the language software used in a research study, but then developed in line with its many users' suggestions, for research or teaching purposes or both. This presentation will trace the evolution of some of Lextutor's most heavily used routines, from the origins of each in a research paper to its modification for many unexpected purposes. Concordancing, Vocabprofiling, Reaction Time research, and Cloze passage building are the main software stories. Behind the stories, the presentation will question the supposed gap between research and practice in applied linguistics.