The problem with books telling you that X kanji looks like Y thing in is that the book is doing the mental work for you. I've memorized more kanji than I can numerate by imagining those connections myself in my brain. Often those connections are geographic and related to personal experience not X looks like Y.
Doing the work to learn anything requires active qualitative (artistic/creative) thinking. Not merely remembering what someone else told you is the "correct" way. #sla #education
FFmpeg to Google Fund Us or Stop Sending Bugs: https://thenewstack.io/ffmpeg-to-google-fund-us-or-stop-sending-bugs/ by @sjvn
The clash between small volunteer-driven, open-source projects, such as FFmpeg & the billion-dollar companies built on their work, which demand rapid security patches, is heating up.
@sjvn this is actually very simple to solve:
- Make #Support paid-only and reject submission from non - subscribers.
This something an increasing number of #FLOSS projects do: Rejecting submissions of non-allowlisted users without a valid #SupportSubscription at time of submission!
Anything else is just being a rich asshole corporation leeching!
The first research talk #VAR4LCR is presented by Valentin Werner and Lisa-Christine Altendorf on "Register and task variation in young German learner English: A (quasi-)longitudinal look at complexity". Find out more about the project here: https://www.iaak.uni-bonn.de/bael/en/research/young-german-learner-english @corpuslinguistics#EFL#SLA
Next up #VAR4LCR María Belén Díez-Bedmar is speaking on "Exploring task type effects on L2 accuracy profiles: Narrative vs. email writing by B1 Spanish EFL learners". This study is based on the FineDesc Learner Corpus, which is a manually error-tagged controlled corpus of 200 texts written by 100 Spanish EFL learners that allows for many interesting comparisons: https://web.ujaen.es/investiga/finedesc/index.php.
- FineDesc
Learner corpus
> Collaboration of 7 University Language Centres (accredited by CertAcles)
• L1 Spanish, but considering co-official languages
> Status of English (EFL1, EFL2, ESL, etc.)
> Attendance (or not) to a preparation course
• Register, text type, main illocutionary force, topic
L2 accuracy criterial features: narrative writing vs email writing at B1 level
Fine Desc
Large effect size
Narrative writing
Email writing
• Indefinite pronouns
• Adverb position
• Incorrect marking of number in
• Unclear passages
adjectives
Medium to large effect size
• Subject-verb agreement
• Verb morphology
Tense and aspect
• Word class selection
Dependent prepositions on verbs
• Verb voice errors
• Indefinite determiners
• Possessive determiners
Small to medium effect size
• Spelling
• Adjective selection
• Verb selection
• Use of incorrect punctuation
The opening keynote at #VAR4LCR is by none other than the master of register variation, Doug Biber, on "Grammatical complexity in L2 writing development: Contrasting oral versus literate complexity across registers and
developmental levels", himself introduced by the doyenne of learner corpus research, Sylviane Granger. Doug showed us lots of heat maps illustrating bottom-up patterns of co-occurrences of complexity features in English L2 writing based on recent work by himself, Tove Larsson and Greg Hancock, e.g., https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2025-0017.
The first research talk #VAR4LCR is presented by Valentin Werner and Lisa-Christine Altendorf on "Register and task variation in young German learner English: A (quasi-)longitudinal look at complexity". Find out more about the project here: https://www.iaak.uni-bonn.de/bael/en/research/young-german-learner-english @corpuslinguistics#EFL#SLA