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The University of Fribourg is represented in the CLARIN-CH Consortium by Prof. Anita Thomas, from the Department of Multilingualism and Foreign Languages Education.
The community from the University of Fribourg provides CLARIN-CH language resources and expertise in language sciences, and it is actively involved in research projects involving language resources.
Language resources
1.The Swiss learner corpus SWIKO is a multilingual learner corpus describing learner language according to principles of corpus-linguistics. The corpus is an umbrella project developed during the 2016–2019 research period and being further developed in the 2021–2024 period. It incorporates data from other projects at the Research Centre on Multilingualism. During the first research period (2016–2019), a database consisting of task-based oral and written student texts was compiled. The texts were produced by lower-secondary students in the foreign languages German, French and English. In parallel, the same oral and written tasks were used to compile productions by their peers speaking German and French as the language of schooling. At the end of 2020, the corpus encompassed 1,803 written and 410 oral original texts. SWIKO enables searches and analyses of learners’ vocabulary and grammar competence, also when contrastive questions are asked, e.g. writing vs. speaking in a foreign language, foreign languages in comparison, foreign language vs. language of schooling. SWIKO can currently be accessed via a request to the Institute of Multilingualism.
2. The Corpora of DaF- and FLE learners is an inventory of existing corpora containing productions of learners of German and French as a foreign language; a further objective is defining gaps and needs in this area. To access, contact Prof. Anita Thomas.
Faculties and Departments involved in CLARIN-CH
Faculty of Humanities
1. Department of Multilingualism and Foreign Languages Education
Areas of expertise:
- Cognitive linguistics
- Corpus linguistics
- Folk linguistics
- Input and interaction
- Linguistic anthropology
- Multilingualism and norms
- Multilingualism and intercomprehension, receptive skills, cross-linguistic influence
- Multilingualism and migration
- Psycholinguistics, cognitive processes, priming
- Second language acquisition (L2 - SLA) and second language development
- Teaching and learning French as a Foreign/Second Language
- Teaching interaction
- Variationist linguistics
2. French Department
Areas of expertise:
3. German Department
Areas of expertise:
4. English Department
Areas of expertise:
Interfacultary center for Informatics
Areas of expertise in relation to language:
Current research projects
1. The project Swiss learner corpus SWIKO (professors Thomas Studer and Anita Thomas from the Institute of Multilingualism and Foreign Languages Education) develops a multilingual learner corpus describing learner language according to principles of corpus-linguistics. The SWIKO corpus is an umbrella project developed during the 2016–2019 research period and being further developed in the 2021–2024 period. In the current research period (2021–2024), SWIKO is being further developed in the scope of two projects: “Weiterentwicklung und Anwendungen (WETLAND)” (Further development and applications) and “Digitalisation et développement de la compétence d'interaction orale (DiCoi)” (Digitisation and development of oral competence).
2. The project Assessing profession-related language skills of language teachers (Center for Teachers’ Language Competences: PHSG, SUPSI, HEP VD, UNIL in cooperation with PH FHNW, PH Luzern and PH St Gallen) aims to assess profession-related language skills of language teachers of French, English and Italian as a foreign language in primary and secondary schools. The main starting points for the project are the “Profession-specific language proficiency profiles” (https://www.phsg.ch) as well as an inventory of the requirements and assessment practices at universities of teacher education regarding profession-specific language skills.
3. The project Comprehension and interaction in French as a foreign language (professor Anita Thomas from the Institute of Multilingualism and Foreign Languages Education) to studies the ‟comprehension‟ aspect of oral interaction competence. More specifically, this involves studying the linguistic and cultural characteristics of comprehension in oral interactions as well as testing teaching sequences that target comprehension in oral interactions for an audience of advanced learners of French as a foreign language.