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Center for Language Research

 
Mosaic view of Mt. Bandai from Inawashiro

RESEARCH

Professors in the CLR have a variety of research interests and publish widely. Some of them have their own labs and supervise undergraduate and/or graduate students there, while others carry out their research in the classroom or in other venues. Professors in the CLR have a proven track record of successful grant applications on all levels: national, prefectural, university-internal, and others.

FUNDING

Various sources of funding exist for CLR professors and we have been very successful at obtaining funding at all levels: (1) funding at the national government level - a.k.a. "kakenhi", (2) funding at the Fukushima prefectural level - a.k.a "kenzaidan", (3) funding available internally at the U of Aizu - "Competitive Research Funding", and (4) other special funding.

Current grants:

Years (April – March) Professor(s) Role Title
2024–2027 Stuart BENSON P.I. The nature of vocabulary in academic computer science speech
2023–2026 Tzu-Yin CHEN P.I. Exploring the Role of Prosody in Processing Compound Structures in East Asian Languages: A Comparative Study
2023–2026 Nick CARR & John BLAKE P.I. & Co-Investigator Dynamic Genre-Specific Automated Online Feedback Tool
2023–2026 Allan NICHOLAS & John BLAKE P.I. & Co-Investigator A Computerized Diagnostic Language Assessment of Japanese EFL Learners' Spoken Requesting
2022–2025 Will LINGLE P.I. Using eye tracking to investigate inference generation during L2 reading
2022–2025 Jeremy PERKINS P.I. F0 cue conflicts between tone and consonant effects
2022–2025 John BLAKE P.I. Natural language generation of trend descriptions for pedagogic purposes
2022–2025 Emiko KANEKO P.I. Cognitive process of Computer-based test takers: An exploratory study with eye tracker
2022–2025 Ian WILSON Co-Investigator 調音音韻論とジェスチャー音声表現から見た韻律階層 [Articulatory Phonology and prosodic hierarchy in terms of gestural phonetic expression]
2020–2024 Ian WILSON P.I. Articulatory settings of English, Japanese, and Chinese bilingual and trilingual speakers
2020–2024 Ian WILSON Co-Investigator インターフェイスにみる英語プロソディの習得と視覚情報を活用した学習法の開発

MORE grants that current CLR members hold or have held in the past

PUBLICATIONS

A list of some selected publications by current CLR professors can be found here: PUBLICATIONS.

LABS

Within the CLR, there are currently 4 labs:
CLR Phonetics Lab ● L2 phonetics, Aizu dialect, ...
Technical Communication Lab ● human-computer interaction, tech. docs, ...
Texts and Tools (TNT) Lab ● online tools helping people learn English
Speech Communication Lab ● L2 English spoken and written communication