GSL lecturer Takako Aikawa received the Japan Foundation: Japanese Language Grant for her “AI (artificial intelligence) Japanese Teacher” project. The project is to develop a state-of-the-art Japanese language learning tool. The tool can simulate the behaviour of a Japanese language teacher, correcting students’ mistakes and providing feedback in real time. Aikawa said that the project can “bridge the fields of language teaching and language technology.”

In other news, Aikawa made a presentation at the Canadian Association of Japanese Language Education (CAJLE) Annual Conference held August 20-21, 2015, in Vancouver, Canada. She presented her research on the AI Japanese Teacher project. “It was a productive conference,” Aikawa said, “and it was great to see researchers from six different countries, including the United States, Canada, and Japan.”