Teaching Computational Linguistics in English Language Academic Programs

Abstract

This study aimed at suggesting a syllabus named “Introduction to Computational Linguistics” to be taught within the programs of Language Teaching and Translation in the Yemeni Universities. This course could be a threshold for scientific study of language through dehumanizing the routinely-repeated processing, analyzing and even production of natural human languages to save time and effort, and avoid bias and subjectivity. The study method relied on a review for several similar programs from well-known universities which included this course within their study syllabi. It also used a field survey through which academics and professionals who gave their insights about the feasibility of including CL within the programs of language departments in the Yemeni Universities. A review to previous research papers and books highlighted the importance of teaching language processing and programming at language programs as well that highlight the importance of giving training to students of Language programs to introduce students to Natural Language Processing (NLP) skills such as tagging, tokenizing, parsing, sentiment analyzing, machine translation, text production, analysis and summarization that could be handled in later courses. The study concluded with a strong recommendation for tradition language schools to include CL course within their academic language programs either within the BA and/or MA program syllabi either as ready-made software track or as a programming track. Later appraisal might give insightful feedback for the development phase to the concerned Language program.