Dr Mark Richards

Brain Sciences - Speech and Language

Position

Associate Research Fellow in Language Technologies for Education

Role

• Consult with Aboriginal communities, schools and other education providers.
• Develop and evaluate research-based technology to support language learning, through frameworks involving semantic items (vocabulary and gesture across languages) and/or pre-assembled utterances (or 'chunks').
• Design, carry out and publish a program of evaluation studies in collaboration with Professor Caroline Jones and other CoEDL members.

Biography

Dr Mark Richards is a researcher within the Speech and Language program in MARCS. He has many years' experience as a language teacher (French, Latin and TESOL) in the primary, secondary and adult education sectors. His most recent role was Head of Languages at Meriden (2007-2015). He completed an M.PHIl in linguistics at the University of Sydney in 1994. The project centred on the development of a learners' grammar and language teaching resources for Mangarrayi, in collaboration with members of the Jilkminggan community in the Roper river region of the Northern Territory. He undertook a PhD at MARCS between 2016 and 2019, and again collaborated with the Jilkminggan community to investigate the use of archival audio recordings to support revitalisation of Mangarrayi. His thesis has been submitted and is awaiting the examiners' report.

Research Interests

Mark's research centres on language revitalisation and language learning. He is interested in the role of technology in scaffolding and supporting language learning. He is currently undertaking a review of recent research into the use of technology in the context of language learning to identify features of different technologies that research suggests provide benefits for learning. He is also consulting as widely as possible with Aboriginal communities and other language learners to inform the development of learning tools to support sustainable language revitalisation.

Qualifications

• Ph.D
• M.Phil (Linguistics) - University of Sydney 1994
• Graduate Diploma in Education - Sydney Teachers College 1986
• B.A. (Hons) - University of Sydney 1984

Publications

Richards, M. & Lardy, J., (2019), 'Repurposing archival audio materials for language revitalisation in an Aboriginal community', Babel Vol. 54, Issues 1&2, pp 41-45.

Richards, M., Jones, C., Merlan, F. and MacRitchie, J. (2019), 'Revitalisation of Mangarrayi: Supporting community use of archival audio exemplars for creation of language learning resources', Language Documentation and Conservation, vol 13, pp 253 - 280.

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