The Workshop “La escritura del TFG y del TFM en Educación”,  organized by the Centro de Escritura of the Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, coordinated by Juan A. Núñez, took place from 17th – 21st January. We gave the opening presentation entitled “Escritura y contenidos prototípicos de un TFG y un TFM”. During the talk, we mentioned the arText tool for writing the TFG. The tool shows the user the prototypical structure, contents and phraseology of this type of academic work.

On 10 December, the Jornadas Terminología, inteligencia artificial y sociedad digital were held in Madrid, combining, on the one hand, the XX Jornada anual de la Asociación Española de Terminología (AETER) and, on the other hand, the IX Jornada de Terminología y Traducción Institucional de la Dirección General de Traducción (DGT) de la Comisión Europea. Iria da Cunha participated in the round table “Terminology and digital society”, moderated by Luis González (DGT translator). Among other things, she presented arText as an example of a technological tool that makes use of terminology and has a transfer to society.

The event was streamed live on the European Commission’s YouTube channel and is available here. You can also access the photo gallery from the AETER website by clicking here.

The Red de Lenguaje Claro Colombia invited our coordinator Iria da Cunha to present arText at one of the round tables of the IV Seminario internacional de lenguaje claro, which took place on the 1st and 2nd of December. The round table was entitled “Midiendo la claridad: testeo de contenidos y diálogo de saberes”. Iria da Cunha was joined by Mario Tascón (Prodigioso Volcán) and Carlos Andrés Rocha Ruiz (Grupo de Modernización del Estado del Departamento Nacional de Planeación de Colombia). The round table was moderated by Juan Manuel Espinosa, Subdirector Académico of the Instituto Caro y Cuervo de Colombia.

The seminar was streamed and proved to be a great success, with more than 950 attendees. It is now available on YouTube.

On 26 November, the II Jornadas de la Red Nacional de Calidad Normativa were held, organised by the Oficina de Coordinación y Calidad Normativa of the Ministerio de la Presidencia, Relaciones con las Cortes y Memoria Democrática of Spain. We participated with a talk entitled “El sistema arText como recurso tecnológico para la redacción de normas en lenguaje claro”. Thank you very much for the invitation!

The Consejería de Transparencia, Participación y Administración Pública and the Escuela de Formación e Innovación Pública de la Administración Pública (EFIAP) of the Región de Murcia, with the collaboration of Fundación NovaGob, organized the Jornada “La tecnología al servicio del lenguaje claro en la Administración”. It was celebrated on 15 November in a dual format. In total, more than 100 people attended.

We participated to present arText claro with a conference entitled “Redacción asistida de textos administrativos en lenguaje claro: el caso del sistema arText”. The event is available to watch on YouTube here.

On Wednesday 3 November we participated in a conference organized by the Programa de Posgrado en Lingüística of the Universidad de Costa Rica by invitation of its director, Adrián Vergara Heidke. The presentation was entitled: “Una herramienta para la redacción asistida de textos administrativos dirigidos a la ciudadanía: arText claro”.

From 26 to 29 October, the XVII Simposio Iberoamericano de Terminología (RITerm 2020-2021) was celebrated. This year’s theme was: “Inclusión y terminología en la sociedad actual”. The event was held online from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) with Gerardo Sierra (Grupo de Ingeniería Lingüística, UNAM) as the president of the organizing committee.

We participated with the communication entitled “Latinismos y expresiones arcaicas en el ámbito de la Administración: hacia la búsqueda de alternativas más claras”. In it, we explained the process that we followed to implement the recommendation “Sustitución de expresiones difíciles de entender” in arText claro. 

On 28 and 29 October, the Congreso NovaGob 2021: VIII Congreso de Innovación Pública was held. It was organized by Fundación NovaGob with the participation of Gobierno de Aragón, Fundación Democracia y Gobierno Local, and Laboratorio de Aragón Gobierno Abierto (LAAB). We participated in the “Desafíos en 10 minutos” with a communication entitled “ArText claro contra el muro del lenguaje administrativo”. It was recorded and can be watched here.

From 4 to 8 October, the 3rd edition of the Encuentros sobre lenguaje claro “EnClaro” was held, organized by Antonio Martín (Cálamo y Cran) and Arsenio Escolar (Archiletras), and directed by Isabel Espuelas.

Iria da Cunha was in charge of opening the event with a talk entitled “Lenguaje claro y tecnología: el caso de arText claro”. She also participated in the round table that took place on 8 October together with Víctor González (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and Romina Sparano (Language Compass). The topic of the round table was “Cómo poner en marcha un plan de claridad”.

On 27-29 September, the VI Congreso Internacional de Transparencia was held at the University of Alicante. We participated in the Grupo de Trabajo GT21-02 Lenguaje transparente, coordinated by Rafael Camacho Muñoz.

The presentation was entitled “El primer redactor asistido para escribir en lenguaje claro textos administrativos en español”. It included an online demonstration of arText claro, the arText tool that helps to write texts in plain language.

The Seminario Internacional sobre Centros de Escritura en Universidades Españolas was held on 20-21 September. It was organized by the Proyecto de Innovación Educativa PIE 19-098 of the Universidad de Málaga (UMA), and the Centro de Escritura de la Facultad de Formación de Profesorado y Educación of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), coordinated by Juan Antonio Núñez.

The paper we presented was entitled: “ArText como recurso tecnológico de acompañamiento en las tutorías de escritura académica”. In it, we talked about the role that the arText system can play as a resource to help students and teachers in academic writing tutorships.

On 14-15 June, the IV Jornadas Internacionales de Transversalidad en la Docencia were held at Universidad Nebrija. We presented a communication entitled “Un redactor asistido para la elaboración del Trabajo de Fin de Grado”, related to the arText tool that helps to write the TFG.

The communication team of Nebrija University has prepared a news item about the conference. You can read it here.

On 3 June, the round table “PLN para solucionar problemas sociales” was held. It was organised by DiverTLes, a community of women working and researching in Language Technologies in Spain created by the “Red de Dinamización de Actividades en Tecnologías de Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural” (PLN.NET).

Iria da Cunha participated with a presentation entitled “ArText: un redactor asistido que tiene en cuenta las necesidades de diferentes colectivos sociales”. The event was recorded and it is available on YouTube.

Mikel Iruskieta (Universidad del País Vasco) and Juliano Desiderato Antonio (Universidade Estadual de Maringá) have invited us to participate in the Symposium “Rhetorical Structure Theory: a discoursive perspective for linguistic analysis and applied linguistics”. This Symposium is part of the II Seminar “Caminhos para a pesquisa em Descrição Linguística”, organised by the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras Mestrado e Doutorado, Universidade Estadual de Maringá (Brazil).

Our talk was entitled “Discourse-related recommendations in a computer assisted writing system”. We have shown the design and computational implementation of the discourse-related recommendations included in arText.

Ricardo Jiménez Yáñez, lecturer at UIC Barcelona, invited us to participate in the II Jornadas de Lenguaje Jurídico “Rebus Sic Stantibus”, which took place on the 27th and 28th of May. Iria da Cunha presented a conference in which she showed a series of resources and tools for writing legal texts in plain language, including arText claro. The recording is available here.

On 18 May, the Jornada de Proyectos de Investigación I+D+i de lengua, lingüística y literatura organised by the Departamento de Filologías Extranjeras y sus Lingüísticas, Facultad de Filología, at UNED was held. The conference was created with the aim of giving visibility to the funded research projects that are being carried out in the departament, among them, the TIC-eADMIN project, in which arText is currently being developed.

Three members of the TIC-eADMIN project team took part in the conference: Iria da Cunha, Gerardo Sierra and Maite Taboada. The recordings of the presentations are available on Canal UNED:

• “El proyecto TIC-eADMIN: la tecnología como recurso para favorecer la comunicación entre Administración y ciudadanía a través del lenguaje claro” – Iria da Cunha

• “ArText, un proyecto integral de ingeniería lingüística” – Gerardo Sierra

• “Natural Language processing to manage harmful content online” – Maite Taboada

Esther Monzó, professor in the Departamento de Traducción y Comunicación at the Universitat Jaume I, invited us to give a conference-workshop at the XXVI Jornadas de Fomento de la Investigación en Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, which took place on May 14th. The conference was entitled “La dirección a distancia de los trabajos académicos en ciencias humanas y sociales: herramientas, recursos y materiales para profesorado y alumnado”.

More information on the conference can be found in this article.

On 11-13 May, took place the XI Jornadas de Investigación en Innovación Docente de la UNED. This year, the theme of the sessions was “Avances en la formación híbrida y en línea para una educación post-pandemia”. Silvia Sánchez Calderón and Iria da Cunha participated in the event with a talk entitled “El MOOC como herramienta de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la elaboración de un Trabajo de Fin de Grado”. This work was carried out in the framework of the Innovative Didactic Group for Open Linguistic Glosary Applications (OLGA).

In the communication, they talked about the MOOC “La redacción del Trabajo de Fin de Grado en seis pasos”, whose 2nd edition starts in November 2021. In this MOOC, different materials are employed, such as the book “El trabajo de fin de grado y de máster: Redacción, defensa y publicación” (Iria da Cunha). In addition, the arText tool for writing the TFG is recommended to university students.

The communication can be seen on Canal UNED:

On May 13 and 14, the III Congreso Internacional enTRetextos: Géneros discursivos, corpus y traducción en contextos profesionales y académicos. Desafíos y oportunidades en la era digital took place. Sara Pistola and Iria da Cunha participated with the talk entitled “Los géneros textuales de la Administración en el contexto universitario: el punto de vista de los estudiantes del ámbito jurídico”.

The communication presented the results of a survey carried out among students of Administrative Law at the UNED. The aim of the survey was to determine the administrative textual genres that students have to write more frequently and which ones generate the most writing difficulties for them.

The recording is available on YouTube.

On 16, 22 and 30 April 2021, it was held the I Seminario Internacional Interuniversitario de Lectura y Escritura en la Universidad “La escritura académica”, organised by the Red Internacional de Universidades Lectoras (RIUL), the Universidad de Extremadura, the Universidad de Jaén and the Universidad de León. Iria da Cunha participated in the seminar with a talk entitled “El sistema arText como recurso para la redacción en línea de textos profesionales y académicos”.

Juan Antonio Núñez, coordinator of the Centro de Escritura de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación), invited us to give a lecture to the students of theMáster en Formación de Profesorado de ESO y Bachillerato. The talk, entitled “La enseñanza de la escritura mediante herramientas tecnológicas de ayuda a la redacción” was about the use of writing support systems in the classroom, among them, arText.

The University of Córdoba has invited us to participate in the permanent education seminar entitled “La construcción del conocimiento  a través de la investigación en Lingüística y Traductología: métodos, problemas y últimas investigaciones”, organised by José María Castellano Martínez and Sergio Rodríguez Tapia.

Within the framework of this seminar, a conference entitled «La importancia de la metodología  en proyectos de investigación sobre herramientas TIC en el ámbito de la lingüística» was given. Thanks to this initiative, it was possible to explain the methodology used in the development of arText to the doctoral students attending the event.

Our colleagues from the Institute of Literature and Language Sciences at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Valparaíso (Chile) have invited us to give a conference on arText as part of the excellent virtual conference cycle they are organizing, called “Meetings in Linguistics”. Our team would like to thank the organizers of the event, Sabela Fernández (Director of the Master’s Degree in Applied Linguistics) and Romualdo Ibáñez (Director of the PhD programme in Linguistics), for their kind invitation.

Our conference was entitled “The arText system: a technological tool that helps to write texts in specialized fields in Spanish”. It summarized the trajectory of the research project in which arText has been developed, from its beginnings in 2015 to the present day. The methodology used in each of the work phases has been explained, as well as the results obtained in each of the financed projects obtained by the team.

The conference was broadcast via Facebook Live and is still available here.