HODACE

The HODACE project (Cross-disciplinary Horizon for Oral Language Acquisition), which will be submitted under the Horizon MSCA 2025-DN-0101 call for projects, focuses on the acquisition of second language (L2) oral skills - comprehension and production - through an interdisciplinary approach integrating linguistics and language education, neuroscience and automatic language processing (ALP). The project brings together a consortium of universities in Roman-speaking Europe (Université Grenoble Alpes, University of Bologna, University of Venice, University of Barcelona), joined by a private structure for the promotion of research - Floralis, a subsidiary of the UGA - and an association - ATD Quart Monde - with an international scope. HODACE aims to study the processes of oral reception and production in L2 in their multimodal dimension, by developing scientific models that will be used in the design and production of innovative digital devices elaborated to support the language and pragmatic training of different types of audience, in institutional contexts (academic, school) and associative contexts (vulnerable or disadvantaged audience). From a methodological point of view, the project differs from traditional studies, which are often monodisciplinary and qualitative, by integrating data acquisition protocols derived from neuroscience and NLP, making it possible to evaluate oral comprehension and production in L2 using neurophysiological indicators and make significant progress in the automatic evaluation of oral production, using Artificial Intelligence approaches. The academic objective is to form a solid network of PhD experts with a solid background in cross-disciplinary skills in the field of languages and language (researchers and teachers, translators and linguistic mediators), whose disciplinary fundamentals will be drawn from the panel of three scientific fields involved. The innovative interdisciplinary curriculum that will be offered to doctoral students will also include training modules to help them develop their multilingual skills and intercomprehension in Romance languages. It will be up to these talented young people to take up the heuristic, methodological and ethical challenges presented by L2 acquisition research and to work towards its societal impact, in terms of changes in training practices and greater inclusion for vulnerable or disadvantaged audience.