The specific aims within the Spoken Language Working Group (SLWG) have been:
The strategy adopted to achieve these objectives has been firstly to consult with EAGLES members and other co-opted experts, through a series of technical workshops involving researchers and industrialists active in the field. One of the central objectives has been to define and subsequently commission the production of a handbook using recognised technical experts in each domain. The project has aimed to take full account of the major developments in this field, and wherever possible to provide a set of practical, working recommendations which encapsulate currently perceived best practice for resource creation and description. Initial drafts have been circulated within the SLWG itself and also to associated projects and individuals to ensure that the EU community viewpoint is adequately represented as far as possible prior to wider dissemination and consultation internationally.
The structure of EAGLES has foreseen the need for interaction between the different working groups in NL and SL, and specific cross-groups have been created to foster liaison between these in the areas of lexica, evaluation and corpora. It is envisaged that a greater degree of interaction will be possible as the results of the different working groups become available later in the course of the project, and in particular within future funded phases of EAGLES activities.
Liaison with related national and international initiatives has primarily been advanced on the basis of regular updates via ELSNET newsletters and COCOSDA bulletins, and at ESCA and ESPRIT programme meetings. Contacts have been established with several EU projects in the ESPRIT and LRE RTD programmes. In particular there is now an emerging relationship with ELRA, the newly established organisation concerned with creation, validation and dissemination of European language resources.