Natural Language Processing in the Undergraduate Curriculum

The paper has two purposes: rst, we argue that natural language processing, and particularly those aspects of that eld often referred to as language technology, should play an important role in the computer science curriculum; second, we describe in broad terms the content of an undergraduate program we have developed at Macquarie University that covers this material. We question the industrial relevance of much that is taught in NLP courses, and emphasize the need for a practical orientation as a means to growing the size of the eld. We argue that a more evangelical approach, both with regard to students and industry, is required. The paper provides an overview of the material we cover, and makes some observations for the future on the basis of our experiences so far.