We felt honoured to have met our friends and colleagues from all around the world in Krakow at the EUROCALL 2005 Conference. The organisers aimed to focus attention on the changing concepts and practices concerning autonomy in learning and teaching brought about by technological developments. This year's programme promised to actively promote the awareness, availability and practical benefits of autonomous learning using CALL, WELL & TELL at all levels of education, with a view to enhancing educational effectiveness, as measured by student success, both academically and personally. The organisers hoped to bring a rich and interesting variety of perspectives to the conference via a very complex programme.

This issue of ReCALL represents something of a watershed in the journalÕs history, for a number of reasons. First of all I have to report that Professor Graham Chesters has decided that he wishes to step down as co-editor, and I would like to thank him here for all his work for the journal over the years. Back in 1990 when Graham and I were involved with the Computers in Teaching Initiative Centre for Modern Languages (CTICML) at the University of Hull, funded by the UK Higher Education Funding Council, one of the required ‘deliverables’ was a regular Newsletter, designed to inform university language lecturers about developments in the use of new technologies in language learning. It soon became apparent that some of the material that was being submitted for publication was far too substantial for a Newsletter, yet merited dissemination among our readers. It was Graham who saw the potential need for a new academic journal in this field, and thus ReCALL was born. I still blush to see my attempts at desk-top publishing in those early issues!

Intercultural competence has acquired an important role in the foreign language classroom. However, we must also come to terms with assessing this highly complex construct if we consider it as a superordinate learning objective. Therefore the components of intercultural communicative competence that go beyond knowledge, especially attitudes, deserve closer attention. On the basis of Byram’s (1997) model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), an attempt has been made to trace the development of attitudes as part of ICC in computer-mediated intercultural communication. Data was drawn from three e-mail projects that took place between 2001 and 2002. Three different upper-secondary classes at a vocational school in Mainz, Germany (n=64) exchanged e-mails with two groups of US-American undergraduate students in Ohio (n=57) and one group of undergraduate students of English from Tokyo (n=30). Preliminary findings from a telecollaborative seminar with US-American undergraduate teacher students at a German teacher training institution were used to support the data. The main question addressed in the paper is whether attitudinal components of ICC can be measured quantitatively in telecollaborative environments. To do this, specifications and implementation of learning objectives for attitudes as put forward by Byram (1997) are applied to different instruments within the framework of the e-mail projects, including a triangulation of instruments. Instruments include e-mails, critical incidents, essays and interaction journals. When data was ambiguous or incomplete, follow-up interviews were conducted with pupils. Results of the study suggest that it is not possible to measure attitudes with the instruments described, but that they can help teachers to describe evidences of attitudes in interaction and trace developments to provide a basis for feedback.

During the last decade, most research studies have analysed online synchronous interactions in written mode (textchat), highlighting the benefits of chatting for the development of learners’ oral proficiency. The environment used in our experiment is multimodal and based on a synchronous audio conference. Analyzing interactions in such an environment is rather new in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). This study is related to false-beginners in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course, presenting a high degree of heterogeneity in their proficiency levels. We use two approaches. One is quantitative and involves learners’ participation in audio and textchat. The other is qualitative and relates to the complexity of professional discourse. Firstly, we provide a method that accurately measures oral participation in the two modes. Then, within this framework, we report that heterogeneous linguistic levels do not constrain learners’ oral participation, outlining the equalizing role played in this instance by the textchat. Moreover, this type of environment supports oral production by false-beginners who have over a period of years become unaccustomed to learning and speaking in a foreign language, and leads them to regain self-confidence. The qualitative part of our study shows that false-beginners can cope with professional conversations at different levels of complexity.

This article presents findings from an exploratory pilot project which aimed at fostering electronic and professional literacy skills of preservice language teachers through computer-mediated peer collaboration. The research context is a qualitative case study involving cooperation via the email and chat functions of FirstClass among preservice teachers at the Justus-Liebig Universität in Giessen and the Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg in Germany. The author investigates participants’ prior experiences with regard to computer skills, Internet proficiency, and technology-based language learning and teaching. Next, she discusses benefits and challenges for preservice teachers with respect to collaborating via computers (computer-mediated communication or CMC) with their transatlantic partners. In collecting and analyzing preservice teachers’ reflections, a Grounded Theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was used. Instances of electronic and professional literacies were identified and triangulated with data from pre-course questionnaires, post-course self-assessments, logs, email and chat transcripts, and field notes. The author discusses benefits and challenges which preservice teachers encountered through the collaboration. Findings include preservice teachers’ differing levels of electronic literacy skills, tolerance for ambiguity, institutional constraints, peer feedback, and perception of the final product. Based on her findings, the author stresses the need to encourage preservice teachers’ meta-level reflections on the challenges of the collaboration and suggests conducting longitudinal follow-up studies in order to investigate if and how in-service teachers apply the knowledge they gained from their teacher education program to their own teaching.

By providing access, data and new forms of literacy and communication practices, it is widely accepted that networked technologies have done much to promote learner autonomy. However, in practical terms, the lack of resources, expertise and research investigations into learner interaction have all too often meant that autonomous learning is conveniently likened to teacher-independent learning, largely relying on the success and assumed intuitiveness of the World Wide Web (web) for its learner driven delivery. This situation affecting foreign language teaching and learning has been further aggravated by the recent trend, at least in UK universities, to conceive languages solely as communicative tools, further severing them from their academic base and cultural roots, often reducing learner autonomy to poor repetitive interaction. On this premise, this paper proposes to focus on how to make better use of the interactive potential of the web in order to maximise independent language learning online. From a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design perspective, it intends to shed further light on and increase our understanding of hypermedia and multimedia structures through learner participation and evaluation. On the basis of evidence from an ongoing research investigation into online CALL literacy, it will seek to identify crucial causalities between the user interface and learner interaction affecting the learners’ focus and engagement within their own learning processes. The adopted methodology combines a task analysis of a hypermedia prototype underpinned by an activity theory approach and participatory design based on user walkthroughs and focus groups. By looking at the relationship between action and goal as well as between activities and motives, it attempts to provide a framework for evaluating online hypermedia interactivity based on identified activities, design tasks and design criteria.

This paper describes the integration of hypermedia adaptive systems for foreign language learners at an early age Our research project is concerned with exploring the relationship between language learning and information technology according to six different phases: a preliminary study of the plausible adaptive system; the development of lessons based on hypermedia and learners’ needs; the examination of language learners’ profiles; the definition of an adapted interface; the integration of the systems in schools; and the evaluation of the use of such systems. While the last three stages are still under way, we have already obtained some significant feedback from preliminary observation and approaches, which chiefly reveal the importance of accounting for interrelated factors at an early age, such as specific learning strategies, skills, and graphical design.

This paper describes an English language listening test intended as computer-based testing material for secondary school students in Hong Kong, where considerable attention is being invested in online and computer-based testing. As well as providing a school-based testing facility, the study aims to contribute to the knowledge base regarding the efficacy and reliability of computer-based testing. The paper describes the construction of an item bank of over 400 short listening items calibrated on item response theory principles. Items from this bank were used to form a traditional paper-based listening test, and an adaptive computer-based test. Both forms of the test were administered to two Hong Kong Grade 11 and Grade 12 classes. Descriptive test statistics indicated that both test types discriminated effectively between school grades. In terms of comparability between test types, there was significant difference between the Grade 11 classes’ performance although not with that of Grade 12. Test takers generally performed better on the computer-based test than on the paper-based test, confirming earlier research. Interviews with test takers after taking both tests indicated an even split in terms of preference, with boys opting for the computer-based test and girls the paper-based test. Correlations between test takers’ performance on the two test types were high enough to indicate the computer-based test’s potential as a low-stakes test (its intended purpose as a school-based testing facility), although not as a high-stakes test (for example, as a territory-wide test replacing a traditional paper-based test).

This study examined the impact of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) on Korean TAFE (Technical and Further Education) college students in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading classroom in terms of their perceptions of learning environment and their reading performance. The study compared CALL and traditional reading classes over one semester by measuring students’ reading performance. A group of 74 first year English major students were divided evenly into two classes. Both groups were taught by the same teacher and covered the same topics in their weekly two-hour reading lessons. A reading comprehension test was given at the beginning and the end of the semester to measure the students’ performance. A written survey was also administered at the end of the semester. Classroom observations and group interviews with students supplemented the data obtained from the surveys. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used for the performance test to explore the differences between the two classes while statistically controlling for the pre-test (covariate). The questionnaires were analyzed by a principle component factor analysis, a repeated-measure ANOVA and a discriminant analysis whereas the interviews with students were analyzed by a content analysis. Students’ performances in the pre-test and the post-test were not significantly different between the two classes. However, the students in the CALL-based English class were more positive in their perceptions of their learning environment than were those in the traditional English class. This study shows that computer technology had a positive impact on students’ perceptions of their learning environment, especially in relation to learning materials and tasks, and with regard to interaction and collaboration with the tutor and other students.

The flexible use of digital recordings from EFL classrooms as well as online communication with teaching experts are two promising ways of implementing e-learning in the context of initial teacher training. Our research focuses on how to blend these elements efficiently with the different theoretical and practical content layers of an introductory course “Teaching English as a Foreign Language” to foster the development of critical, reflective thinking of prospective teachers of English and to empower the learners. In this paper we discuss the concept of autonomy as a course strategy and argue that enabling a student to take responsibility and to make informed choices is the main route to an autonomous learner. We introduce and analyze learning activities such as working with multimedia-based case stories that include video episodes as situational anchors and conducting an einterview. These learning activities are two formats that integrate elearning and contact learning in a directed, interactive way to foster the learner’s autonomy. The study is a follow-up of a pilot study on blended learning in a teacher training course and was conducted as action research in the 2004/05 winter semester. It combines qualitative and quantitative research methods and integrates multiple perspectives on the teaching and learning scenarios.

This study in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) was conducted in a Spanish as a foreign language classroom. The study investigates dyadic face-to-face collaborative dialogue at the computer from a sociocultural perspective. Protocols for analysis were obtained by the transcription of audio recordings of twelve dyads/triads completing three tasks in two mediums of implementation, computer and non-computer-based. By comparing learners’ activity in the two mediums through microgenetic analysis (i.e., developmental analysis), we were able to study some specific ways in which the computer influenced the course of interaction. Specifically, the aim of the study was to investigate the value of the tasks as pedagogical instruments to support collaborative activity in the foreign language classroom; the value of collaborative activity as a source for possible restructuring of interlanguage (i.e., microgenesis); and the impact of the computer as a mediational tool in the processes of collaborative activity. Results confirm: (1) the three tasks support high degrees of collaborative activity – albeit qualitatively different; (2) language can – sometimes simultaneously – be deployed by learners both as a means of communication and as a cognitive tool to achieve linguistic development; (3) the presence of the computer seems to change the nature of collaborative activity.

While language teacher education programmes and language syllabi in secondary education encourage the use of the target language in the classroom, resources to support teachers in this endeavour, such as books with useful phrases, do not state that the examples they provide are corpus-based, i.e. drawn from actual language use rather than invented phrases. This paper investigates whether consultation of a corpus of classroom discourse can be of benefit in language teacher education. The paper describes a project involving the creation of corpora of classroom discourse in French and Spanish, and the use of these corpora with student teachers. After setting the research in the context of corpora and classroom interaction, it examines issues such as the content of the corpora, the type of consultation (direct or mediated by the teacher), and the student teachers’ evaluation of the activity. Special attention is paid to one particular aspect of classroom interaction, discourse markers.

This article discusses a framework for the development of tasks in a synchronous online environment used for language learning and teaching. It shows how a theoretical approach based on second language acquisition (SLA) principles, sociocultural and constructivist theories, and concepts taken from research on multimodality and new literacies, can influence the design and implementation of tasks for computer-mediated communication (CMC). The findings are based on a study conducted at the Open University, a study which examined all three levels of theory, design and implementation. The paper first presents the underlying theories in more detail before examining how these theories are translated into the design of tasks for language tutorials via an audio-graphic conferencing tool. Finally it looks at how the design was implemented in practice by focusing on a number of issues such as student–student and student–tutor interaction, feedback, use of multimodal tools, and the differences between teaching face-to-face and online.

The aim of this research is to reveal the dynamics of focus on form in task completion via videoconferencing. This examination draws on current second language learning theories regarding effective language acquisition, research in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and empirical data from an evaluation of desktop videoconferencing-supported task completion by distance learners of Chinese. Occasions of focus on form that occurred in this learning environment are explored using the Varonis and Gass model (1985) for negotiation of meaning. Initial findings indicate that videoconferencing-supported negotiation of meaning may facilitate second language acquisition at a distance and has its own distinct features. Issues for future research in the employment of videoconferencing for L2 learning at a distance are suggested.

ReCALL Vol 17(2) November 2005 Please note that due to a misunderstanding the affiliation of the paper entitled “Can it be as effective? Distance versus blended learning in a web-based EAP programme” on page 197 was incorrectly cited. The correct citation should have been: Mihye Harker and Dimitra Koutsantoni Division of Language and Communication, LBS University of Luton, Luton LU1 3JU, UK (e-mail:mihyeharker@yahoo.co.uk, dkoutsantoni@yahoo.com).