The ultimate goal of CALL teacher education is to enable L2 teachers to integrate CALL technology into their classroom with confidence and knowledge. As a way to achieve this goal, an increasing number of studies have paid attention to the integration of CALL technology into the teacher education program and into the classroom. Nonetheless, there is little specific research into L2 teachers’ integration of technology into the classroom in relation to their prior technology education. As a means of better understanding the complexity of L2 teachers’ integration of technology into the classroom, this paper proposes a spherical model of such integration by reviewing and synthesizing the relevant literature. Drawing on this model, the paper emphasizes the importance of CALL teacher education with regard to L2 teachers’ integration of technology into the classroom. Next, it discusses how the model can contribute to future research on such integration.

Educators and researchers in the acquisition of L2 phonology have called for empirical assessment of the progress students make after using new methods for learning (Chun, 1998, Morley, 1991). The present study investigated whether unlimited access to a speech-recognition-based language-learning program would improve the general standard of pronunciation of a group of middle-aged immigrant professionals studying English in Sweden. Eleven students were given a copy of the program Talk to Me from Auralog as a supplement to a 200-hour course in Technical English, and were encouraged to practise on their home computers. Their development in spoken English was compared with a control group of fifteen students who did not use the program. The program is evaluated in this paper according to Chapelle’s (2001) six criteria for CALL assessment. Since objective human ratings of pronunciation are costly and can be unreliable, our students were pre- and post-tested with the automatic PhonePass SET-10 test from Ordinate Corp. Results indicate that practice with the program was beneficial to those students who began the course with a strong foreign accent but was of limited value for students who began the course with better pronunciation. The paper begins with an overview of the state of the art of using speech recognition in L2 applications.

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At the prewriting stage, both groups were given a list of five abstract nouns: the experimental group was provided with paper-based concordance lines to study the collocations of the words, while the control group was allowed to consult dictionaries for the usage of the words. The written texts of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were analysed and compared between and within groups. The results showed that the written output by the experimental group, as compared with the control group, contained a higher variety of collocational and colligational patterns and had fewer linguistic errors in using the target abstract nouns. The post-experiment learning journals and questionnaires administered to the experimental group further confirmed that concordance activities encouraged usage-based learning, helped students notice the lexical collocations and prepositional colligations of the target words, and thus improved accuracy and complexity in their productive language. Despite these positive findings, potential problems of using concordance activities for independent learning were also reflected in the students’ written output and reported in the learning journals.

Corrective feedback (CF), a response to linguistic errors made by second language (L2) learners, has received extensive scholarly attention in second language acquisition. While much of the previous research in the field has focused on whether CF facilitates or impedes L2 development, few studies have examined the efficacy of gradually modifying the explicitness or specificity of CF as a function of a learner’s response to the feedback. Yet, the type and extent of CF needed by a learner, as suggested by Vygotsky (1978), sheds light on whether a learner is developing his or her abilities in a particular area and the ways in which they do it. This paper reports on a study that explores the design, effectiveness and learners’ perception toward a graduated (Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994) approach to CF, i.e., feedback that progresses from very general and implicit to very specific and explicit, in an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) environment. The results show that the graduated approach to CF is effective in helping learners to self-identify and self-correct a number of grammatical issues, although an onsite tutor provides necessary remedies when the ICALL system occasionally fails to do its part. Implications for CF research, particularly on the notion of individualized feedback, are also discussed.

Corpora and concordancing have become much more widely available as researchers recognise that they can significantly enrich the language learning environment. There is still, however, a strong resistance towards corpus use by teachers and learners (Römer, 2006:122). An understanding of the implications and relevance of corpus use for pedagogy may help teachers and learners overcome this resistance, and hence accelerate the process of “percolation” (McEnery & Wilson, 1997:5) or the “trickle down” (Leech, 1997:2) of corpus research to language teaching and learning. The pedagogical context in which learners' consultation of corpora (corpus consultation literacy) can be developed is fundamental in understanding this new literacy and developing it so that it leads to successful language teaching and learning. This paper seeks to investigate the role which corpus consultation literacy plays in enhancing the language learning process and, consequently, aims to establish whether this new literacy can contribute to a process-oriented approach to language learning. Firstly, a theoretical overview of a process-oriented approach to language learning will be outlined, before investigating if corpus consultation can potentially enhance such an approach. This will be supported by evidence from a number of published empirical studies, covering aspects such as learning within a constructivist framework, and the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills through the use of cognitive and developmental tools. Learners' comments from related studies, namely Chambers and O'Sullivan (2004), O'Sullivan (2006), and O'Sullivan and Chambers (2006), which pertain to the learning process and the influence of corpus consultation literacy on this same process, will also be considered. The hypothesis presented here is that corpus consultation literacy can enhance a process-oriented approach to language teaching and learning. It is envisaged that this research will contribute towards the establishment of a sound theoretical and pedagogical foundation for the integration of corpus consultation literacy into language teaching and learning.

What does learning in today's technology-enhanced environment mean? Is learning as an activity fundamentally changing as a result of the opportunities offered by new technologies and tools? How are the new communicative channels and increased social dimensions possible through Web 2.0 technologies impacting on the way students work and learn? And what does this mean for the role of teachers and institutions in terms of how they support students? This paper considers these questions and reports on findings from current research evaluating how students are actually using technologies and what this research tells us about the ways in which patterns of learning might be changing. It will consider the implications for individual teachers (in terms of designing and supporting learning activities for students) and institutions in terms of the impact on policy and the associated infrastructure needed to provide an appropriate environment that maximises the potential offered by new technologies.

This study investigates the effects of multimedia glosses on text recall and incidental vocabulary learning in a mobile-assisted L2 listening task. A total of 88 participants with a low level of proficiency in English were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that involved single channel (textual-only, pictorial-only) and dual-channel (textual-plus-pictorial) glosses as well as a control condition where no glosses were provided. The participants listened to a story through their mobile phones and were engaged in an immediate free recall task and unannounced vocabulary tests after listening. The findings indicated that access to glosses facilitated recognition and production of vocabulary with the type of gloss having no effect. On the other hand, glosses had no effect on text recall.

This article describes an exchange project carried out by foreign language classes in the University of León, Spain and the University of Northern Michigan, USA. The two groups integrated videoconferencing technology into a task based exchange in order to make students more aware of how they viewed their own and the target cultures. In the course of the project learners also experienced some of the challenges of inter-cultural communication. The development of the project is described and examples of intercultural learning are looked at. Some guidelines for the use of videoconferencing in such intercultural exchanges are also suggested.

The central question in this paper is whether Web technology has the potential to add value to face-to-face language teaching in the form of activities that cannot be realized fully in a traditional classroom. While arguments will be presented for and against e-learning, our conclusion is that the latest human-machine interfaces offer an environment for interactive learning that can foster the acquisition of communicative skills. The paper argues that one of the great strengths of the Web is the potential to engage students in creative information gap activities and real experiential learning in the form of meaningful, process-oriented projects in authentic settings. Evidence will be drawn from three sources:

[bull ] The current literature on new learning approaches.

[bull ] The latest best-practice applications, such as Webquests, Voice Chat, MOOs and innovative co-operative ventures.

[bull ] The findings of two large research studies by the author on students’ perceptions of Web-based language learning in school and tertiary settings.

The paper emphasises the importance of creating connectivity rather than content.

Although the success of automatic speech recognition (ASR)-based Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) systems is increasing, little is known about the pedagogical effectiveness of these systems. This is particularly regrettable because ASR technology still suffers from limitations that may result in the provision of erroneous feedback, possibly leading to learning breakdowns. To study the effectiveness of ASR-based feedback for improving pronunciation, we developed and tested a CAPT system providing automatic feedback on Dutch phonemes that are problematic for adult learners of Dutch. Thirty immigrants who were studying Dutch were assigned to three groups using either the ASR-based CAPT system with automatic feedback, a CAPT system without feedback, or no CAPT system. Pronunciation quality was assessed for each participant before and after the training by human experts who evaluated overall segmental quality and the quality of the phonemes addressed in the training. The participants' impressions of the CAPT system used were also studied through anonymous questionnaires. The results on global segmental quality show that the group receiving ASR-based feedback made the largest mean improvement, but the groups' mean improvements did not differ significantly. The group receiving ASR-based feedback showed a significantly larger improvement than the no-feedback group in the segmental quality of the problematic phonemes targeted.

This paper aims to provide a rationale for the utility of corrective feedback (CF) in digital games designed for language learning, with specific reference to learners’ perceptions. Explicit and elaborate CF has the potential to increase learners’ understanding of language, but might not be found useful in a game-based learning environment where the primary focus for the learner is on meaningful interaction and experiential learning. Also, as CF can be perceived as a measure of performance, it could harm learners’ perception of competence. Eighty-three learners of English as a foreign language participated in a mixed-method experimental study that aimed to first explore the perceived usefulness of, and preferences for, explicit and implicit CF in an immersive educational game, and to secondly chart the relation between learners’ perceptions of CF as they pertain to three individual difference factors related to learners’ self-perception, namely intrinsic goal orientation, perceived competence and game experience. Survey and interview data showed that CF was found to be generally useful. A regression model indicated that the three measures of self-perception affected learners’ perceptions of explicit CF positively, and that there was no impact on perceptions of implicit CF. Further, learners reported having enjoyed the implicit CF, although they did not find it particularly useful for learning. These findings indicate that the type of CF should be considered in the design of effective and enjoyable educational games.

Since advances in computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools have made virtual exchanges readily available in educational practices, telecollaboration has been gaining traction as a means to provide practical experiences and cultural exposure to language learners and, more recently, teacher trainees. Drawing upon Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), this study examines 48 teacher trainees’ interculturality through a telecollaborative project between two teacher training classes from Turkey and the USA. This study relies on data generated by the participants throughout this telecollaborative project: weekly online discussion board posts within groups of six and post-project reflections. Although developing ICC is an arduous and prolonged task, the data analysis suggested that the participants’ experiences in this telecollaboration contributed to their emergent ICC through discussions on the topics of multicultural education and interactions with trainees from another educational context. Their intercultural learning is evidenced by their (1) awareness of heterogeneity in their own and interactants’ culture, (2) nascent critical cultural awareness, and (3) curiosity and willingness to learn more about the other culture. Thus, this study implies that telecollaboration offers an effective teacher training venue that affords teacher trainees with first-hand intercultural encounters to engage with otherness and prepare for their ethnolinguistically diverse classrooms.

Despite the availability and growing use of digital story software for authoring and instructional purposes, little is known about learners’ perceptions on its integration in the foreign language writing class. Following both a social semiotics approach and activity theory, this study focuses on six advanced Spanish learners’ perceptions about the production of a digital story in which they integrated a variety of modes (written, oral, images, sounds) and manipulated the semiotic resources within each mode (size, color, lines in the image mode), to convey meaning. Analyzing participants’ reflections, questionnaires, and online journals, results highlight learners’ (a) interpretation of the tools and artifacts and their effect on their understanding of a final product, (b) connections between short-term goal-oriented actions and the longer-term object-oriented activity of developing a multimodal text, and (c) linguistic reorientations when creating a digital story.

In choosing a title for this paper, we have consciously copied the name of the series of biannual conferences, started at Lancaster in 1994, which aim to bring together those who have an interest in the application of corpora to the teaching of language and linguistics. Already, those conferences have set in train a series of publications – conference proceedings (Wilson and McEnery, 1994; Botley, Glass, McEnery and Wilson, 1996), a general selection of papers (Wichmann, Knowles, McEnery and Fligelstone, 1997) and a collection of papers related to multilingual copora (Botley, McEnery and Wilson, 1997). The aim of this paper is to summarize the progress to date in the field of teaching and language corpora, both as a general introduction and as a gateway to the more comprehensive literature which is developing. As such, this paper owes a considerable debt to all of the participants at the past two conferences.

Corpus linguistics has established that language is highly patterned. The use of patterned language has been linked to processing advantages with respect to listening and reading, which has implications for perceptions of fluency. The last twenty years has seen an increase in the integration of corpus-based language learning, or data-driven learning (DDL), as a supporting feature in teaching English as a foreign / second language (EFL/ESL). Most research has investigated student attitudes towards DDL as a tool to facilitate writing. Other studies, though notably fewer, have taken a quantitative perspective of the efficacy of DDL as a tool to facilitate the inductive learning of grammar rules. The purpose of this study is three-fold: (1) to present an EFL curriculum designed around DDL with the aim of improving spoken fluency; (2) to gauge how effective students were in employing newly discovered phrases in an appropriate manner; and (3) to investigate student attitudes toward such an approach to language learning. Student attitudes were investigated via a questionnaire and then triangulated through interviews and student logs. The findings indicate that students believe DDL to be a useful and effective tool in the classroom. However, students do note some difficulties related to DDL, such as encountering unfamiliar vocabulary and cut-off concordance lines. Finally, questions are raised as to the students’ ability to embed learned phrases in a pragmatically appropriate way.

Computer-mediated-communication (CMC) tools allowing learners to be in contact with native speakers of their target language in other locations are becoming increasingly flexible, often combining different modes of communication in a single web- and internet-based environment. The literature on telecollaborative exchanges reveals, however, that online intercultural communication between language learners “often fails to achieve the intended pedagogical goals” (O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006:624) and warns that “exposure and awareness of difference seem to reinforce, rather than bridge, feelings of difference” (Kern, 2000:256). Yet, research into the reasons for lack of success in CMC-based partnership-learning has, so far, only been carried out on a relatively small scale (see, for example, Thorne, 2005, Ware, 2005, O’Dowd & Ritter, 2006). In autumn 2005, students of French at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA and adult learners of French at the Open University (OU), UK were joined by native French speakers studying for an MA in distance education at the Université de Franche Comté (UFC), France in a pilot Tridem project in which all participants worked on the completion of a series of collaborative tasks. The Tridem partners met over several weeks in an internet-mediated, audio-graphic conferencing environment. The project output, a shared reflection in French and English on cultural similarities and differences, took the form of several collaborative blogs. The paper draws on data from pre- and post-questionnaires, from the work published by the learners in the blogs and from post-treatment, semi-structured interviews with volunteer participants. Beyond considering some of the known factors influencing success and failure in CMC-based collaborations such as discrepancies in target language competence among learners, this article also explores affective issues and difficulties arising from varying levels of multimodal communicative competence. The insights gained are mapped against O’Dowd and Ritter’s (2006) ‘inventory of pitfalls’ in telecollaboration. The result is a tentative framework which allows those involved in setting up and running telecollaborative exchanges to gauge both degree and nature of some of the risks they are likely to encounter.

Research on data-driven learning (DDL), or teaching and learning languages with the help of electronic corpora, has shown that it is both effective and efficient. Nevertheless, DDL is still far from common pedagogical practice, not least because the empirical research on it is still limited and narrowly focused. This study addresses some gaps in that research by exploring the effectiveness of DDL for teaching low-proficiency learners lexico-grammatical constructions (verb-preposition collocations) in German, a morphologically rich language. The study employed a pretest-posttest design with intact third- and fourth-semester classes for German as a foreign language at a US university. The same collocations were taught to each group during one class period, with one group at each course level taking a paper-based DDL lesson with concordance lines from a native-speaker corpus and the other one taking a traditional rule-based lesson with textbook exercises. These constructions were new to third-semester students, whereas fourth-semester students had been exposed to them in the previous semester. The results show that, whereas the DDL method and the traditional method were both effective and resulted in lexical and grammatical gains, DDL was more effective for teaching new collocations. The study thus argues in favor of using paper-based DDL in the classroom at lower proficiency levels and for languages other than English.

This article reviews the literature of multimedia glosses in computer assisted language learning (CALL) and their effects on L2 vocabulary acquisition during the past seventeen years. Several studies have touched on this area to examine the potential of multimedia in a CALL environment in aiding L2 vocabulary acquisition. In this review, the researchers investigate the studies that deal with different modes of multimedia annotations in a CALL environment. This article reviews the empirical studies of multimedia glosses in reading as well as in listening comprehension activities and discusses the factors under which these studies have been conducted and their impact on L2 vocabulary acquisition. The study aims to understand how multimedia glosses have been used in the past to support second language vocabulary acquisition and also to explore any evidence regarding how multimedia glosses in a CALL environment can enhance the acquisition of L2 vocabulary. Only empirical studies (18 studies published in international refereed journals and conference) have been reviewed exclusively. The article discusses the findings of the reviewed studies and recommends future research.

To address the challenges of limited language proficiency and provide necessary feedback in the implementation of task-based language teaching (TBLT), a mobile-supported TBLT application was developed to provide linguistic and task scaffolding. Sixty-six English as a foreign language (EFL) university learners participated in a three-week experiment as part of a general English course. They were assigned to either an experimental group (mobile-supported TBLT), which received TBLT with scaffolds built into the application, or a control group (traditional TBLT), which received traditional paper-based TBLT without the scaffolds. At the end of the experiment, an English achievement test of vocabulary, grammar, and conversation comprehension was administered to determine if the technological scaffolds enhanced the learning outcomes for the course. Students’ self-perceived use of oral communication strategies was also measured to explore how these scaffolds affected the conversational interaction essential for task performance. Results showed that the mobile-supported TBLT group outperformed the traditional TBLT group on the vocabulary and conversation comprehension tests but not so much on the grammar test. Also, the mobile-supported TBLT group reported greater awareness of fluency- and accuracy-oriented strategies for speaking than the traditional TBLT group. Implications for designing mobile learning to enhance TBLT in an EFL setting are drawn.

This study investigates the impact of an online workbook on the attitudes of 245 second language (L2) Spanish learners toward this pedagogical tool over two consecutive semesters. The treatment consisted of four hours of classroom instruction and one set of online homework per week, during two consecutive semesters. Students' attitudes toward the electronic workbook were measured by means of a survey administered after eight months of exposure to the workbook. The qualitative data of the survey was compared to quantitative data from two different language assessment tests. The results of these tests indicated a significant increase in grammar scores. These results are consonant with the positive findings of student perceptions about the online workbook obtained in this and previous studies, emphasizing its benefits in terms of accessibility to the material, user-friendliness, and instant error feedback. More importantly, most students praised the usefulness of the online workbook for language learning, particularly in the areas of grammar and vocabulary acquisition. Despite participants' mostly positive attitudes, the survey also revealed some negative aspects of the use of the online workbook, such as the amount of time needed to complete the online exercises. This paper addresses these issues, and provides suggestions to overcome this type of problem.