Departing from a well proven concept for an English curriculum at the School of Telecommunications Engineering at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences and Technologies, the challenge to move 50% of the course online to better address the needs of its part-time students seemed to be a feasible if a difficult task. The first attempt in 1999 was passable but highly frustrating as too much time and energy had been invested into producing online materials without utilising the new medium to its full potential.

The underlying principle for our approach now is blended learning or in other words using as many approaches as useful to cater for the different needs and abilities of our learners. This is reflected in the following pillars of our concept i) a well-balanced combination of physical and online sessions ii) a task-based approach that draws on the expertise of our mature learners in their own fields iii) a multi-channel approach in online learning blending synchronous and asynchronous communication integrating all four skills (see figure below)

iv) a constructivist approach in shifting responsibility for a large part of the learning outcome to the learners themselves.

We believe that the success factor for our concept hinges on the specific combination of different modes of learning recognising a wide range of learner strategies and the vital need for learner interaction both with the instructor as well as other learners. Learners present their achievements over the semester in an online portfolio they may design themselves. This includes their learner profile, the peer-reviews and their reflections on the individual assignments and their overall progress.

This presentation looks at the development online language learning materials in an English course for beginners at the Language Centre, University of Padova. The course integrates classroom lessons with use of a Web-based learning environment. As is the case in many Italian universities, high enrollment figures and the large number of working students mean that not all students attend courses. The presentation, then, will focus on how computer-based learning activities can play a valuable and necessary role in the facilitation of autonomous language learning in contexts where students work without the presence of an online tutor. Particular attention will be paid to the design, choices and theory behind the various types of feedback in the course. Forms of feedback such as prompts for reflection, reinforcement of student response, guidance, explanations, corrections, substitutions, scores and access to recorded responses and results, will be proposed as alternatives to the traditional and often inadequate "right/wrong" type of computer response.

The exercises are created by language teachers and the presentation will look at how their classroom experience influences the nature of the feedback. Feedback is also developed according to students' results and incorrect responses (recorded in the Learning Management System, Lotus LearningSpace) to provide appropriate content and achieve beneficial levels of student-computer interactivity. Students' reactions to the different kinds of feedback will also be considered.

This presentation introduces the Developing Independent Language Learning (DILL) programme at the University of Salford. It evaluates student and staff attitude and behaviour towards DILL and the lessons learned during its pilot year. DILL was introduced in September 2002 with all first year modern foreign language students.

Research has shown that many students fail to make effective use of resources available in Language Centres. Furthermore, they lack the strategies required to work on their own. However, the level of successful use can be increased by teaching specific skills aimed at developing learners’ ability to learn independently. DILL builds upon ideas and materials developed for the taught DILL module on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programmes of study. In addition, involvement in the SMILE project has raised awareness of the value of language advising in the modern foreign language sector.

DILL uses the Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to provide a progressive programme for individual task-based learning of strategies for independent planning and learning, including a framework for learner reflection, and pointers to practice language-specific materials in the multi-media Language Resource Centre. The VLE Discussion Boards are used as a vehicle for student interaction about learning, additionally, with staff moderation, they are used for general language advising. DILL is integrated into language programmes and Personal and Academic Tutors will give formal assessment of progress as shown in a portfolio of work and reflections on learning.

Writing skills and cognitive skills are of prime importance to academic success. Good practices in argumentative writing, standard structures and coherent style are however hard to teach. Online Writing Centres at various universities offer solace in various languages, yet concentrate primarily on providing suggestions and correct samples. Students still need to consult lecturers and resources like libraries and manuals to achieve anything like the standard set.

This paper report on the research carried out to test the effectiveness of feedback tools like www.worldwidewriting.com on the quality of student work in assignments. The study was carried out at various faculties in various languages by staff from Nijmegen University and the University of Professional Education of Arnhem & Nijmegen.

After an introduction to the study, the presentation will focus on didactical issues for the teaching of writing skills using keywords like collaboration, action-based learning, project-based learning and student-based teaching to discuss some best practices. The session will be run on an informal basis and the presenters will welcome audience participation, or indeed, feedback.

The project team has selected some of the best methods for teaching communicative skills in the less taught languages in technical colleges. The methods are: Computer assisted language learning in context, Simulations, The Physical-Emotional and Cultural approach (PhyEmoC), Task Based Teaching, and Tandem Learning.

The project team will develop sets of materials and instructions for exemplary lessons for each method. The materials will be ready for use in Basque, Danish, Dutch, Gaelic, Romanian, English, German, and Spanish. To assist and inspire language teachers the use of the methods and materials will be demonstrated through instructional video recordings of exemplary lessons.

The final products will contain:
§ A DVD video library with commented recordings of the methods used in classes.
§ A manual with method descriptions, instructions and ready to copy and use materials.
§ A website containing all the developed materials for download, i.e. manual, lesson materials, videos and also a communication centre with discussion areas where teachers can comment and share advice on the different methods and also share materials and propose new methods and ideas.

The products are Copyleft (a copyright notice that permits unrestricted redistribution and modification, provided that all copies and derivatives retain the same permissions).

This demonstration will give a brief overview of the project and present the video, software, manual and exemplary lesson developed for “Computer assisted language learning in context”. For more information please visit the project website www.languages.dk/methods

The course I am teaching now focuses on Web applications and how to integrate these into teacher education and TEFL. The core element of the course is task-based learning. The course is for in-service teachers of English. They explore and get familiar with different resources on the Web by doing tasks and evaluating websites with regard to how these might be ‘exploited’ for their classroom use. The end of semester project incorporates different aspects of the resources that were discussed therefore constructionist principles are embedded into the learning process. Students must develop skills to become functionally, academically, critically and electronically literate. The methodology course described focuses mainly on critical literacy as students learn to evaluate the validity and reliability of information sources and electronic literacy as they become able “to select and use electronic tools for communication, research and autonomous learning” (Shetzer 1998).

I have started to use Nicenet - a collaborative online environment - to give in-service teachers a forum to collaborate and share ideas about how to adapt different technology tools and learning material to a particular level and learning situation. I have made use of the following functions of Nicenet: threaded conferencing, link sharing and posting documents. Through Nicenet students can work independently and they can interact with each other in addition to the classroom setting (the class meets in person every week for 90 min).

Automatic recognition of words is one of the key skills of good readers. Reading inevitably depends on perception or visual efficiencies of readers. We investigated the word recognition speed of visually impaired college students who studied English as a foreign language to develop assistive software of English learning compensating for their visual problems. The subjects have difficulties in visual acuity and also in their visual field. Compared with good readers we found two types of slow readers in our subjects. Good readers with normal vision and one type of low vision group (LV1) can read words in almost the same time period independent of their length. The rates of lps (letters per second) increased linearly with word length. The lps of the other type of low vision (LV2), however, were constant. This means that their reading time of individual words increases according to the length of words. Reading is stressful and painful work especially for the latter type of low vision students. Then we have developed reading support software called readKON equipped with a speech synthesis device.

The main features of readKON are as follows;(1) It can be customized according to individual needs. (2) A speech synthesizer should read by a reader (manual operation to allow them to control the speed). (3) Learners can see their progress looking at the changing rate of their reading speed. The readKON was tested for the two groups of low vision readers. LV1 improved their reading speed by vocal support of the device. For LV 2 it is more useful for word recognition training. The time of decoding each word shortened, and the number of words they read accurately increased. The results show that the readKON is applicable to English learning of any type of slow readers with visual impairments.

An emphasis on the French-speaking editorial space leads one to notice that Information and Communication Technologies applied to Teaching (ICTT) constitutes an excellent means of learning and speaking French. Indeed, ICTT helps people to use French considered in their countries as a foreign language more effectively and to take advantage of French literacy training developed elsewhere, without moving from their places of residence. Besides the ICTT introduces new forms of socialisation to the French-speaking community as it reinforces knowledge exchange between people who are physically dispersed. The spread of websites created to support French learning is important and requires paying much more attention to content. Thus we propose in this paper to analyse and evaluate the existing FLE (Français Langue Etrangère) websites.

Taking into account common pedagogic principles, the paper gives answers to the following questions: How are the FLE websites created? What are their effective uses? What are the main constraints and advantages of these websites French-speaking learners? This analysis permits us to establish a first typology of the main Internet sites for FLE presented as follows:
· Training centres;
· Editors;
· Educational websites and resources directories;
· Courses and products for FLE online learning.

Then, the paper draws up a matrix model of the best content representative of FLE sites according to selective criteria such as usability, relevance and effectiveness. The paper puts great emphasis on comprehension questions and the role of metaphors. It recommends paying more attention to surveying learners’ needs and taking into account the cultural variety of the French-speaking world. Further commitment to the provision of FLE websites is required to meet learners’ needs too.

This presentation will explain the trajectory of the system in the context of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Spanish schools and elsewhere. A new version has been developed, free to all, of this powerful tool, and some outstanding exemplars have been created by teachers themselves, and some of these will be shown. The wide range of possible routines (MCQs, T/F, Crossword, Hangman, Matching, and many more, as well as a completely open-ended framework for branching activities) will be demonstrated, and attention will be given to the way any activity template is open to the simple insertion of media elements with a number of interactions possible for each one.

The emergence of XML as a Web-based standard adds importance to MALTED for the future, and brings closer the reality of relatively easy creation of highly interactive, individualised Web-based routines which offer a pedagogic quality virtually unrestricted by technical constraints.

It is also intended to hold a MALTED workshop at EuroCall for those interested.

We will, on the basis of the evidence presented, seek to draw conclusions about the level of acceptance among students towards the use of computer technology in their language learning experience and make suggestions about the reduction or elimination of student resistance in the future.

This paper aims to show an online course for assessing and developing lexical competence. It is the result of a previous project, which evaluated the lexical competence of students in their final year of English Philology at the University of Granada and concluded that their level was not only insufficient for the academic requirements of the English Philology degree course, but also fell short of the professional demands that many of our students will need to respond to as would-be English teachers. As a result, the lecturers involved in the project sought and obtained finance to undertake a further study ADELEX - “Assessing and Developing Lexical Competence through the Internet” - which specifically aimed to develop a semi-virtual programme that would improve the vocabulary levels of our students (http://www.ugr.es/~inped/index.htm).

In a short and intensive programme, we have developed activities to expand word knowledge, collocations and lexical phrases and encourage the use of dictionary look-up, linguistic corpora and other linguistic resources on the Web. This year we have launched a completely online course by making use of WebCT (Web Course Tools). It is hoped that this might also serve as a model for other linguistic fields (grammar, reading etc) and other educational levels (secondary, postgraduate etc) and, ultimately, become an option for other degree programmes. This virtual course was carried out as pilot study covering the academic year 2001-2002 and was short-listed for the first prize and subsequently received official recognition by the University of X.

The temptation to take educational technology to the next level is very seductive. This road, however, is fraught with hazards which can easily be avoided. This paper will discuss many of the common pitfalls found when dealing with technology and how to take appropriate advantage of technology and technologists. While it is rare for a technologist to preach a 'less is more' ideal, this paper will address the compromises required to produce effectively in education.

To demonstrate this, the presenters will outline a process of the interaction of an educator and technologist as they collaborate on the technological augmentation of a group exercise in syntactic and semantic critique and revision for an ESL class. The demonstration will be mindful of the potentials for failure, burnout, unexpected success, and the possibility of the educator becoming swept up and lost in technology, as well as the technologist overlooking the pedagogical goals. The presenters will also give guidance to the self-starter on how to go it alone and still achieve outcomes that are useful, cost-effective, timely, recyclable and long lasting.

IDC students receive e-mail accounts upon registration. They develop their computer and digital literacy skills during their first year of study. Throughout their BA program, they study Communication Skills in English and their digital literacy skills are enhanced, e.g. by learning how to evaluate Web materials. In the first semester of English, the focus is mainly on reading comprehension skills/strategies and the writing of summaries and e-mail messages. Afterwards, writing requirements become ever more complex (e.g., all types of letters, CVs and accompanying letters of application, press releases, position papers on controversial issues, research papers, abstracts, book reports and film critiques, culminating in an online student journal edited and controlled by 3rd year students).

Students do almost all of their work on computer and send all written assignments as Word document attachments. The teachers use Microsoft’s Tracking System and students are given a set of correction symbols (e.g., vt indicates that the verb tense is incorrect, ro indicates a Run-On sentence). Students receive grades only after their final revision of each assignment.

This paper will present:
the use of the tracking system and student revision, with sample papers, and student feedback (at the end of the 2nd year) on their perception of the efficacy of the tracking system.

Based on results from several EU Leonardo da Vinci projects, we will focus on the requirement of authenticity. We will discuss the pros and cons of multimedia and internet in this respect, and will demonstrate a time/cost-effective tool and procedure for the production and customisation of online multimedia language learning modules based on authentic material from public and proprietary sources.

Special attention will be given to our 'American Interviews', a series of video clips covering different walks of life from horseback riding and ranching to dress making, local politics and commercial life. We will demonstrate how

The learning evaluation of our approach is embedded in the American Cultural Studies programme at a German university. We will present and discuss the main evaluation results and will conclude by showing how the approach can be transferred to other content and study areas.

The 'new' world of learning and teaching languages was never so rich with (technological) opportunities as it is now. They range from opportunities for self-organised learning with multimedia and Web-based contents to eLearning through the use of conferencing systems, discussion forums, tandem chat, email partnerships and the like. No doubt, recent developments within the fields of multimedia and internet offer a fascinating potential for teaching and learning.

Why is it then that teaching practice has so far been reluctant to adopt multimedia and Web-based technologies? Why is it that the language CD ROM market is problematic and eLearning remains hardly more than a buzzword in many language training departments and institutions?
We believe that the key to success lies in integrating the old and new ways of learning within a comprehensive approach of 'Blended Learning'. The pedagogic strengths of the new media can only be fully exploited when successfully combined with each other and with tried and tested traditional methods. Thus, in our 'Blended Learning' approach, CD ROM materials and Web-based contents and eLearning activities are used by local study groups to supplement and strengthen the direct contact between teachers and learners.

In our presentation, we discuss pedagogic principles, concepts and scenarios of 'Blended Language Learning', using practical examples and case studies. Moreover, we look at relevant multimedia/Web content and tools, eLearning activities and technological infrastructures. Emphasis is on realistic (and affordable) solutions that can be seamlessly integrated in existing learning and teaching approaches (in schools, universities and adult education) and can be expanded step by step. The technological basis for our approach is an online 'LanguageStudio' with an expandable and flexible range of options: ready-made learning modules with database connection and feedback options, tools for fast and easy authoring and Web-upload of additional materials (e.g. by tutors for their specific learner groups), facilities for tutorial guidance and online communication.

This paper reports on research in progress into the development of an application to provide learners with real time feedback on their vowel production. This process includes the calculation and plotting of formants (peaks in intensity at certain frequencies) on a graph using the PRAAT programme. The patterns which result are highly reminiscient of the traditional vowel quadrilateral, which in turn reflects articulation, i.e. articulatory changes are reflected on the graph. This application can provide feedback on both pure vowels and diphthongs.

Some of the difficulties and obstacles which as yet prevent it from being a tool which can be used by the learner autonomously will also be outlined and discussed. Foremost amongst which are: the question of speaker normalisation (how to compensate for the difference in values between male, female and pre-pubertal speakers) which may be resolved by way of statistical elaboration of the formant data; and the methods used to isolate the vowel sound from the rest of the signal.

Without any programming, MaxAuthor creates language instruction courseware for 47 languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Native American languages. MaxAuthor is an MS-Windows application. Completed courseware can be delivered over the Internet or MS-Windows and can utilize audio, video, graphics, and exercises such as multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, listening dictation, pronunciation, and audio flash cards. Under the hood, it uses technologies such as Unicode, Java, Perl, Cascading Style Sheets, embedded fonts, and streaming video.

MaxAuthor was used to create the Critical Languages Series of CD ROMs for Brazilian Portuguese, Cantonese, Chinese, Kazakh, Korean, and Turkish (http://clp.arizona.edu/cls).The author records separate audio for both sentences and words and has the option of recording audio in the training language only, but can also record translations or paraphrases in up to 5 other languages or dialects. This presentation will show examples of completed courseware and the process of authoring a simple lesson.

If culture is included in CBI instruction, it is often through authentic texts on current events as related to contemporary target-language society (Klahn 1997; Klee and Tedick 1997). We took this practice one step further and established a goal of deepening the cultural experience by centering only on the theme of French gastronomy. The target-language course includes an historical perspective, descriptions of regional cuisine, cultural festivals, problems in the food industry, menus, food shopping and literary texts. Skills are exercised using theme-appropriate films and music, in-class food tastings, critiques, and interactive Web exercises.

Culturally-prominent themes enmeshed in a country's identity offer noteworthy advantages in L2 learning. First, our case-study ensures a highly-meaningful contextualization and significance with rich L2 input. Second, the continuous recycling of content fosters increasing fluency in that content area. Third, content can be easily manipulated to move students to higher levels of language processing. Finally, choosing high interest themes may revitalize the often-noted lagging motivation of advanced students.

This question presupposes a belief that authentic communication does happen in the Internet. Therefore, I present a case study on virtual travel agencies Web-sites, where I found strong evidence for (1) conversational interaction between user and machine; (2) norm-bound use of terminology and (3) a high level of adequacy between terminology and underlying economic reality. I draw upon three different scientific fields, i.e. discourse analysis in economic discourse (especially sales talk in tourism); terminological analysis of tourism products, and the economics of tourism.

My findings strongly indicate that communicative actions between Web-users and their virtual "partners" follow the norms and conventions of genuine face-to-face dialogue between experts (travel agents) and non-experts (customers). Surprisingly, coherence was found to be the result of the pragmatic outcome of purpose-bound conversation, rather than of author-dependent meaning.

Finally, I propose the design of instructional learning units and of linguistic tools, as a means to operationalise these findings. I emphasis the TOOL FUNCTION and develop the concept, structure and functionality of a terminological database that caters for the needs of the German tourism system and thus provides user-oriented dictionaries and terminology lexica that can be used by students, professionals and translators alike.

But in the real world of distractions, gridlock and opportunity costs, it is difficult to get students in sufficient numbers to gather regularly in a fixed location for a viable class to form.

The online translation course currently being piloted at the Dublin Institute of Technology seeks to minimise this ‘translation loss’ by employing the mid-tech solution of WebCT allied to a novel approach to student feedback. The course is delivered in cycles of three weeks and provides the structure necessary to simulate class discussion. The only fixed time commitment on the student’s part is a synchronous online session once every three weeks.

Colour coded highlighting - readily available within Microsoft WORD, for example - is used to categorise student errors and infelicities according to predetermined (yet flexible) categories designed to promote a problem-solving approach to the translation process and to train for speed.

Tutor feedback provides not instant solutions, but rather an invitation to reflect on the nature of the problems posed by the student’s target text. The final week of the three week cycle is employed by the students in pair or group work. They discuss their ‘colour corrected’ electronic scripts online within the VLE provided by WebCT. This filters out trivial errors and allows the synchronous session at the end of the final week of the translation cycle to concentrate on the remaining intractable problems.

This methodology need not be restricted to translation, but can be adapted to any discursive task where emphasis is placed on the quality of feedback to the student.

The aim of the paper is to present a research project supported immensely by the above-mentioned technologies. It includes an analysis of language material used in a series of English language textbooks from a syntactic point of view (aspect of one-word adverbial placement), comparison of the results with the British National Corpus, applications for the second/foreign language acquisition process.

The process was broken down into several stages:
The linguistic theories on sentence structure and their conclusions regarding principles of adverbial placement were compared with practical rules and prescriptions used in the investigated textbooks. A high degree of discrepancy between these two sources led to a detailed language material inspection.
A corpus of sentences was created from the textbooks which comprise one-word adverbials. This “textbook” corpus was tested against the British National Corpus.

Corpora findings were confronted with the simplified rules stated in the textbooks. On the basis of application of second/foreign language acquisition theories, these findings served as the basis for evaluating textbook language material and for suggesting certain modifications to make the language acquisition process more effective.

In the future some of these procedures can be used in the classroom so that students can have an opportunity to discover the rules on the basis of the work with authentic language corpora. This research and its applications represent an example of an effective connection between linguistic research and teaching/learning process, interrelated thanks to concordance software.

This paper focuses on the strategies adopted at the Language Resource Centre at the University of Economics and Business Administration to overcome these pitfalls. Data gathered through interviews and feedback questionnaires show that students like the idea of being able to learn a language away from a formal teaching environment. Many among them, however, feel the need for external structure and support to keep their motivation high.

The support provided by the language resouce centre takes several forms. It includes introductory meetings in which students are made aware of the philosophy behind tandem learning and social gatherings in which they meet other tandem partners to exchange experiences (videoclips from these meetings will be shown during the presentation). Moreover, the personnel of the language resource centre contacts students regularly to circulate ideas about activities to do with their tandem partners. E-mail is used in this case instead of the Web because it adds a more personal touch and students have the feeling of being “looked after”.

The structure is provided by means of a Tandem Learning Diary which is designed to help students reflect on their own learning and on how their tandem partners learn. Tandem students using this tool are encouraged to keep a record of their objectives and of their progress. Those who complete their diaries are issued a Certificate of Participation in the Tandem Learning Project to be included in their CVs and/or Portfolios. Data gathered from the analysis of diaries and feedback questionnaires will be presented.
http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/sprachlabor/tandem_en.html

The sample consisted of a control group and an experimental group with university students of English as L2. The control group was trained in a four-hour traditional class where the teacher taught some units communicatively, taken from a well known book, and the students had to listen, speak and write about them. The experimental group was developed in the intelligent class for two hours, where the students had to search for information and organize it creatively so that each of them had to present the information in front of the class for 7 minutes in a two-hour session. They had to speak about a subtopic related to “economic, political and cultural issues in the globalization period” in a two-hour workshop weekly.

The teacher’s duty was to teach and make the students work communicatively in the control group, and to guide and assess the group weekly in the experimental one. Data were taken from pretests and postests applied at the beginning and at the end of the semester, whose results were submitted to statistical tests.

Some online instructors seem to suggest that the dynamics and genre of online interaction and communication provide a generally even playing field for native and non-native (Baumeister et al, 2000). They argue that today’s technology-savvy student is adept at contributing to a discussion thread whether they were born in the US or the UAE. Others point to the fact that differences in language and culture are so ingrained that they play a significant role in any educational context, online study included citing evidence of information density in text (Becker, 1988) and complexities of interpersonal relations (Kawachi, 2000).

Approaching the issue from the direction of both language and culture and based on an extensive literature study and interviews with online tutors and students, this paper will seek to detail the main issues in the debate in order to bring a sense of clarity. It is expected that the findings will have ramifications for the way we teach and support international students in English-medium online educational contexts.

This paper presents the results of a research project involving students of French at Masters level, who are given the opportunity to improve a short text which they have written in French by using concordancing software to consult a small specialised corpus of texts by native speakers on a similar subject. The experiment focuses not on morphological and syntactical accuracy, but on vocabulary, style and register. The paper also considers issues relating to the creation of an appropriate small corpus and the importance of giving detailed guidelines to the students.

From these discussions, it appears obvious that interactive computer-assisted learning holds much potential in enhancing learners' cognitive and metacognitive processing. Though interactive aids in various forms are not uncommon among CD ROM-based learning materials, little has been done to harness this potential in network-based language teaching practice, particularly in non-English foreign language instruction. There may be two reasons for this. First, popular and commonly available authoring programmes for Web exercises do not as yet provide sufficient support for the inclusion of interactive aids. Second, thus far hardly any notable empirical work has been carried out to ascertain the effects of interactive computer- or network-based language learning on the metacognition of learners.

This paper will describe the background, methodology and results of a qualitative empirical study in Singapore on the effects of interactive online learning aids on the metacognition of beginning learners performing a networked multimedia exercise for German as a Foreign Language. It will further discuss the implications of this study for the design of network-based tasks and exercises and for future research.

A handout will be provided with bibliographical details.

The proposed presentation will describe a curriculum development project carried out by the German language faculty at the National University of Singapore which seeks to marry the specific advantages of a computer network with that of multimedia technologies. The objective of the "Movie Studio" project was to create a motivating network-based platform for the production of dialogues in simulated situations, in written and in spoken form. Much like e-cards, which are fast gaining popularity among Internet users, the 'DIY' movies created by the learners can be viewed by designated viewers who will be informed by e-mails.

The presenter will show that, in this project, the design of this application and its technical realisation were very much driven by educational and second language acquisition theories rather than technology per se. The presentation will also include a demonstration of the application's various functions (e.g. creating the context by selecting settings and characters, writing dialogues, and recording these using streaming technology), the learning support available to learners and possiblities for its integration in the language curriculum.

Cited Literature
Chun, D. & Plass, J. (2000). Networked multimedia environments for second language acquisition. In R. Kern & M. Warschauer. (eds.), Network-based language teaching: concepts and practice (pp. 151-170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

It was our contention that a well-designed Web-based language learning environment would allow learners to actively and thoughtfully manipulate elements in the program as well as to engage in meaningful interaction, rather than having learners passively read through information. We were also not interested in “testing for comprehension” kind of mechanisms prevailed in many commercial language learning programs, because we believed in an active and reflective language learning process. Thus, we specified the following goals for the project:
· Exposing learners to authentic language input
· Teaching the skill of summarizing and paraphrasing
· Helping learners acquire new vocabulary items
· Helping learner understand and enjoy the culture and humor

Considering students taking the Introduction to Linguistics course, we also specified goals for them as:
· Providing learners with an opportunity for limited and controlled linguistic analysis
· Training student to use linguistic terms actively.

Achieving these goals required that the research team to investigate how the available technology and accessible technical know-how could best accommodate our understanding of language learning and teaching. In this presentation, the audience will see a working prototype, a detailed explanation of the design rationale, and results from a usability test in which learner expectations and strategies are discussed.

Ongoing research in DNA and chromosome decoding, music and software plagiarism, OCR and information retrieval requires sophisticated algorithms for exact or approximate string matching, such as the Boyer-Moore algorithm (Charras & Lecroq 1997). But also in the field of text plagiarism detection, fast and accurate routines are needed. The Cerberus program (Decoo 2002), developed by DIDASCALIA and freely downloadable, is based on a straightforward but powerful routine. This routine has since been refined with a view to develop a useful routine for answer evaluation and dictation correction.

The objectives of this new routine are threefold: a/ to identify the longest common cluster between two strings or texts, b/ to clearly show the differences between them (missing characters, redundant characters, different characters) and c/ to allow objective grading of the students’ texts or responses. Requirements for the routine are: accuracy, scalability, accessibility and execution speed. Major problems during development were the specific redundancy of natural language, the possible repetition of text clusters, and, in the case of answer evaluation, interaction design.

XML Web Services within the .NET framework enable us to post this routine on the Web as a function, which can be called by any Windows or Web application written in any language as long as the specification is being respected. The function has to be called with two strings as parameters and the returned string is the result of the comparison.

Our next challenge is to observe how teachers and developers react when effective string comparison routines become more and more available.

References
CHARRAS, Christian & Thierry LECROQ. Exact String Matching Algorithms,
http://www-igm.univ-mlv.fr/~lecroq/string/, 1997, visited January 2003.

DECOO, Wilfried. Crisis on Campus: Confronting Academic Misconduct. MIT
Press, 1997.

Three resources will be showcased: Web streaming media, audio/video editing, and DVD authoring. Streaming technology is employed for live and on-demand broadcasts involving a variety of speaking and writing activities. Digitally editing A/V materials makes possible the synchronization of alternate sound tracks with original motion video, providing among others opportunities for practicing pronunciation and intonation patterns in context. The production of a DVD as part of a course project in Business German simulates real-life tasks, assigning students distinct responsibilities that require collaboration at all stages. In most physical CALL environments, the respective hardware and software resources are available to instructors, accessible to students, and affordable to administrators. An example is the free iMovie software that is used for A/V editing and is easy to learn. With the exception of A/V synchronization, the digital tool applications to be demonstrated represent work that is in progress at the time of this writing.

Previous research revealed that most of the teachers did not have enough knowledge to deal with computer technology. It was then decided to make the first module (How do I learn about Applied Linguistics through Distance Learning?) a compulsory one as it deals with applied linguistics using technology as a pretext to provide the adequate input. This module was piloted and results are available in a recent electronic publication, Contijoch et al (2001).

The objective of this paper is to share how the pedagogical design of the Diploma was conceived in close collaboration with a multidisciplinary team to develop the instructional design. It is important to mention that Mexico being a developing country, public funds are restricted, which adds an extra challenge to the development of the project considering that we are aiming to a first class quality educational site. During this paper presentation results of some of the relevant research that has been found after piloting three modules will be shown.

References
Contijoch, M. C., Delgado, M. E., Gilbón, D. M., Martineck, L., Signoret, A.
Torrealva, N. (2001). Estudio piloto de un curso en línea para profesores de
lenguas. Revista Digital UNAM. Vol. 2. No.4. ISSN: 1607-6079

The Web-based materials deal specifically with the development of lexical and grammatical awareness and its application within a task-based format. The materials are text-based and the objective for the student is to demonstrate understanding and mastery of target language and structures within a creative goal-based task.

For the teacher, the challenge is to construct a robust framework in which the student is both supported and guided towards a flexible model of autonomous learning using new technologies both as a medium and a resource. The pedagogical role of the materials is to both reinforce what is done in the classroom and guide the learner towards independent investigation, and creative application of the target language and structures. This integrated learning model is constructed around a set of pathways. In interacting with the materials via the learning pathways the student moves through the different stages of the learning process. While improved linguistic competence is the principal goal, the student is also engaged in a process of learning how to move to independent and purposeful exploitation of resources: in brief, learning how to learn.

The use of specially-designed computer software for the analysis of language corpora facilitates the identification of frequent word combinations in a register. One of the most salient cases among word combinations is that of lexical bundles, which are sequences of three or more words that frequently co-occur in a register. The most frequent lexical bundles in academic prose, for example, are expressions such as as a result of, at the end of the, the extent to which, in the case of, and on the other hand, among others. Most lexical bundles are not structurally complete, and many of them extend across structural units (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999).

This paper will focus on the teaching of lexical bundles to students taking discipline-specific writing courses at university levels. The presentation will include a rationale for teaching lexical bundles, an explanation of the role of special software and corpus-based techniques for identifying bundles in discipline-specific prose, examples of instructional techniques used in writing-intensive classes, and suggestions for how the teaching of lexical bundles can be used to promote more efficient reading and writing.

This paper looks at the effects of culture and learning style on the use of discussion lists on a university learning environment (The Virtual Campus).

The aim of the research is to consider whether cultural assumptions about the role of the learner and the teacher will affect the nature and content of the students’ contributions and participation. Comparisons will be made between Chinese and Swedish learners, among others. Messages will be analysed in terms of content analysis and choice of language; a combination of positivist and interpretive analyses may contribute to this.

The question will be addressed of whether basic assumptions about the construction of knowledge as a collaborative process or an expert delivery may have an effect on the use of discussion lists. An alternative explanation may be that the use of email as a leisure activity has changed expectations about the use of communications technology which have a direct bearing in classroom use or use for self-study.

There will be reference to research on learning style and culture, as well as to the author’s previous research on CMC and culture. Conclusions are tentative at present, but differences in approach to learning and expectations can be found.

Starting from a desire to develop a common format between "Hot Potatoes", "WELTS" (part of the WELL project) and the "Interactive Language Learning" system from London Metropolitan University, we have produced the technology to make such conversion possible. Having worked to develop online teaching materials using one system, there is no reason why users should be bound into that system forever, should they find another system more appropriate for their teaching methodology. Furthermore, given the immense resources required to develop the critical mass of material required to make online CALL relevant to an individual's teaching practice, such a common approach is required to facilitate the pooling of resources. Should a bureaucratic or financial decision in an institution result in a change of software, teachers need to be able to easily convert their legacy material.

This presentation will demonstrate how easy it is to move from one authoring system to another using XML technology, thereby increasing potential accessibility. It will further propose using these developments to create a large pool of exercises for practice and assessment that is independent of the delivery system employed. This will obviate the need for teachers to keep repeating basic language learning material and the presentation will give examples of the expansion of online CALL into more imaginative areas.

The three registers were conversation, academic language and news. The analyses were based on samples collected from the LSWE corpus(Longman Spoken and Written English) using the Monoconc program (Barlow,2000). Chi Square analyses were done between the collected frequencies.

Findings supported the idea that modal meanings are distributed according to respective registers and that differences exist in the distribution of the modal meanings across registers for various grammatical forms of the same modal. Results carry implications for the teaching of modals.

During the classroom sessions, student-teacher interaction is audio taped and the students’ computer moves are stored using a screen capturing software called Camtasia. Immediately after the computer reading sessions, a semi-structured interview protocol is used to collect the students’ views and interpretations of the experience of reading online materials. Operational data are analyzed to identify common trends and differences in students’ working styles and patterns of interaction with the reading materials and comprehension tasks. Verbal reports are analyzed to identify their perceptions of the teacher’s objectives, views of the materials and their self reports on the strategies they used to complete the tasks.

The two data types, computer tracking and verbal reports, provide empirical evidence that the participants in the study overlooked and underused valuable aspects of the design that were intended to provide opportunities for developing reading strategies, facilitating negotiation of meaning and enhancing vocabulary development. The inferences and interpretations emerging from the findings are contrasted with the teachers’ intentions and rationale underlying the design of the activities. Areas of mismatch emerging from the contrast serve as basis of a discussion about the issue of learner choice and teacher control in CALL material design and pedagogy.

The researcher suggests that CALL designers incorporate in the design interface a system of communicating with learners that guides them through the options and helps them exhaust the learning potential of the materials. The researcher concludes the thesis with suggestions and recommendations for CALL design and research. She calls for teacher ownership of the technology in order for her to participate in the design of CALL materials and in exploratory research of their own use of these materials in the classroom. She argues that teacher-generated knowledge about teaching in CALL environments resulting from such endeavor is more likely to point to ways to ease the tension between the teacher intentions and learners’ priorities, and the tension between technologist and pedagogical views of computer use in language education. The researcher also makes suggestions for future research design focusing on “new literacies” and the processes involved in teaching reading comprehension with computers.

The methodology underpinning this attempt emerges from the study of learner differences. If indeed learners learn in a multitude of ways and if their learning can be affected by a variety of potentially unknowable factors, then a deterministic method for the design of online learning environments and their components would not be able to adequately accommodate for these differences. For the purpose of this project, it was decided to open up the field of inquiry and attempt to create a multifaceted, “organic” environment which would be able to provide a variety of self-directed and collaborative opportunities. The qualitative results which can be interpreted from this initial trial (completed with a minimum number of students and resources) should therefore provide valuable information for the design, modification and implementation of future ILE versions and other Web-based language-learning environments.

In order to commence exploring how such a learning context might be achieved, the ILE was developed. This paper looks at the implementation of the ILE in its initial stage and reports upon some of the findings that have emerged from a largely goal-free or interpretative evaluation of the environment. These findings have been gathered over a four-week period and include a large range of areas of interest: from learner profiles and online interaction, to the learners direct response to the environment and its various components. This paper will end with a brief discussion of some of the possible implications of this research for future applications of similar environments.

Reference
Jakobsson, A. 2002. ‘Learning attitudes decisive to students’ cognitive and knowledge development’. 2002 Conference Proceedings, International conference on Computers in Education, Volume II, p.1029.

With considerable support by Tandberg, Inc., this project is enabling CSU campuses to offer synchronous and asynchronous language and cultural instruction between distant campuses drawing upon different faculty and lab manager strengths. This language course, created and offered collaboratively among seven CSU campuses, introduces cultural knowledge in-context through a unique virtual environment designed specifically for this project.

The presentation will describe the process of designing the curriculum and technology to effectively deliver instruction, learner interaction and measured performance, and models new practices in demonstrating how foreign language faculty and language lab managers can collaborate in course development. The technology and selected course materials will also be demonstrated for the audience.

Using “Opus PRO” advanced features and options: e.g. variables, script, etc we are able to insert a score for a single task and a total score for the whole lesson, affix the date and record the time spent on the material, randomize multiple choice questions, set up scrolling text and provide tutorial information. We fully utilize the properties of "input text" -that is a special sort of text - which allows the user to type information or even a short composition, which may then be printed up for the teacher. We have found all these options very useful for maximizing feedback from the teacher and therefore most productive in encouraging learners’ progress in independent work. We have taken into account the disadvantages of using CALL materials in the English Language Laboratory: such as:
§ The amount of waiting time students may face
§ The overwhelming amount of choices that easily distract students
§ The lack of mechanism to access lessons at inappropriate levels

Our goal is to avoid most of these problems in order to make the learning process attractive and user-friendly for students. Thus we produce CAL lessons as a form of computer-based publication that combines text and pictures including multimedia and feedback options. We distribute our CAL lessons in digital CD ROM form, based on the concept of desktop publishing, in order to make lessons easily accessible to the user at any computer. The presentation should be of interest to teachers and developers of CALL/WELL text-based materials.

The narrative data of the present study are drawn from Carter and McCarthy’s book (1997). The extracts are recorded on an accompanying cassette. Carter and McCarthy refer to some features, or some embellishments by the story-teller, such as exaggeration, intensification and amusing details. In addition, Carter et al (1997) claim that oral narratives operate in a different context from that of written forms: attention may have to be attracted, and then kept. Labov (1972) posited a six-part structure for a fully-formed oral narrative: abstract, orientation, complicating actions, resolution, evaluation, and coda.

Several studies investigated important variables related to performance and strategy use in hypertext environments such as text organization, coherence, and reading goal. These studies have revealed relationships among reading goal, text format, and strategies use (Foltz, 1996; Dee-Lucas,1996; Viau and Larivee, 1993). However, current research provides us with contrary findings with regard to whether the reading strategies employed during hypertext reading are essentially different from those involved in reading linear text.

The focus of this study is to compare the strategies used by advanced learners of English while reading a hypertext document and a linearly organized electronic text. Participants were 10 advanced learners of English. A within subjects design was used where participants were asked to read two equivalent texts: one organized hierarchically and the other linearly. Participants were asked to think aloud while reading the text. Their think aloud protocols were recorded and analyzed to generate a list of strategies used. Preliminary results indicate that similar reading strategies were used in both conditions. However, participants also applied navigation strategies in the hypertext condition.

A handout will be provided with bibliographical details.

The system processes student input by accessing a knowledge base, structured in the form of an extended systemic grammar, and containing, not only a very large number of acceptable variant versions, but also predicted language mistakes. Automatic routines deal with misspellings, minor inaccuracies and omissions of words, while a language mistake calls up an explanatory comment and, but only if the student asks for it, a fuller explanation of the point of grammar or vocabulary in question. In addition, a learner can at any moment interrogate Dominie and be shown a list of all the possible “next words”. Far from making the activity easier, this often presents challenging choices and encourages an investigative, enriching, approach to language learning.

Dominie, which has taken several years to develop (the project was shelved for a time due to programming difficulties), was created as follows. Teachers from seven different countries, contacted at Eurocall, agreed to set the textual material to their students as paper exercises and send the scripts to Faro Systems, which is a small independent partnership located in Scotland. In that way data files could be compiled for Dominie containing variants and predictable mistakes that would be useful in practice to Dutch-, French-, German-, Greek-, Polish-, Russian- and Spanish-speaking learners. These colleagues are now piloting Dominie and reports from them describing ways in which the package can be used will be included in the presentation.

In the context of this work our paper discusses three important elements currently still ill provided for in most online offerings. These are: (1) creating a sense of community, (2) providing opportunities for speaking activities, and (3) including meaningful feedback structures. We present a review of current Intelligent Language Tutoring projects and consider the role of graphics in personalising feedback. We also propose how a sense of community might be created through the use of innovative collaborative projects, using voice applications and discuss the important concepts of social dilemma, learner versus instructor control, time management and authentic assessment which arise in this context.

A handout will be provided with bibliographical details.

The implementation of the project is being done using distant learning techniques and taking full advantage of all capabilities the Web offers.

The curriculum is structured as to develop the teachers' abilities to use computers in everyday teaching, and to design and evaluate didactic plans that make use of the computer as a tool in actual classroom environments. The collaboration of various partners, including technical experts, has provided the expertise for these targets. The network has been participating in all steps of the development, implementation and evaluation of the training material, in order to establish a standing communication between theory and practice.

There is little evidence that IT environments actually lead to gains in learning (Allum, 2002). In fact, it is always difficult to evaluate what learning goes on in specific periods of training and practising, partly because learning is not a linear, but an “organic” (Nunan, 2000) process. However, we think it is possible to identify and compare some of the characteristics of the learning situations, and possibly learning outcomes, in CALL and non-CALL environments.

In this research, we were interested in finding out the influence of the use of IT and collaborative work on the performance of learners of French as a foreign language (FFL). Our hypothesis was that the use of IT on the one hand, and collaboration on the other hand, would result in varying gains in the quality of the language produced.

We set up an experiment in which learners of FFL were asked to work individually and in pairs, with or without IT, in order to carry out similar communicative tasks in the foreign language. The data collected consisted of both oral and written language. The results will show whether those learners working collaboratively with IT produced richer, more appropriate and syntactically accurate language than those working with conventional materials. Although this limited study does not allow generalizations to be made, suggestions will be made as to the potential of CALL environments for language learning, and for the setting up of larger comparative studies of this type.

Our study aims at demonstrating h