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Editorial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

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Abstract

Type
Editorial
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 2014 

As this issue is about to go to press, the 21st EUROCALL Conference has just ended in Évora, Portugal. We could not have dreamt of a better venue for our anniversary, which we celebrated in style! Twenty years of CALL research, research and development, and practice were reflected upon by keynote speakers and participants alike. ReCALL also featured prominently. This time last year, we announced our first impact factor and ranking in the Linguistics and Educational Research categories. For 2012, the Thompson Reuters impact factor for ReCALL rose by 17% to reach 1.118. Our journal is now ranked 29 out of 160 journals in the Linguistics Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and 52 out of 216 journals in the Education and Educational Research JCR. This is a tremendous achievement, which must be credited to our authors and reviewers. The latter are to be commended for their engagement with the journal and tireless efforts: in 2012/2013 alone, we received 102 submissions, 70% of which were unfortunately rejected.

The steady increase in the number of submissions has led us to make a number of changes in our reviewing process. Firstly, we are very happy to welcome Prof. Alex Boulton, from the University of Lorraine (France), as co-editor of ReCALL. Alex is no stranger to EUROCALL or ReCALL: he is an elected member of the EUROCALL Executive Committee member and guest editor of the forthcoming May issue of the journal. Secondly, we will soon move towards the electronic submission and management of papers. Details will be announced in due course.

This current issue comprises two sections. The first one includes two papers from the EUROCALL 2012 Conference held in Gothenburg, Sweden. Pia Sundqvist and Liss Kerstin Sylvén investigate young Swedish learners of English and their out of school language-related activities, and more particularly their use of computers and engagement in playing digital games. Maribel Montero Perez, Elke Peters, and Piet Desmet study the effect of two types of captioned video on listening comprehension and L2 learners’ perception of the usefulness of captions while watching L2 video. The second section includes four regular papers. The first two papers also look at the effect of captions on listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition respectively. Jie Chi Yang's and Peichin Chang's study proposes three modes of captions: full, keyword-only, and annotated keyword captions and investigates their contribution to the learning of reduced forms and overall listening comprehension. Wenhua Hsu incorporated online video into her college freshman composition class and examined its effects on advanced vocabulary production. Continuing with vocabulary acquisition, Si-Min Hu, Viphavee Vongpumivitch, Hsien-Chin Liou, and Jason S. Chang examine the effectiveness of Chinese and English e-glosses on incidental English vocabulary learning on junior high-school EFL students. Finally, Chun-Yu Lin, Chung-Kai Huang, and Chang-Hua Chen investigate barriers to the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) for teachers of Chinese as a foreign language in US universities.