Since the last issue of ReCALL, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of our lives. The result for many areas of education has been the increased use of remote learning tools, and educators and students alike are now using digital technologies in ways that may have been inconceivable at the end of last year. We, in the ReCALL editorial team, hope that you and your families are safe and well in these unprecedented times.
An insight into a potential virtual classroom is explored in the paper by Julian ChengChiang Chen, who considers the use of a 3D multi-user virtual environment, such as Second Life. The author identifies task planning activities that can be included in either a classroom-based or a 3D-based virtual environment to optimise the quality of the learners’ linguistic experience. The paper concludes that there are significant implications for such adaptability to physical or virtual classroom environments, which are perhaps particularly timely as we adapt to new methods of delivery. A key feature of the success of any virtual classroom is the perception of its value to learners and their attitudes. This is highlighted by Liam Murray, Marta Giralt and Silvia Benini in their study of the distractive nature of technology and its impact on student learning. The authors find that students are often unaware of how long they spend online, but conclude that learners do have an understanding of the potential disruption that technology can cause to their learning and that learners need to have a critical digital literacy in order to maximise the benefits of technology for their language learning.
The theme of student attitude and reactions to the use of technology for language learning is continued by Shu-Li Lai and Jason S. Chang in their article examining a lexical collocation tool. Their work found that the tool was efficient in helping students to solve collocation problems, thereby encouraging engagement with the tool. Their article provides a further timely example of how student attitude influences level of engagement with the technology, and this, in turn, is key to its successful adoption and effective pedagogical use. The issue of effective engagement with technology is also explored by Ward Peeters and Marilize Pretorius, who discuss the potential for using social networking sites in language learning. They argue that research into the benefits of social networking and Web 2.0 for creating collaborative learning opportunities has been inconclusive. Their work highlights the need for inclusion of the teacher in virtual communities of practice online, such as those offered on Facebook, along with the incorporation of key learning activities to avoid the “fail-book” effect.
In the final article of this issue and, in the context of a wider world exploring the increasing potential of technology to facilitate learning, Judith Buendgens-Kosten argues that computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research has traditionally focused on the use of technology to teach one language. The author explains that research and development in CALL can avoid this monolingual bias and paves the way for multilingual CALL: perhaps a timely place to conclude the current issue, with a new, potential direction for CALL research in a world that is having to quickly adjust to new ways of operating.
