This paper explores the motivation and prerequisites for successful integration of Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) tools into current foreign language teaching and learning (FLTL) practice. We focus on two aspects, which we argue to be important for effective ICALL system development and use: (i) the relationship between activity design and restrictions needed to make natural language processing tractable and reliable, and (ii) pedagogical considerations and the influence of activity design choices on the integration of ICALL systems into FLTL practice.

This article discusses an experiment in sending regular Short Message Service (SMS) messages to support language learning, and vocabulary learning in particular, at beginners' level in Italian at an Australian university. The approach we took built on the initiatives of Thornton and Houser (2005) and Dias (2002b), and was informed by the results of an earlier trial we had conducted with students at high-intermediate level (Levy & Kennedy, 2005). In testing the possibilities for using mobile phones for language learning purposes, we were especially interested in investigating the acceptability of a ‘push’ mode of operation, in which the scheduling of messages is determined by the teachers. While the students appreciated the experience overall, and found the message content often useful or enjoyable, there was a wide range of views on the frequency of messages acceptable. We are therefore planning the further integration of messaging into the course around a flexible arrangement involving options for high or low frequency of pushed messages, as well as messages available on request – in ‘pull’ mode.

This study examines the role of guided induction as an instructional approach in paper-based data-driven learning (DDL) in the context of an ESL grammar course during an intensive English program at an American public university. Specifically, it examines whether corpus-informed grammar instruction is more effective through inductive, data-driven learning or through traditional deductive instruction. In the study, 49 participants completed two weeks of ESL grammar instruction on the passive voice in English. The learners participated in one of three instructional treatments: a data-driven learning treatment, a deductive instructional treatment using corpus-informed teaching materials, and a deductive instructional treatment using traditional (i.e., non-corpus-informed) materials. Results from pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test indicated that the DDL group significantly improved their grammar ability with the passive voice, while the other two treatment groups did not show significant gains. The findings from this study suggest that in this learning context there are measurable benefits to teaching ESL grammar inductively using paper-based DDL.

Many studies have demonstrated that vocabulary size plays a key role in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). In recent years, mobile game-based learning (MGBL) has been considered a promising scheme for successful acquisition and retention of knowledge. Thus, this study applies a mixed methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to assess the effects of PHONE Words, a novel mobile English vocabulary learning app (application) designed with game-related functions (MEVLA-GF) and without game-related functions (MEVLA-NGF), on learners’ perceptions and learning performance. During a four-week experiment, 20 sophomore students were randomly assigned to the experimental group with MEVLA-GF support or the control group with MEVLA-NGF support for English vocabulary learning. Analytical results show that performance in vocabulary acquisition and retention by the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group. Moreover, questionnaire results confirm that MEVLA-GF is more effective and satisfying for English vocabulary learning than MEVLA-NGF. Spearman rank correlation results show that involvement and dependence on gamified functions were positively correlated with vocabulary learning performance.

This paper reports on an exploratory case study that investigates the synchronous interaction of intermediate level EFL learners in the 3D virtual world Second Life. The subjects took part in three seventy-minute chat sessions that involved the use of affordances provided by a purpose-built world within this environment. Analysis of the data revealed that the context and tasks appeared to elicit a high degree of participation. The interaction was highly learner–centered, with the majority of messages exchanged between students. The analysis further indicated that the subjects overcame initial difficulties to produce coherent target language output focused on the tasks through collaborative interaction involving the use of five transactional and two interactional discourse management strategies. Transactional strategies identified in the data were the use of split turns, time saving devices, addressivity, upper case and quotation marks. Interactional strategies were the use of politeness and keyboard symbols. The majority of these represented transfers from strategies used in non-computer-based forms of communication. The others were adaptive behaviours appropriate to the online medium. The consistent use of these strategies enabled the subjects to manage their interaction in an effective manner. Learner feedback was largely positive, and indicted that participation appeared to engender high levels of motivation and interest. This paper concludes by identifying areas of potential in future research on the use of 3D virtual worlds in CALL.

In today’s globalized world, learning languages and developing intercultural skills are of paramount importance due to dynamic and complex global interdependencies. However, not every language student around the world has a chance to engage in face-to-face intercultural communication with people from different backgrounds. Telecollaboration offers a worthwhile opportunity by creating digital environments for language learners to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds. This qualitative meta-synthesis therefore aimed to investigate the research papers that were published between 2010 and 2015 in respect to language and intercultural learning within telecollaborative environments. Besides reporting emerging research trends among the studies, this synthesis study scrutinized recent emerging issues and observable patterns under five main themes: (1) the participants’ overall views on their telecollaborative experiences, (2) language learning through telecollaboration, (3) intercultural learning through telecollaboration, (4) the challenges experienced within the telecollaborative projects, and (5) the needs for further effective telecollaboration. Finally, this study synthesizes key emerging issues in telecollaborative projects and offers further research and practice directions in line with the current observable patterns.

This paper reports on the task-based interaction of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in the 3D multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) Second Life. The discussion first explores research on the precursors of MUVEs, text-based 2D virtual worlds known as MOOs. This is followed by an examination of studies on the use of MUVEs in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). The discussion then focuses on an investigation of the Second Life-based text chat of learners located at a university in Japan. Data analysis reveals that the environment, and tasks, elicited types of collaborative interaction hypothesized as beneficial in the sociocultural account of language development. Collaborative interaction identified in the data involved peer-scaffolding focusing on lexis, and correction. The data further showed that the participants actively maintained a supportive atmosphere through the provision of utterances designed to signal interest, and the extensive use of positive politeness. These factors facilitated social cohesion, intersubjectivity, and the consistent production of coherent target language output focused on the tasks. Participant feedback was broadly positive, and indicates that specific features of Second Life such as individual avatars, coupled to the computer-based nature of the interaction, appeared to enhance discourse management, engagement, and participation. The findings suggest that Second Life provides an arena for learner centered social interaction that offers valuable opportunities for target language practice, and the development of autonomy. Areas of potential for future research are identified.

An analysis of the characteristics of education and educational institutions of the third millennium shows that predominant features are flexibility, inclusiveness, collaboration, authenticity, relevance and extended institutional boundaries. Roles of both students and teachers have changed significantly as educational goals have broadened to include lifelong learning, global interaction, the acquisition of meta-cognitive knowledge and skills, and processes include negotiated curricula and real-life tutors and informants. This is a demanding package that appears to lead us naturally to a social constructivist paradigm for learning and teaching. While few would dispute the value of this approach in humanistic terms, a series of dilemmas – social, conceptual, political, pedagogical – have been articulated. The author will demonstrate that although these are not insurmountable, addressing them has major time implications. The paper argues that to free up time we need to combine social constructivist activities with cognitive constructivist ones, incorporating personalised ICALL systems.

This article discusses the informal learning of English by non-native speakers with particular reference to the role of virtual communities. The concept of informal learning is presented and related to current areas of interest in the literature such as incidental learning, and dynamic systems theory. Our research investigates how non-specialist language learners use the Internet in their spare time to read and listen to English, and also communicate in English, notably in online communities through social networking websites. The study looks particularly at the dynamics of these phenomena by studying a small number of non-native users of English over a period of two months. The results of this research will be used to question the relevance of the learner autonomy paradigm, which has been a cornerstone of language learning policy in Europe for the past thirty years.

Interest in the use of a mobile phone to access the Internet for learning English in general, and listening skills in particular, has been increasing in Korea over the last few years. However, there has been only a small number of studies on this topic in Korea. The present paper investigates the potential of using a mobile phone to browse wireless application protocol (WAP) sites for the purpose of learning listening skills. The study focuses specifically on the attitudes of language learners toward using a mobile phone for this purpose. The study is based on input, interaction, output and sociocultural theories, as well as on collaborative, learner-centred, constructivist and task-based learning approaches. An experiment was carried out with a group of undergraduate students who had enrolled in a required intermediate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) listening course at a Korean university. A WAP site was designed and used as the instrument for the experiment. This study found that the language learners expressed positive attitudes towards the use of the WAP site. It also found that the WAP site can be effective for learning listening skills and for student-centred and collaborative learning. Based on the findings, it is clear that WAP sites can be effective for learning listening skills, since they can enhance opportunities to learn language skills, and encourage language learners to participate actively in the learning process.

While the concepts and principles associated with learner autonomy underpin a broad range of CALL applications and research projects, current debates and research paradigms in CALL do not provide adequate tools and models to investigate in depth the relationship between CALL and the development of learner autonomy. This paper explores the potential of cultural-historical activity theory to study this relationship. Starting from the complex and multidimensional nature of learner autonomy, it highlights some of the weaknesses in the CALL literature addressing some aspects of this relationship. Following a presentation of the main tenets of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), including the notion of contradiction which is at the core of CHAT, it then seeks to demonstrate how activity theory can assist us in rethinking our understanding of learner autonomy in the context of technology-rich language learning environments and in formulating suitable criteria and questions, which can guide judgemental and empirical analyses. The paper concludes by illustrating some of the principles explored through examples drawn from an activity-theoretical judgemental analysis of a French module delivered to first year students in Dublin City University.

This paper has two key objectives. Firstly, it seeks to record the technologies in current use by learners of a range of languages at an Australian university in 2011. Data was collected via a large-scale survey of 587 foreign language students across ten languages at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Notably the data differentiates between those technologies that students used inside and outside of formal classrooms as well as recording particular technologies and applications that students perceived as beneficial to their language learning. Secondly, this study aims to compare and contrast its findings with those from two previous studies that collected data on students’ use of technologies five years earlier, in 2006, in the UK and Canada. The intention is to chart major developments and changes that have occurred during the intervening five-year period, between 2006 and 2011. The data reported in two studies, one by Conole (2008) and one by Peters, Weinberg and Sarma (2008) are used as points of reference for the comparison with the present study.

The findings of the current study point to the autonomy and independence of the language learners in this cohort and the re-emergence of CALL tools, both for in-class and out-of-class learning activities. According to this data set, learners appear to have become more autonomous and independent and much more able to shape and resource their personal language learning experience in a blended learning setting. The students also demonstrate a measure of sophistication in their use of online tools, such that they are able to work around known limitations and constraints. In other words, the students have a keen awareness of the affordances of the technologies they are using.

Applying Communicative Project theory (Linell, 2009), we identify and distinguish between the different coordination and language activities that emerged during an episode of World of Warcraft (WoW) gameplay involving English Language learners (ELLs). We further investigate ELLs’ coordinations between killing and caring, self and others, in which language and action arise. Using multimodal analysis, we found: 1) a diverse tapestry of communicative activities unlikely to match what would be found in a classroom environment; 2) that the values realizing involved in killing (a typical action in WoW) demonstrates a strong covariate tie with caring; and 3) that players’ values realizing is multi-layered, heterarchical and dynamic at a given time and space of situated interaction. We conclude by making suggestions for 1) the design of learning environments based on affordances for coaction and rich communicative activities and 2) the reconceiving of language learning as skilled linguistic action (Cowley, in press) grounded in situated learning and participation in intercultural, technology-mediated L2 networks.

This study reports on the results of classroom research investigating the effects of corpus use in the process of revising compositions in English as a foreign language. Our primary aim was to investigate the relationship between the information extracted from corpus data and how that information actually helped in revising different types of errors in the essays. In ‘data-driven learning’, previous research has often failed to provide rigorous criteria for choosing the words or phrases suitable for correction with corpus data. By investigating the above relationship, this study aims to clarify what should be corrected by looking at corpus data. 93 undergraduate students from two universities in Tokyo wrote a short essay in 20 minutes without a dictionary, and the instructors gave coded error feedback for two lexical or grammatical errors. They deliberately selected one error which should be appropriate for checking against corpus data and one that was more likely to be corrected without using any reference resource. Three weeks later, a short hands-on instruction of the corpus query tool was given, followed by revision activities in which the participants were instructed to revise their first drafts, with or without the tool depending on the codes given to each error. 188 errors were automatically classified into three different categories (omission, addition and misformation) using natural language processing techniques. All words and phrases tagged for errors were further annotated for part-of-speech (POS) information. The results show that there was a significant difference in the accuracy rate among the three error types when the students consulted the corpus: omission and addition errors were easily identified and corrected, whereas misformation errors were low in correction accuracy. This reveals that certain errors are more suitable for checking against corpus data than others.

This paper describes a study in which we investigated the effects of corrective feedback on learner uptake in CALL. Learner uptake is here defined as learner responses to corrective feedback in which, in case of an error, students attempt to correct their mistake(s). 177 students from three Canadian universities participated in the study during the Spring semester 2003. The study considered three feedback types: Meta-linguistic, Meta-linguistic + Highlighting, and Repetition + Highlighting. Study results indicate that feedback that provides an explanation of the error and also highlights the error in the student input (Meta-linguistic + Highlighting) is most effective at eliciting learner uptake. The study also considered two learner variables, gender and language proficiency. Our data suggest that none of the two learner characteristics has a significant impact on student responses to corrective feedback.

This paper addresses the views of students of blended language learning (BLL) – a particular learning and teaching environment, that combines face-to-face (f2f) and computer-assisted language learning (CALL). In this instance, the ‘blend’ consisted of learners’ independent self-study phases at a computer, with a CD-ROM, and traditional f2f classroom learning. This paper explores this BLL environment from the participants’ perspective and focuses on three learners who left the class. The aim of the study was to understand the reasons behind those students’ decision to leave, so that ideas might be developed for the successful implementation of BLL environments in the future that would appeal to all learners. The analysis showed that students left the class for three reasons: a perceived lack of support and connection/complementarity between the f2f and computer-assisted components of the ‘blend’; a perceived lack of usage of the paper medium for reading and writing; and the rejection of the computer as a medium of language learning. The paper concludes by pointing out implications for the possible future of BLL.

Organizing and implementing telecollaboration projects in foreign language curricula is not an easy endeavour (Belz & Thorne, 2006; Guth & Helm, 2010), as pedagogical, organizational and technical issues have to be addressed before cross-cultural interaction sessions can be carried out (O'Dowd & Ritter, 2006; O'Dowd, 2011). These issues make many teaching practitioners reluctant to try to integrate telecollaboration in their teaching, as they are more aware of the burden such initiatives might impose than of the benefits they might have for language learners.

Within the European project NIFLAR1 we have tried to study the added value that integrating synchronous collaboration projects through video-web communication or Second Life might have in language learning. The study presented in this paper measures the oral communicative growth of language students, who were allocated at random to one of three research conditions: (1) the VC experimental group carried out interactions with native peers through video-web communication; (2) the SL experimental group carried out the same tasks with native peers in Second Life and (3) the control group performed the tasks face to face with classroom peers and had no opportunity to interact with native experts. Communicative growth was measured by comparing oral pre- and post-tests across conditions. Results show significant differences, the experimental groups outperforming the control group.

Corpora have been suggested as valuable sources for teaching English for academic purposes (EAP). Since previous studies have mainly focused on corpus use in classroom settings, more research is needed to reveal how students react to using corpora on their own and what should be provided to help them become autonomous corpus users, considering that their ultimate goal is to be independent scholars and writers. In the present study, conducted in an engineering lab at a Korean university over 22 weeks, data on students’ experiences and evaluations of consulting general and specialized corpora for academic writing were collected and analyzed. The findings show that, while both corpora served the participants well as reference sources, the specialized corpus was particularly valued for its direct help in academic writing because, as non-native English-speaking graduate engineering students, the participants wanted to follow the writing conventions of their discourse community. The participants also showed disparate attitudes toward the time taken for corpus consultation due to differences in factors such as academic experience, search purposes, and writing tasks. The article concludes with several suggestions for better corpus use with EAP students regarding the compilation of a corpus, corpus training, corpus competence, and academic writing.

The potential of corpora for language learning and teaching has been widely acknowledged and their ready availability on the Web has facilitated access for a broad range of users, including language teachers and learners. However, the integration of corpora into general language learning and teaching practice has so far been disappointing. In this paper, I will argue that the shape of many existing corpora, designed with linguistic research goals in mind, clashes with pedagogic requirements for corpus design and use. Hence, a ‘pedagogic mediation of corpora’ is required (cf. Widdowson, 2003). I will also show that the realisation of this requirement touches on both the development of appropriate corpora and the ways in which they are exploited by learners and teachers. I will use a small English Interview Corpus (ELISA) to outline possible solutions for a pedagogic mediation. The major aspect of this is the combination of two approaches to the analysis and exploitation of a pedagogically relevant corpus: a corpus-based and a discourse-based approach.