The great majority of questionnaires measuring non-observable constructs such as attitude towards CALL are often developed from a specific point of view and are seldom followed by psychometrical validation. Psychometrical properties of the questionnaire, such as construct validity and reliability, then remain unanswered too often, laying a heavy…

Formulaic speech has been notoriously difficult to define and identify despite its crucial importance to native-like fluency and idiomaticity. In this article, I introduce a way of identifying phraseological units in a running text. I am interested in recurrent fragments like "charged with crimes against humanity" in texts which involve multiple…

In this study, we present the analyses stemming from a survey administered to 2149 foreign language learners at Michigan State University. We had three goals. First, we aimed to compile a profile of language learners' technological acumen, access to and ownership of technology, and the current uses of technology across a wide range of languages…

Many teachers have the tendency to look at only the standardized test scores of their students while ignoring how or why various dimensions of language proficiency has improved or not improved. Portfolio, however, reveals a clear picture of the student's growth and development. This study reflects that traditional approaches to assessment of…

The study explored the effects of students' locus of control and types of control over instruction on their self-efficacy and performance in a web-based language learning environment. A web-based interactive instructional program focusing on the comprehension of news articles for English language learners was developed in two versions: learner-…

A team of university Italian teachers at an Australian university has been able to obtain enduring benefits from computer-assisted language learning (CALL), through projects that last, and indeed grow and develop over time. The projects have focused on supporting students in effective use of out-of-class time once they reach an intermediate level…

There has been extensive reporting on the interactional characteristics of multi-participant text-based chat rooms. In these chat rooms there are several students typing at the same time, often on more than one topic. As a result, it is not uncommon to see multiple overlapping utterances. Despite these communicative challenges, research suggests…

Most existing web-based language learning exercises may be termed "static" in that their content is fixed; the sentences exist in the form in which the developer wrote them, and the scope of the exercise and the variety of interactions can only be expanded by manually adding to the existing stock. One solution to this problem is an application…

This paper briefly discusses different research approaches in CALL and makes a case for applying grounded theory (GT) to data gathered from an electronic role-play conducted in L2. The article shows that this method can help gain a better understanding of what learners do when engaged in the task. Through the process of open coding, four…

The educational experience related over the following pages is the result of several research projects undertaken after an evaluation of the vocabulary size of final year English philology students at the University of Granada (Spain), who were found to have a significant deficiency in their lexical competence. In view of the results obtained,…

This exploratory study describes a framework for data-driven learning (DDL), in General (non-major) English university classes, in which learners "construct" linguistic corpora instead of merely "consulting" them. Prior related work has addressed the needs of language specialists, in particular trainee translators who are…

Task-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) may represent an optimal psycholinguistic environment for form-meaning connections, but learners do not receive feedback from a trusted authority. Intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) provides feedback, but the encouragement of communicative interaction remains largely…

We built an NLP system implementing a "virtual writing conference" for elementary-school children, with German as the target language. Currently, state-of-the-art computer support for writing tasks is restricted to multiple-choice questions or quizzes because automatic parsing of the often ambiguous and fragmentary texts produced by pupils…

This study investigates whether a computer assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) system can help young learners improve word-level pronunciation skills in English as a foreign language at a level comparable to that achieved through traditional teacher-led training. The pronunciation improvement of a group of learners of 11 years of age receiving…

In this article, we set out to assess QuADEM (Quality Assessment of Digital Educational Material), one of the latest methods for evaluating online language learning courseware. What is special about QuADEM is that the evaluation is based on observing the actual usage of the online courseware and that, from a checklist of 12 different components,…