Search

Many language learners lack the motivation to read complex texts. Because high-immersion Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly reported to be highly motivating, the goal of our study was to compare English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' (N=79) motivation while reading a story with subtitles in VR (experimental group) versus reading the same story screencast in two-dimensions (2D -- control group). The Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed that learners' motivation in VR was significantly higher compared with the control group. Our finding confirmed that VR is highly motivational in the context of reading foreign texts and can be useful for Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) researchers, practitioners, and instructional designers. This analysis is a part of a larger study (Kaplan-Rakowski & Gruber, 2023) on VR facilitating reading tasks. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Foreign language teaching achieves best learning outcomes when individual differences of learners are taken into account. While it is difficult for teachers to support internal differentiation in the classroom, digital tools can adaptively propose individual learning paths through activities so that students can practice with appropriately challenging exercises. But how can sufficiently varied, systematically parametrized exercises be provided to enable a system to match them to individual learner needs? We present an approach for high-variability exercise generation that transforms a single specification into a multitude of exercises varying in complexity. The approach is currently being evaluated in a randomized controlled study in regular German seventh grade English classes, facilitating a systematic empirical exploration of adaptive exercise complexity in relation to learning outcomes. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

The present exploratory study investigated the efficacy of secondary face-to-face classroom-based English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction digitally supported by the FeedBook, an interactive computer assisted language learning web-based suite of exercises providing item-level scaffolded feedback. Seventy-seven native (L1) German seventh-grade students used the FeedBook during four two-week training periods (cycles, here we analyse Cycle 2 and 3). Classroom and FeedBook practice occurred in parallel, except for grammar constructions for which only FeedBook practice was provided (controls). At the end of Cycle 3, students engaged in a classroom-based communicative task for which the practised constructions were relevant. Custom-designed pre- and post-tests, administered via the FeedBook, assessed language accuracy in each cycle. Mixed-effect models revealed significant pre-/post-test accuracy gains independent of the learners' proficiency in English, but not in controls. Gains from digitally supported instruction were also positively related to accurate use of EFL grammar constructions in the communicative task. Overall, the results indicate learning benefits for face-to-face classroom-based instruction supported by the FeedBook, evidenced both in grammar tests and in communicative activities. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

Within the parameters of the new Erasmus programme, this Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) combines virtual exchange with physical mobility. There were three institutions involved in this project: Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Ireland, Hochschule Bremerhaven, Germany, and Malaga Healthcare College, Spain. The virtual exchange ran for five weeks from November to December 2021 and the physical mobility took place in Bremerhaven in the first week of April 2022. Twenty-seven participating students from diverse academic backgrounds engaged in shared tasks during the virtual exchange on a Blackboard platform, hosted by Letterkenny Institute of Technology and were awarded two ECTS credits, which was embedded into their local curricula. Content was delivered using both synchronous and asynchronous tools. The topic was global citizenship and students collaborated in multicultural teams to create presentations on their chosen topics. In addition to this team work, they also shared their individual insights into the course content by posting to a discussion forum in Weeks 1, 3, and 4. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

As teaching moves increasingly online, language teachers are faced with the challenge of how to support dyslexic students in an inclusive manner in and out of the classroom. This paper will focus on an innovative educational multi-modal, mobile application -- Comics for Inclusive English Language Learning (CIELL) -- supporting upper-intermediate and advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students with dyslexia when faced with language proficiency tests and academic writing tasks. A cyclical educational design research methodology (McKenney & Reeves, 2019) was used to include three cycles of feedback from stakeholders so that their views and suggestions would inform the development of an alpha, beta, and gamma version of the app, thereby maximising practical relevance. The discussion of the quantitative and qualitative feedback is supported by educational design research. [For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]

Social Virtual Reality (VR) applications enable real-time interpersonal conversation and allow users to perform activities together. They have the potential of changing the ways learners practise speaking a foreign language. Following a previous study (Jauregi Ondarra, Gruber, & Canto, 2020), we designed the present study to explore how presence, immersion, and interactivity affect overall social experience. Students from Germany and the Netherlands engaged in High-immersion VR (HiVR) virtual exchange sessions, using Spanish as a lingua franca at A2 level. International dyads carried out four interaction tasks in AltspaceVR, using head-mounted devices. To examine students' HiVR virtual exchange experiences, different sources of data were gathered: questionnaires, reflection diaries, recordings, and focus group interviews. The preliminary results, based on the surveys and reflection journals, show that students liked to use a social VR app to communicate in the target language with peers from other countries, as they felt completely immersed and co-present in the social interactive VR space. This might enhance engagement and lower anxiety levels. [For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting school closures have confronted the educational sector with numerous challenges. This study focuses on how teachers faced these challenges and examines what we can learn from the crisis for prospective digitally-enhanced English language teaching (ELT) and teacher education. It follows a qualitative research design and is based on semi-structured interviews with 20 foreign language teachers. The transcripts were analysed using qualitative content analysis to investigate teachers' perspectives on their work during the pandemic and to describe needs concerning their professionalisation. First results suggest that Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) needs to be integrated better in teacher education to foster teachers' competences for teaching languages online. [For the complete volume, "CALL and Professionalisation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2021 (29th, Online, August 26-27, 2021)," see ED616972.]

Virtual exchange projects have become an effective pedagogical method to support students' development of intercultural language competence. High-immersion experiences in Virtual Reality (VR) may offer an environment which is conducive to developing such competence. This paper reports on a pilot study carried out with two groups of university students (N=30) in the Netherlands and Germany. The students, involved in a virtual exchange using VR headsets, completed three tasks collaboratively. The aim of the study was to investigate participants' perception regarding (1) their collaboration with foreign peers within the VR setting and (2) the perceived usefulness of the tool. The researchers employed questionnaires and conducted interviews and focus groups. The audio recording transcripts from the VR encounters and students' reflective journals provide further data to triangulate the results. This pilot study provides first results with regard to virtual exchanges carried out in high-immersion VR. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

iRead is an EU Project involving literacy games in Spanish, German, Greek, and English for L1 and L2 acquisition. Content is selected dynamically from a large database using linguistic rules based on the player profile. The teacher can view pupils' progress based on automated game sequences or assign games manually. This project strives to understand how teaching with new technology is incorporated into the classroom. The authors interviewed both teachers and children about their points of view and compared their answers at the end of the project. Results indicate that pupils had a much deeper understanding of their learning than was apparent from the teachers' point of view. [For the complete volume, "CALL for Widening Participation: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2020 (28th, Online, August 20-21, 2020)," see ED610330.]

Empathy is widely perceived and understood as an unquestioned component of Intercultural Competence (IC). The authors see the ability to empathise with others and to see their point of view as an important condition for developing an ethnorelative viewpoint, and therefore consider it important to incorporate activities into the intercultural communication curriculum that addresses the affective side of IC (Calloway-Thomas, Arasaratnam-Smith, & Deardorff, 2017; Guntersdorfer & Golubeva, 2018). In their paper, the authors discuss the importance of meta-cognitive tasks by creating opportunities for students where they can describe, share, and evaluate emotions. Based on the recommendations made by O'Dowd (2016), Byram, Golubeva, Hui, and Wagner (2017) about designing and implementing virtual exchanges (VEs), the authors present a preliminary framework, i.e. a sequence of self-reflective meta-analysis tasks that they developed for the intercultural VE between students at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Germany and their peers at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in the United States. This framework can be adapted to a variety of online teaching contexts. [For the complete volume, see ED609298.]

While an extended stay abroad is generally assumed to be a valuable experience, some students are reluctant to take up the opportunity. To understand this phenomenon better, this study looks at students' concerns before they embark on their time abroad (to undertake a study placement, work placement, or a language assistantship) and looks at returning students' perceptions, to see the extent to which their initial concerns materialised. The research is based on two questionnaires distributed to over 800 participants at two universities (one in the UK, one in Germany). Besides quantitative data, qualitative responses give additional insights into the students' perceptions. The results show marked differences between the two cohorts and also produce evidence of a considerable shift in students' perceptions after their return: a high percentage of students noted that their anticipated concerns were not realised. The results of this study are useful in shedding some light on students' concerns and can inform student support and Year Abroad (YA) preparation. [For the complete volume, "Perspectives on the Year Abroad: A Selection of Papers from YAC2018," see ED603732.]

This chapter examines the impact of the Year Abroad (YA) on mental health and wellbeing, arguing that whilst we tend to be systemically and culturally inclined to focus on and mitigate negative impact, we overlook the benefits. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from students surveyed on placement in Germany and Austria, and on mental health research, this chapter highlights the positive impact of the YA, even where students are faced with challenging situations. It suggests a correlation between a range of factors including linguistic competence and otherness, facilitating a sense of wellbeing not attainable in a first language setting. These findings are indicative, suggesting that further, in-depth longitudinal research is warranted. [For the complete volume, "Perspectives on the Year Abroad: A Selection of Papers from YAC2018," see ED603732.]

This work-in-progress study focuses on the implementation of digital media into the Russian language classroom at secondary schools in the German-speaking countries of Austria, Germany, and the trilingual region South Tyrol. The data were collected in a mixed-methods procedure: quantitative data from online questionnaires and qualitative data from face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with teachers and learners of Russian. The data from the online-surveys were analysed with descriptive statistics and that of the interviews with qualitative content analysis. The results from the online-surveys illustrate the kinds of digital devices that are employed, the frequency of their use, and the purposes digital media are intended to fulfil in the Russian language classroom. Another finding concerns the teachers' digital literacy, suggesting that only half of the Russian teachers can create online language learning tasks. The paper closes with implications for pre- and inservice teacher education and future research. [For the complete proceedings, see ED600837.]

The 22nd EUROCALL conference was held at the University of Padova from the 26th to the 29th of August 2015, the first time that EUROCALL has been held in Italy. The event was organized in collaboration with the University Language Centre and the support of the Department of Political Science, Law and International Studies. Over 300 delegates travelled from over 37 different countries to attend. The theme of the conference this year was Critical CALL, drawing inspiration from the work carried out in the broader field of Critical Applied Linguistics. The term "critical" has many possible interpretations, and as Pennycook (2001) outlines, has many concerns. It was from these that the conference theme was decided, in particular the notion that assumptions that lie at the basis of a field's praxis should be questioned, ideas that have become "naturalized" and are not called into question. Another concern of Critical Applied Linguistics is the relationship between the macro and the micro, an engagement with issues of power and inequality and an understanding of how classrooms and conversations are related to broader social, cultural and political relations. Over 200 presentations were delivered in 68 different sessions, both in English and Italian, on topics related specifically to the theme and also more general CALL topics. 94 of these were submitted as extended papers and appear in this volume of proceedings. An author index is included. (Individual papers contain references.)

The Erasmus+ TeCoLa project (2016-2019) aims to develop and test innovative gamified telecollaboration approaches for secondary schools that address issues of learning diversity in intercultural and Content Integrated Language Learning (CLIL) and teaching. Authentic task-based transnational interactions among peers from different socio-cultural, educational and language backgrounds are at the very heart of the learning process, using telecollaboration as a way to communicate and collaborate. In this paper we will shortly describe the project's foci and will elaborate on the teacher training programme that has been designed on the basis of the teachers' needs and on a sound conceptualisation of telecollaboration tasks that are useful, enjoyable, and meaningful. [For the complete volume, see ED578177.]

Motivational factors play an important role in (language) learning processes and research indicates that this is also true for telecollaboration exchanges (Jauregi, de Graaff, van den Bergh, & Kriz, 2012; Melchor-Couto, 2017; in press). This short paper will introduce a study into how motivational factors play a role in telecollaboration exchanges by teenagers depending on the interaction constellation, the tools being used, and the telecollaborative experience. A total of 202 foreign language learners from different European countries took part in telecollaboration activities. All participants carried out an average of four telecollaborative sessions either by written chat or by video communication. Data from a survey measuring motivational factors, including self-efficacy beliefs, motivation, and anxiety, was gathered after every session. A small number of pupils were also interviewed on aspects related to motivation and anxiety. The results show: (1) a significant decrease in anxiety across conditions as sessions progress, especially for those communicating in Lingua Franca (LF) constellations using chat; (2) that pupils interacting with Native Speakers (NSs) seem to be the most confident concerning their perception of competence; and (3) that those communicating with NSs were significantly more positive about the learning potential of communicating with NSs. [For the complete volume, see ED578177.]

This paper discusses the animated web series "Lifeswap" as an example for "amateur online interculturism" and investigates its potential for intercultural language education. Drawing on Dervin's (2015) discussion on the "amateur interculturist", I suggest that online publications of personal encounters of intercultural interaction can be used to foster critical reflection in intercultural language education. To illustrate this idea, I first introduce the concept of "amateur online interculturism" and the approach of the makers of the "Lifeswap" series. I then focus on one episode to provide an example of the series and to show how humour and cultural stereotypes can be used constructively to explore tensions in intercultural interactions. The online comments I present in the last section highlight the harmonising effect of humour but indicate that pedagogical intervention is needed to problematise intercultural issues. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED572005.]

This paper reports on an exploratory case study of learner participation within the context of online language learning in virtual world platforms. Data for this investigation was collected through a case study of a Business English course within a qualitative Case-Study Research framework. This study examines learner activity in virtual worlds in relation to three main features of the platform: avatars, artefacts and spaces. The study makes use of "Reflexivity" and "Exploratory Practice" as its core methodological approach to the building of the case. The virtual world data is analysed from a multimodal perspective and makes use of "visualization" as the primary analytical tool. In an attempt to broach the Eurocall 2015 conference topic of Critical Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), this paper will present and discuss three findings: a broadening of our understanding of learner participation in virtual worlds, the critical role played by course designers and teachers in the shaping of learner participation in virtual worlds, and the potential of virtual worlds as a tool for reflective practice and practitioner research. [For full proceedings, see ED564162.]

The majority of studies on telecollaboration for educational purposes focus on language-related aspects. Therefore, a qualitative explorative research project was set up at the RuhrUniversity Bochum, Germany, dealing with telecollaboration from the perspective of a non-language discipline; it is based on the approach of transferring telecollaboration to content subjects, more precisely to geography education in the context of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). In this paper, the proceedings and main findings of the preliminary study of the research project are presented. The aim of the preliminary study was to learn more about the extent to which telecollaboration existed in geography education in the whole of Germany and in particular in the federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW). [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

This paper explores the role of coaching in enhancing teachers' key competences for integrating Telecollaboration (TC) in their language course. A total of 23 secondary school teachers participated in this case study as part of the EU-funded project TILA. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered via two surveys, the first one measuring coaching satisfaction and a second one tackling teacher competences. The results show that teachers highly value coaching to integrate complex pedagogical innovations in their teaching. Participants reported that coaching contributed to an improvement of key competences necessary to implement TC exchanges successfully. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

The paper presents a telecollaboration project between 54 pre-service teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) studying at a teacher training college in Israel and a university in Germany. The telecollaboration involved a collaborative Project Based Learning Task (PBLT) in which the students compared and evaluated the ways EFL is taught in their respective contexts. The purpose of this ongoing study is to provide pre-service EFL teachers with an apprenticeship of learning ways that technology can be used to transcend classroom walls for virtual mobility and cooperation. It specifically intends to determine how such an apprenticeship can strengthen student teachers' belief in their ability to implement telecollaboration in their own teaching. Data for the study were gathered through a pre-post quantitative survey. The findings indicate that telecollaboration experience integrated into teacher training can raise students' perceived self-efficacy to implement telecollaborative exchange projects into their future teaching. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

This study aims to enhance foreign language learners' language competence by integrating formal and informal learning environments and considers how they can improve their grammatical and lexical skills through the gathering (comprehension) and sharing (writing) of information in the foreign language. Experiments with German learners at a Japanese university preparing to study in Germany were conducted. An application to archive newspaper articles was created, indexing current German coverage. A worksheet was provided, where learners were asked to select, read, and summarize articles via the application. Feedback was given to their summary. Participants were divided into two groups, learners that studied only in an informal setting, and those that were also instructed in a formal setting. Interviews were conducted with the participants in order to evaluate how the activities affected their language skills. Results showed that the practice affected their reading methods and heightened their motivation for further language learning in general. Students participating in activities in and outside the classroom showed improvements in their lexical knowledge, and better understanding of subtle nuances in written texts, which positively affected their writing skills and their speaking ability. [For the complete volume, see ED578177.]

This paper explores the intersection of learning methodologies to promote the development of 21st century skills with the use of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) tools to enhance language learning among adolescent learners. Today, technology offers a greater range of affordances in the teaching and learning of second languages while research shows that student classrooms still continue to concentrate on linguistic competences rather than communicative competences (Gilmore, 2011). The Bridge21 model, which is technology-mediated, team-led and project-based, brings a particular approach to 21st-century learning and is distinguished by the mixture and focus of scaffolding and consistency in the application (Lawlor, Conneely, & Tangney, 2010). An exploratory case study was designed to extend the Bridge21 model to include spatially-separated teams, based in Ireland and Germany, learning together and enhancing the use of oral and aural skills for second language acquisition. Thirty-six students worked on project-based tasks during a six day workshop focused on the usage of authentic materials and CMC tools. The findings suggest that using the Bridge21 learning model succeeded in allowing students to collaborate at a distance and to participate in second language acquisition. [For full proceedings, see ED564162.]

What are the perceived effects of Telecollaboration (TC), compared to other types of communication-scenarios with peers (i.e. local peers in small groups and Erasmus students abroad)? This is the question this exploratory study tackles within a blended language learning course. The analysis of students' perceptions paints a rather contrastive picture of telecollaboration. While it stays in the shadow of interaction with Erasmus students, it is complementary to local small-group work and does sustain learning. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

The concept of task has become central not only to an understanding of language learning per se, but also to the design and research of Online Intercultural Exchanges (OIEs). While research on the design of tasks in OIEs has been very productive, we still lack insights into how teachers develop competences in task design on the micro-level. Consequently, this contribution looks at how OIEs allow pre-service teachers to develop such competences when designing telecollaborative task sequences for their future learners. Findings show that the most promising research approach to tackle this question at the interface between telecollaboration, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), and teacher education is a stronger reliance on qualitative research because it helps understand what pre-service teachers do when developing such competences. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

We report on a case study on pedagogical affordances of intercultural telecollaboration for authentic communication practice and competence development in the local foreign language. Focus is on spoken and written conversations involving pairs of secondary school pupils of different linguacultural backgrounds. Particular attention is given to three task design features: multimodal home access to telecollaboration, lingua franca use of the target language, and soft intercultural topics addressing pupils' everyday concerns and experiences. Performance analyses of recorded conversations and reflective interviews reveal significant pedagogical advantages of the chosen task design features. The online lingua franca conversations are marked by a high degree of cooperative autonomy with an emphasis on creating common ground, negotiating a shared line of argumentation, ensuring a supportive and consensual atmosphere, and solving communication problems on the fly. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

This study examines the development of telecollaborative exchange activities within blended language courses that are aimed at preparing post-graduate students for an intercultural workplace by developing valuable transversal competencies and intercultural awareness, which enable one to better adapt to changing work situations. A description is given of the collaborative activities completed by students at the University of Siena, Italy, and the University of Maastricht, Netherlands. The relevance of intercultural communication exchanges for meeting the needs of students who are searching for career opportunities or research collaboration abroad is also highlighted. The study concludes with a discussion of how activities and applications can be used to increase motivation and critical thinking skills as students work together collaboratively. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

This case study describes the "Bologna-München" Tandem, a cross-border collaboration which began in 2011. The aim of the collaboration is to give students studying Italian at the Ludwig- Maximilians-University in Munich and students studying German at the University of Bologna the opportunity to experience interculturality through interaction with native speakers. The interaction takes place in the classroom through lessons via Skype and during study trips. The "Bologna-München" Tandem combines telecollaboration and student mobility in order to promote a language and cultural exchange as well as an awareness of interculturality. [For the complete volume, see ED571330.]

This paper presents another stage in a series of research efforts by the authors to develop an experience-connected mobile language learning environment, bridging formal and informal learning. Building on a study in which the authors tried to connect classroom learning (of German in Japan) with learners' real life experiences abroad by having smartphones detect the learners' location and supply them with multimedia content matching their real-time communicative situation, the authors developed a hybrid language learning environment supporting different types of learning. Based on observations that learners tended to use resources rather for preparatory or retrospective learning, and on considerations about the potential of social media as a space for informal language learning, the authors added a feature that supports learners when writing a social networking service (SNS) post about their everyday experiences abroad. Help is offered based on the analysis of the learners' geolocational position--hinting to what situation they might want to write about--and on the text they already entered. Based on these data, they are provided with help in the form of vocabulary and/or model texts. [For full proceedings, see ED565087.]

According to a recent research carried out by Aruba Networks (2014) in the US, the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and UAE, 86% of all respondents have two or more devices that can connect to the internet, and nearly two thirds (64%) already own three or more mobile devices with this feature; another 39% own four or more (p. 4). We live on the move, and this includes mobility, as well as working anytime, anywhere and lifelong learning. Thus, research on language teaching and/or learning should focus on the ways to get adapted to the specific new needs of our modern society (e.g. mobility). Accordingly, for instance, mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) activities should be app-based; "this is not a trend language educators can ignore" (Godwin-Jones, 2011, p. 8). In this paper, we present some preliminary results and conclusions after the design and implementation of some MALL apps carried out by the ATLAS research group. They have been developed in the context of the SO-CALL-ME project, in order to enable the members of ATLAS to explore the way in which students can improve their oral language skills "on the move". [For full proceedings, see ED565087.]

Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition (TILA), is an EU-funded project within the Lifelong Learning Programme that will run between January 2013 and June 2015. TILA's overall objectives are: (1) to innovate, enrich and make foreign language teaching programmes more attractive and effective by encouraging the implementation of telecollaboration activities in secondary schools across Europe; (2) to assist teachers and teacher training programmes in developing information and communications technology (ICT) literacy skills as well as organisational, pedagogical and intercultural competences to guarantee adequate integration of telecollaboration practices; and (3) to study the added value that telecollaboration may bring to language learning in terms of intercultural understanding and motivation amongst younger learners. Our aim in this (albeit short) paper is to introduce the project, its background and outline the specific teaching needs of our participants with regards to languages and technology. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]

This paper examines how students learn to collaborate in English by participating in an intercultural project that focuses on teaching students to work together on a digital writing project using various online tools, and documents their reflections working in an intercultural context. Students from Université Paris Sud Orsay and Bonn Rhein-Sieg-University of Applied Sciences participated in this digital collaboration project. Mixed groups of students, two French and two German, used several synchronous and asynchronous tools to communicate with their counterparts (Facebook, WordPress blog, WIMS e-learning platform, email, videoconferencing). Students had to produce an article together, comparing French and German attitudes about a topic they negotiated freely in their groups. Before publishing their post, students were expected to peer-review the article written by their group. Once published, the posts were commented on by the other participants of the project. The final stage consisted of voting for the best posts on the e-learning platform, WIMS. A videoconference was also organized to create cohesion between the participants. The result of the student evaluations, together with the administrative, technical and intercultural difficulties encountered during the collaboration between two vastly differing university setups is presented. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]

Our contribution focuses on synchronous oral telecollaboration in secondary schools. With reference to the EU project TILA, aspects of task design and implementation are discussed against the backdrop of issues of technological quality in connection with class organisation in computer labs. Case study evidence is provided in favour of the integration of telecollaborative out-of-class activities. [For full proceedings, see ED565087.]

This study evaluates an international collaborative project developed and practiced on the internet, as a form of SNS, focusing on how much university students from six countries worldwide participated in the project, from the viewpoint of the participants' contribution to the forum discussion of their own group's topic on education. The 66 participating students' communication data posted in the eight group forums were compiled and analyzed by quantitative and qualitative methods. As for the quantitative method, the corpus data comprising 48,990 running words was analyzed by topics and countries to obtain profiles of the characteristics of the participants' English language use in terms of message volume as well as vocabulary density, sentence length, and key words. As to the qualitative method, the data were analyzed by KBDeX software focusing on some key words such as "agree/disagree" and "opinion" to investigate the interactive discourse of discussion, negotiation, or mediation in each group. The results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed the students of each country had their own distinguishing features in language use and communication patterns. [For full proceedings, see ED565087.]

Our proposal describes ISPY, a multilateral European K2 language project based on the development of an Online Networking Platform for Language Learning (http://www.ispy-project.com/). Supported by the Lifelong Learning European Programme, the platform aims to help young adults across Europe, secondary and vocational school programs, learn a new language and gain insights into the cultural knowledge implicit to those languages. Conducted by the University of Wolverhampton in collaboration with five other countries in Europe (Spain, Poland, Netherlands, Germany and Romania), the project will promote interaction between learners from different countries who will partly work together to learn a new language via a set of spy missions promoting problem-solving challenges, deductive tasks and collaboration through extension activities in the Moodle platform. The ISPY platform can be used to support face to face in class teaching or outside instruction to enhance language acquisition. It is designed in short scenes in flash movies and comprises a set of ten espionage missions. Available in each of the target languages, all of these multimedia pills consist of a range of activities including photo stories, video presentations, Webquests, quizzes, listening and extended tasks that call for collaboration through a moderated forum. Each country will also have the option to add extra activities in a Moodle application created purposely for the project, additional tasks which, in essence, are new spy missions for those who have already been awarded as "Qualified" spies. [For the complete volume, see ED574893.]

For the first time, the annual conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) took place in Sweden. The conference took place at the Faculty of Education on historic ground on the old fortification walls of Carolus Dux from the 17th century right in the centre of the city. This year's host comprised the University of Gothenburg in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology. The local committee members represented three collaborating institutions: "Faculty of Education, the University of Gothenburg"; "Department of Languages and Literatures, the University of Gothenburg"; and "Division for Language and Communication, Chalmers University of Technology." This year's conference theme was "CALL: using, learning, knowing." The conference seeked to establish the current state of the art, how using technologies shape what and how we learn, and what we consider we know from research and development within CALL. These three dimensions are in a continuous fux and interplay as an upward spiral, contributing together to create a dynamic learning experience for the student. There were presentations presented at the conference. 59 of these were submitted as extended papers and appear in this volume of proceedings. An author index is included. (Individual papers contain references.)