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THE TYPICAL student at the Newcomer Center, an alternative school in Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights, IL, is a recent immigrant with little or no English skills. [...]

While attending a conference in Brazil in 1998, the first author came across a store specializing in video games called "Game Over." When asked if the locals knew what that […]

In recent years, synchronous online peer response groups have been increasingly used in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. This article describes a study of synchronous online interaction among […]

Less than two decades ago, new forms of socially constructed multimedia were believed to be devaluing writing, marginalizing the essay, and contributing to a postmodern death of the author (e.g., […]

INTRODUCTION As evidenced by this special issue on teaching pronunciation, foreign language (FL) teachers are often challenged by the ongoing debate on how to teach pronunciation across proficiency levels. While […], This paper reports on an investigation of podcasting as a tool for honing pronunciation skills in intermediate language learning. We examined the effects of using podcasts to improve pronunciation in second language learning and how students' attitudes changed toward pronunciation over the semester. A total of 22 students in intermediate German and French courses made five scripted pronunciation recordings throughout the semester. After the pronunciation recordings, students produced three extemporaneous podcasts. Students also completed a pre- and post-survey based on Elliott's (1995) Pronunciation Attitude Inventory to assess their perspectives regarding pronunciation. Students' pronunciation, extemporaneous recordings, and surveys were analyzed to explore changes over the semester. Data analysis revealed that students' pronunciation did not significantly improve in regard to accentedness or comprehensibility, perhaps because the 16-week long treatment was too short to foster significant improvement and there was no in-class pronunciation practice. The podcast project, however, was perceived positively by students, and they appreciated the feedback given for each scripted recording and enjoyed opportunities for creativity during extemporaneous podcasts. Future studies might seek to delineate more specific guidelines or examine how teacher involvement might be adapted to the use of podcasts as a companion to classroom instruction.

Using computers to recognize and analyze human speech goes back at least to the 1970's. Developed initially to help the hearing or speech impaired, speech recognition was also used early […]

The Tactical Language and Culture Training System (TLCTS) helps people quickly acquire functional skills in foreign languages and cultures. It includes interactive lessons that focus on particular communicative skills and […], The Tactical Language and Culture Training System (TLCTS) helps people quickly acquire communicative skills in foreign languages and cultures. More than 40,000 learners worldwide have used TLCTS courses. TLCTS utilizes artificial intelligence technologies during the authoring process and at run time to process learner speech, engage in dialogue, and evaluate and assess learner performance. This paper describes the architecture of TLCTS and the artificial intelligence technologies that it employs and presents results from multiple evaluation studies that demonstrate the benefits of learning foreign language and culture using this approach.

INTRODUCTION Computer-mediated communication (CMC) typically involves two dimensions: time (synchronous or asynchronous) and modality (textual or spoken) (Hubbard, 2004; Warschauer, 2001). The text-based CMC involves email, online discussion forums, online […], This study uses voice blogs as a platform for an extensive study of language learners' speaking skills. To triangulate the findings, the study collected data by surveying the learners' blogging processes, investigating learning strategies, and conducting retrospective interviews. The results revealed that students (a) developed a series of blogging stages, including conceptualizing, brainstorming, articulation, monitoring, and evaluating, and used a wide variety of strategies to cope with blogging-related difficulties, and (b) perceived blogging as a means of learning, self-presentation, information exchange, and social networking. Findings suggest that blogs can constitute a dynamic forum that fosters extensive practice, learning motivation, authorship, and development of learning strategies.

INTRODUCTION As in any other communicative situation, in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) contexts learners need to know what to say and how to say things with words--to echo Austin's […], This paper describes a corpus-based approach to teaching and learning spoken grammar for English for Academic Purposes with reference to Bhatia's (2002) multi-perspective model for discourse analysis: a textual perspective, a genre perspective and a social perspective. From a textual perspective, corpus-informed instruction helps students identify grammar items through statistical frequencies, collocational patterns, context-sensitive meanings and discoursal uses of words. From a genre perspective, corpus observation provides students with exposure to recurrent lexico-grammatical patterns across different academic text types (genres). From a social perspective, corpus models can be used to raise learners' awareness of how speakers' different discourse roles, discourse privileges and power statuses are enacted in their grammar choices. The paper describes corpus-based instructional procedures, gives samples of learners' linguistic output, and provides comments on the students' response to this method of instruction. Data resulting from the assessment process and student production suggest that corpus-informed instruction grounded in Bhatia's multi-perspective model can constitute a pedagogical approach in order to i) obtain positive student responses from input and authentic samples of grammar use, ii) help students identify and understand the textual, genre and social aspects of grammar in real contexts of use, and therefore iii) help develop students' ability to use grammar accurately and appropriately.

Using computers to help students practice and learn grammatical constructions goes back to the earliest days of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). With the coming of the Internet age, CALL began […]

Ever since the PLATO system of the 1960's, CALL (computer assisted language learning) has had a major focus on providing self-paced, auto-correcting exercises for language learners to practice their skills […]

INTRODUCTION In my work as an author and teacher trainer, I have the opportunity to travel around the world and talk to teachers in a variety of settings. Though I […]

You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you could've picked up for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library. Good Will Hunting, 1997 Language […]

New technologies, or new uses of existing technologies, continue to provide unique opportunities for language learning. This is in particular the case for several new network options for oral language […]

Byline: Natalie Ilsley In 2015, over a million refugees from war-torn countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq entered Germany, seeking asylum, safety and a better life. Many of them are [...]

DARTH VADER SPORTS BLUE SHADES AND A RED floral shirt as he poses in front of a coconut tree in the Instagram square. In the caption beside the Dark Lord [...]

Results of a European Union (EU)-wide study by the EU Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) have revealed that language teachers are failing to take advantage of social networking, and also perceive it as threat to their classroom authority. However, there are several teachers who feel that there is a growing grassroots network of teachers who use online interactive, collaborative and social media to teach modern languages.

Since its inception in 1983, CALICO has served as an international forum for language teachers who want to develop and utilize the potential of advanced technology to support their teaching […]

* Learning a new language is tedious and demands a lot of practice. Luis von Alan doesn't want all that effort to be wasted. In fact, it might be a [...]

An overview of the VerbCast pilot project undertaken by a Partners in Excellence group in North Ayrshire, East Ayrshire, and Argyll and Bute. The project was designed to help a group of 15 to 17-year-olds become more confident in their use of French verbs and involved a series of 20 daily podcasts lasting 15 minutes which concentrated on one verb. The students believe that using the podcast method helped make what would have been dull more interesting.