The process of studying a foreign language in Russian higher education institutions is carried out in a specially organized linguo-didactic language environment which is understood as a methodological framework designed in accordance with the peculiarities of a linguo-cultural community. It is aimed at combining learning methods and techniques to…

In this study, 21 university students, who represented thirteen nationalities, participated in an online cross-cultural learning activity. The participants were engaged in interactions and exchanges carried out on Facebook® and Skype® platforms, and their multilingual communications were supported by speech-to-text recognition (STR) and…

Language education has a rich history of research and scholarship focusing on the effectiveness of learning activities and the impact these have on student behaviour and outcomes. One of the basic assumptions in foreign language pedagogy and CALL in particular is that learners want to be able to communicate effectively with native speakers of…

In the first half of the twentieth century, notions such as linguistic structures and students' linguistic capacity were the traditional elements of any language teaching. These notions are yielding their place to the functional use of language and how language is being shaped by the different communicative situations. This communicative approach…

This paper presents firstly a set of seven principles that lie behind the development of a vocabulary learning resource destined for French learners of English in higher education, and secondly an experiment investigating the use of narrative as a device to facilitate recall of target words. The seven principles can be combined in different ways,…

Many studies about listening strategies are based on what learners report while listening to an oral message in the second language (Vandergrift, 2003; Graham, 2006). By recording a video of the computer screen while L2 learners (L1 French) were listening to an MP3-track in German, this study uses a novel approach and recent developments in…

This qualitative study examines perceptions and use of assignment feedback among adult beginner modern foreign language learners on higher education distance learning courses. A survey of responses to feedback on assignments by 43 Open University students on beginner language courses in Spanish, French, and German indicated that respondents can be…

In 2003, the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia (UWA) underwent a major restructure involving the move from eight-point units to six-point or twelve-point units. For the discipline group of European Languages and Studies this redistribution of points resulted in the creation of a new series of…

Describes a beginners' French Web site that aims to expose learners to the authentic French of native speakers and to the French produced by tutors and learners within the Web site itself. Provides information for incorporating Web-based instruction. (Author/VWL)

Analyzes the design requirements of a multimedia conceptual dictionary, drawing on research identifying the role of the conceptual dictionary in native language vocabulary acquisition. The article considers both the traditional role of the dictionary in language learning and that of the conceptual dictionary and how this role can be supported by…

Acknowledging that students learning a second language need opportunities for extended spoken and written interactions with native speakers, this paper describes instructional computer networking that links grade 12 Anglophone students of French in Toronto with native French-speaking peers in Montreal. Focus is on writing skills. (25 references)…

Discusses the use of Teacher's Partner, a multimedia tool that assists the foreign language teacher by presenting communicative exchanges among native speakers. Year-long research analyzing classroom interaction patterns showed increased use of communicative discourse by teacher and students in those class periods when the Teacher's Partner was…

Two experiments investigated the effectiveness of computer-assisted prosody training, its generalization to novel sentences and segmental accuracy, and the relationship between prosodic and lexical information in long-term memory. Experiment 1, using a pretest-posttest design, provided native English-speaking learners of French with 3 weeks of…