Where the role of instructor discourse has been the focus of much recent research on asynchronous online instruction, the anatomy of effective instructional discourse of foreign language educators has yet to be examined. Indeed, the majority of work in the area of foreign language and telecommunications has concentrated on student-student,…

Research on interaction has provided important insights on how second languages may be acquired through interaction, and on how second language learners use their second language in various settings and tasks. Research into computer mediated communication (CMC) in a second language learning context has been a logical outcome of interactionist…

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are often portrayed as offering a collaborative community space in which native and non-native language speakers reciprocally scaffold linguistic, cultural and content knowledge, a space which assists students in overcoming well-documented challenges encountered in traditional classrooms (Leki,…

Related literature indicates that the Internet has an important role and great potential in foreign language learning. It is also obvious that attitudes of learners affect learning process significantly. This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of foreign language learners and to find the relationship between attitudes and subject variables.…

This study provides a theory-driven account of community building in a bilingual telecollaborative chat setting. A symmetrical arrangement of 70 L1 English learners of Spanish and L1 Spanish learners of English engaged in weekly Internet chat sessions in small groups. The learning metaphors of community and participation serve as the theoretical…

Online discussion boards are being used increasingly by tertiary educators as a tool for encouraging greater student interaction and developing learning communities. In particular, educators who have adopted a learner centered, socio-constructivist approach to teaching have sought to facilitate collaborative learning in which students reflect upon…

While interaction in online language learning in the area of written computer-mediated communication is well researched, studies focusing on interaction in synchronous online audio environments remain scarce. For this reason, this paper seeks to map the nature and level of interpersonal interaction in both online and the face-to-face language…

This paper describes a collaborative Internet-based project involving foreign language students and teacher trainees in three different countries. The project involved both online collaboration with international partners and face-to-face classroom activities and was designed not only to facilitate purposeful, authentic language use, but also to…

The present paper explores the extent of Irish language use in networked communications, and attitudes towards the language by 125 schoolchildren from three backgrounds in Ireland: (1) an Irish-speaking area (Gaeltacht) and Irish medium of instruction, (2) an English-speaking area and Irish medium of instruction, and (3) an English-speaking area…

This paper describes an action research project that investigated the pedagogical applicability of computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools for collaborative projects. The research involved two groups of students studying to become ESL/EFL teachers, one group at a university located in the US Midwest and the other in the Catalan region of…

This paper investigates the development of social presence in communities of language teachers at two universities. Specifically, our research sheds light on how social presence is characterized according to the technological tools used to link the community of language teachers. Over the period of a 14 week semester, nine electronic journal…

This article presents a survey of computer-based tracking in CALL and the uses to which the analysis of tracking data can be put to address questions in CALL in particular and second language acquisition (SLA) in general. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods, researchers have found that students often use software in unexpected ways,…

This study explores the experiences of newly qualified teachers of foreign languages in English secondary school contexts as they both seek opportunities and develop their abilities to use information and communications technologies (ICT) as a tool to support foreign language learning. A cohort of newly qualified foreign language teachers from the…

Many adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers and tutors, paid and volunteer alike, often have great difficulty finding the time, opportunity, and resources to get training in areas vital to adult instruction, such as principles of adult education and learning, second language acquisition theory, teaching methodology, and the use of…

Investigates learner perceptions of the use of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) as a means of extending the community of learning in tertiary Chinese language and non-language courses. Finds that there exist pedagogical benefits in employing CMC, but the benefits do not necessarily arise from community building. (VWL)