During the course of pre-and in-service teacher education programmes, reflection can happen in a number of ways, for example: reflective journals, personal stories and pair/group co-operative discussions, professional development portfolios, and blogs and electronic portfolios. The aim of this paper is to examine various technologies such as…

This paper investigates the usefulness of Web portals in a workbench for assisting student interpreters in the search for and collection of vocabulary. The experiment involved a class of fifteen English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student interpreters, who were required to equip themselves with the appropriate English vocabulary to handle an…

Research into the online informal learning of English has already shown it to be a widespread phenomenon involving a range of comprehension and production activities such as viewing original version television series, listening to music on demand and social networking with other English users. Dynamic systems theory provides a suitable framework…

This article discusses the informal learning of English by non-native speakers with particular reference to the role of virtual communities. The concept of informal learning is presented and related to current areas of interest in the literature such as incidental learning, and dynamic systems theory. Our research investigates how non-specialist…

Multiplayer online games form complex semiotic ecologies that include game-generated texts, player-to-player communication and collaboration, and associated websites that support in-game play. This article describes an exploratory study of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) "World of Warcraft" ("WoW"), with specific attention to its…

Oral communication ability has become increasingly important to many EFL students. Several commercial software programs based on automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies are available but their prices are not affordable for many students. This paper will demonstrate how the Microsoft Speech Application Software Development Kit (SASDK), a…

The use of a blog as a pedagogical aid for the learning of foreign languages is gaining support among teachers' communities (Soubrie, 2006; Tome, 2007) as it can help students develop online interactions and authentic productions. The current study is analysing the use of such a multimedia setting in a group of Master's students in France,…

This paper deals with the implementation of an "online pedagogical assistant" in a blended learning device for English for Special Purposes (ESP) students in a French university (UPMC, Paris VI). As it is now, it comprises a customized website designed to serve as a guide through the development of the students' work. The architecture of this…

Blog technology is a potential medium for encouraging reflective writing through self-expression and interactive exchange through social networking. This paper reports on a study using blogs as out-of-class assignments for the development of learners' language competence. The study involved seventeen university students at advanced level who kept…

For language learning, online environments allowing for user generated content are becoming increasingly important since they offer possibilities for learners to elaborate on assignments and projects. This study investigates what wikis can do as a means to enhance group interaction, when students are encouraged to participate in constructing text…

Recent years have seen the emergence of Web2.0, in which users are not only passive recipients of the featured content, but actively engaged in constructing it. Sites such as "Facebook" and "Myspace" are typical examples of this, as are blogs that allow users to present themselves online, to write about their daily lives or even to establish…

Wikis represent a particular type of collaborative learning environment where collaboration can result in aggregated, collective products. This study makes the claim that such potential challenges language production practices in school where the individual learner's output is often the focus of attention. The argument is put forth by juxtaposing…

This paper represents an earnest attempt to identify specific pedagogical roles for blogs in language learning. After briefly describing various types of blogs and defining their purposes (Herring "et al.", 2005) we attempt to accommodate their position and application within language teaching (Thorne & Scott Payne, 2005), relating evidence from…

Over the last decade, most studies in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) have highlighted how online synchronous learning environments implement a new literacy related to multimodal communication. The environment used in our experiment is based on a synchronous audio-graphic conferencing tool. This study concerns false beginners in an English…

This paper describes an intercontinental project with the use of interactive tools, both synchronous and asynchronous, which was set up to internationalize academic learning of Spanish language and culture. The objective of this case study was to investigate whether video-web communication tools can contribute to enriching the quality of foreign…