Keiser, Robert

Thompson, June

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CONFERENCE REPORTConcordancingConcordancing programs, for example the LongmansMini Concordancer or WordCruncher, make it easy forthe teacher to develop an exploratory, inductiveapproach to grammar and literary and stylistic analy-ses. These analyses are based on authentic languagematerials in the form of various corpora. By using wellchosen contexts for search functions, students can begiven the chance to practice rule- or feature-extraction,which can lead to more efficient learning and longerretention through the motivating process of activelyacquiring knowledge instead of receiving it. Thus ITseems to be extremely useful in EFL grammar teachingfrom intermediate levels onwards and at all levels of LIteaching for raising language awareness, especially forstimulating text-based literary and stylistic analysis.Thesauri, Spell-, Grammar- and Style CheckersThesauri and spellers have been incorporated in muchof the better word processing software and are beingwidely used. There are several programs available nowthat allow the user to improve a written text ortho-graphically or stylistically, for example by makingsynonyms available or by pointing out possiblespelling errors, repetitions, dangling participles, splitinfinitives or sentence-final prepositions. 'Is this some-thing up with which we must put?' would be one of theprograms' more bizarre preferred readings. Thus ahighly critical approach to the actual output sugges-tions of some of the more prescriptive programs shouldbe adopted and taught. They should not be ignored,though, as they are real-life tools used by an increasingnumber of professional writers. Since the pupils willbe exposed to them later, they should already haveacquired a critical attitude towards their use in school.General Conclusions: the Austrian PerspectiveAdequate in-service teacher training at regular inter-vals seems to be extremely important for a didacticallysuccessful implementation of IT in language teaching.Program information, teaching ideas, human supportand expert advice must be provided constantly to everyCALL user. This has been, and still is, the main con-cern of a number of initiatives taken and projects runin Austria by individuals, working groups, by theCALL Austria Association, the Ministry of Educationetc. These initiatives need backing, coordination andexpanding. In doing so, the emphasis, no doubt, willhave to be on the appropriate integration of the com-puter into communicative language teaching.Pre-service familiarisation with CALL in all itsaspects should be accomplished at university or col-lege of education levels. At present this seems to begenerally missing from Austrian universities, apartfrom a regular course on the use of CALL in commu-nicative language teaching at the English Departmentin Graz.Sound evaluation of programs and research into theeffectiveness of CALL in relation to overall curriculargoals seem to be prerequisites for further advances insoftware development, program conception and teach-ing application. This, too, should be of genuine con-cern to our universities and other teacher traininginstitutions. Sadly, cooperational research projectsbetween the school authorities, in-service teachertraining institutions and the universities are utterlylacking at the moment of writing.The English departments of the Universities ofGraz, Innsbruck and Vienna are reporting on concor-dancing work with various corpora. A research projectinto the effectiveness of concordance-generated induc-tive grammar teaching is being planned at the EnglishDepartment in Graz. At the English Department inInnsbruck there are important developments under wayconcerning Hypertext uses. Experiments with self-access CALL for ESP students have been carried out atthe English Department in Klagenfurt. There is nodoubt that the potential is there. Let's tap it!Charlotte Gratze, Franz Mittendorfer andBernhard KettemannUniversity of Graz, AustriaEUROCALL' 91 ConferenceHelsinki, Finland, 21-23 August 1991Two PerspectivesThe dates of 21-23 August 1991 will go down in histo-ry as the dramatic days of the failed coup in the USSR.Those who attended the EUROCALL conference inHelsinki over this period will remember the sombremood on arrival, the question on everyone's lips"Where is Gorbachev?", the shots of tanks moving inRed Square seen on the TV in the foyer of theSummerhotel Dipoli, and the frustration of not under-standing either the Finnish commentary or the Swedishsub-titles; then the pictures of a tired and emotionalGorbachev, and straining our ears to catch the CNNovervoice to his live press conference.Against this backdrop, the efficiency and hospitalityof the conference organisers at the Helsinki School ofEconomics and the Helsinki University of Technologywas almost overwhelming. No detail had been forgot-ten, and the largest EUROCALL conference to dale,with almost 200 delegates, will indeed be remem-bered with gratitude by all who attended. English wasspoken throughout, and I found that I had to remindmyself from time to time that British delegates werevery much in the minority, and that organisers and pre-senters alike were communicating, at a very sophisti-cated level, in a language that was foreign to them.16 ReCALLhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344000002688Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 14:50:13, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.CONFERENCE REPORTPROCEEDINGS OF THEEUROCALLCONFERENCEHELSINKI, 21-23 AUGUST 1991List of papersAlida Bedford, Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK:ANALYSING THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTMonica Bouman & Pieter Uit den Boogaart,Eindhoven University of Technology,The Netherlands:PRAGMA-CALL FOR INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICA-TION IN COMPANYEdith Buchholz, Rostock University, Germany:CALL WARE EVALUATION BY ADULT LEARNERSGordon Burgess, University of Aberdeen, Scotland:HYPERTEXT CALL: NAVIGARE EST DISCERE (TONAVIGATE IS TO LEARN)Marcella Chartrand, Beverly Rising & AlexandraRobison, Universidad Pontificia Comillas,Madrid, Spain:ORAL COMMUNICATION THROUGH THE INTERPRETA-TION OF GRAPHS IN COMPUTER ROLE SIMULATIONSPeter Claydon, Pentti Hietala & Kimmo Nissila,University of Tampere, Finland:DEVELOPING KNOWLEDGE-BASED LEARNINGSUPPORT FOR A COURSE ON ACADEMIC WRITINGDick Davies, CECOMM, Southampton Institute, UK:ELNET, THE EUROPEAN LEARNING NETWORKGraham Davies, Ealing College, UK:EXPODISC, AN INTERACTIVE VIDEODISC PACKAGEFOR LEARNERS OF SPANISHKurt van Deun, Edwig van Elsen & Evelien deHeus, Antwerp University, The Netherlands:LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE BIT BY BIT -A COMPUTER ASSISTED AND SYSTEMATIC BUILD-UPOF FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCYJohn Dickey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA:NEW APPROACHES TO COMPUTER ASSISTED LANG-UAGE LEARNING WITH AN INNOVATION SUPPORTSYSTEMMarina Dodigovic, University of Osijek, Yugoslavia:PP - A FLEXIBLE PRAGMALINGUISTIC PROGRAMBrian Downey & Eef Jansen, Rotterdam School ofEconomics (HES), The Netherlands:ENID - A COMPLETE CALL SYSTEM FOR LEARNINGENGLISH IDIOMSManuel Fernandez, Alexandra Robison & BeverlyRising, Universidad Pontificia Comillas,Madrid, Spain:A COMPUTERISED SYSTEM FOR LANGUAGEEVALUATIONBoth Graham Chesters and I represented the CTICentre for Modern Languages, and between us managedto cover a large proportion of the papers presented. Oneunusual and impressive aspect of the conference was thatthe proceedings were published simultaneously. As read-ers will see from the list of papers opposite, almost alwere relevant to our own interests, and the conferenceorganisers have kindly allowed us to select and reprintsome of the papers for the benefit of ReCALL readers.As often happens at such conferences, certain pre-sentations stand out in the memory. My own paperdescribing the work of the CTI Centre was rewardedby very positive feedback in the form of offers ofinformation, software donations and general supportand encouragement. No one who saw it will forgetJudith Hatula's session on videoconferencing, with alive two-way audio and video link between Finlandand Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the USA. Fromthe comments I heard, this technological miracle wasso far removed from the experience of teachers thatthey found it difficult to conceive of its application inlanguage learning. Only time will tell. GrahamDavies's presentation of Expodisc Spanish wasextremely well received, in spite of his misgivingsabout running it on unfamiliar equipment. Perhaps hepushed his luck too far, forgetting the restrictions sur-rounding the purchase of alcohol in Finland: as wewatched the last moments of the final video sequence,covering how to order drinks from the bar, all electri-cal power suddenly failed, plunging the auditoriuminto total darkness. At this point we could only marvelonce again at the thoroughness and attention to detaildisplayed by our Finnish hosts: the souvenir giftincluded in the conference pack of every delegate wasa decorative candle!June ThompsonCTI Centre for Modern Languages, University of Hull,UKThe 7th International Conference on Computer-Assisted Language Learning, jointly organised by theLanguage Departments of the Helsinki School ofEconomics (HES) and the University of Technology,took place in Helsinki from August 21-23.The organising committee had prepared a high-quality programme for the 200 participants fromEurope and as far as Japan. The first outstanding fea-ture was the publication in book form of the texts of allthe lectures. Here are some highlights.In her keynote address Nina Garrett from theGeorge Mason University, Fairfax, VA, outlined thedevelopment from technology-led CALL via the lan-guage leaching era to the learner-centred golden age ofCALL, which should also be the object of futureresearch.No 5 November 1991 17https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344000002688Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 14:50:13, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.CONFERENCE REPORTThe 44 lectures were grouped under the headings:Types of Learner ProgramsAnne Kankaanranta, Erja Backstrom and JuhaniPappila of the HES showed how an economist, a lan-guage teacher and a programmer cooperated to pro-duce 'EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES1, a 50-card stackwith political and economic information and a Finnish-English-French terminology bank.Werner Stiers of Wuppertal, FRG, introduced con-cept and implementation of 'TEACHWARE1, an MS-DOS package which comprises the modules:• Wordiest identifying unknown words below arange of 2000 and of 5000.• Wordfinder and Wordconcord producing textsaccording to user-defined criteria for worksheets.• Wordbank with 6000 words in semantic fields.Learning EnvironmentsAlida Bedford of Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK, anal-ysed the highly complex perceptions of teachers andstudents leading to 'microworlds' which call for evalu-ation, identification of the teaching approach and thelearners' needs and interests."Learning hard, working smart or avoiding work' byRobert Hoffmann of the Hong Kong City Polytechnicreported on the adventures and misadventures of elec-tronic editing to improve student writing. It startedwith the problem of setting up a CALL Centre (TheETAS CALL Editor believes in integrating a few PCsinto the classroom to avoid the language lab disaster).The project itself aims at using word processing, on-line spelling checkers, thesauri, text/style checkers,concordances and desk-top publishing to produce'correct and powerful1 English texts.June Thompson described the services and activi-ties of the CTI Centre (The Computers in TeachingInitiative) for Modern Languages at Hull University,UK: Courseware evaluation, collection and distribu-tion of information, management issues involvingCALL. For anyone wanting to follow up the develop-ment of CALL the half-yearly CTI publicationReCALL, the NewsSheets, and the ReCALL SoftwareGuide with over 300 items are musts.ConferencingMore and more modern communication technologiesare used to link up students from various countries formeaningful learning.Dick Davies of Southampton Institute of HigherEducation, UK, reported on his involvement in CECOMM,a European College with a clear commitment to busi-ness and language study, put into practice with the helpof ELNET, the European Learning Network. The tech-nical infrastructure, the pedagogical and organisationalissues, and the learning strategies were outlined in detail.The international equivalent, ICONS, the InternationalCommunications and Negotiations Simulations, a multi-Andreas Fleissner, Wolfgang Mischke, HeikeRautenhaus, Jens Rettig & Friederike Sattler,University of Oldenburg, Germany:HOW TO TEACH A LANGUAGE BY COMPUTER ANDYET PROMOTE THE USE OF LEARNING STRATEGIESOtmar Foelsche, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA:TEXTRA - CASUAL MULTIMEDIA IN LANGUAGETEACHING AND LANGUAGE LEARNINGJeremy Fox & Clive Matthews, University ofEast Anglia, UK:LEARNER STRATEGIES AND LEARNER NEEDS IN THEDESIGN OF CALL HELP SYSTEMSNina Garrett, George Mason University, Fairfax, USA:WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE - AND WHO ISLEADING THE WAY?Anthony Hall, University of Klagenfurt, Austria:A COMPARISON OF NATIVE AND NON-NATIVESPEAKER LANGUAGE USE DURING A NUMBERS-BASED BUSINESS SIMULATIONJudith Hatuia, Telecom Finland:VIDEOCONFERENCING POSSIBILITIES FOR THEPRESENTATION OF COMPUTER-AIDED LANGUAGELEARNING SERVICESOlaf Heuer, University of Leipzig, Germany:DRILL-AND-PRACTICE - A NECESSARY PREREQUISITEFOR COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE OF LEARNERSOF RUSSIANRobert Hoffman, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong:WORKING HARD, WORKING SMART, OR AVOIDINGWORK? REFLECTIONS ON ELECTRONIC EDITING ASA LEARNING ENVIRONMENTTim Johns, University of Birmingham, UK:DATA DRIVEN LEARNING AND THE REVIVAL OFGRAMMARMarja Kalaja, Tuuli Lehtisalo, Sven Hult & OraLassila, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland:IMPLEMENTING AN AUTHORING TOOL FOR EDUCATION-AL SOFTWARE - THE HYPERREADER EXPERIENCEPaula Kalaja & Sirpa Leppanen, University ofJyvaskyla, Finland:'HELLO, IT'S ME AGAIN' - PROCESS WRITING ANDCOMPUTER CONFERENCING IN EFLAnne Kankaanranta, Erja Backstrom & JuhaniPappila, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland:COOPERATION IN THE CREATION OF A C A ( L ) LPROGRAMMELis Kornum, Christianshavns Gymnasium,Copenhagen, Denmark:A MULTIMEDIA LEARNING ENVIRONMENT - EXPERIEN-CES AND EVALUATIONIlona Koutny, Ebtvb's University, Budapest, Hungary:PAROLERN - A SPEAKING AUTHORING PROGRAMPACKAGEJaakko Kujala, Helsinki University ofTechnology, Finland:THE INGENIOUS LINGUISTDiana Laurillard, The Open University, UK:PRINCIPLES FOR COMPUTER-BASED SOFTWAREDESIGN FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING18 ReCALLhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344000002688Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 14:50:13, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.CONFERENCE REPORTPirkko Lindqvist, University of Turku, Finland:LABLIB - FAST AND EXACT INFORMATION ABOUTTEACHING MATERIALSPatricia Manning, The Open University, UK:COMPUTERS, LEARNERS AND TEACHING STRATEGIESZdenek Martinek & Eva Valentova, Pilsen,Czechoslovakia:AUTHORING SYSTEM SOPHIAGiorgio Marullo, The Open University, UK:AN ADAPTIVE TUTORING SYSTEM FOR SECONDLANGUAGE LEARNINGClive Matthews & Jeremy Fox, University ofEast Anglia, UK:FOUNDATIONS OF ICALL - AN OVERVIEW OFSTUDENT MODELLINGJose" Noijons, Dutch National Institute for EducationalMeasurement, Arnhem, The Netherlands:THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE Q T O INTERACTIVETEST OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION: C L . ^ P .Walter Peeters, Institut Sainte-Marie, Brussels,Belgium:MANAGING THE CLASS WITH A COMPUTERStephan Pohlmann, University of Rostock, Germany:LETTER TUTOR - A COMPUTER PROGRAM FORLEARNING, PRACTISING AND WRITING ENGLISHBUSINESS LETTERSHeather Rendall, Hereford & Worcester EducationAuthority, UK:CAN THE MICROCOMPUTER COMPENSATE FORTHE DISADVANTAGES OF ENGLISH AS A MOTHERTONGUE?Werner Stiers, Wuppertal, Germany:TEACHWARE - TEXT ANALYSIS AND PROCESSINGSOFTWARE FOR IMPROVING EFL TEACHING MATERIALMaija Tammelin, Helsinki School ofEconomics, Finland:PROJECT ICONS - USING A MULTINATIONALCOMPUTER-ASSISTED SIMULATION IN ALANGUAGE CLASSJune Thompson, CTI Centre for Modern Languages,University of Hull, UK:THE COMPUTERS IN TEACHING INITIATIVE -PROVIDING A SERVICE FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERSJarek Woloszyn (in memory of), University of theSouth Pacific, Suva, Fiji Islands:THE E-MAIL ALTERNATIVE - TEACHING WRITINGOFF-LINEChristoph Zahner, UMIST, Manchester, UK:WORD GRAMMARS IN ICALLCopies of the Proceedings are available, priceincluding postage FIM 130 in Europe, or FIM 180elsewhere. Please send cheques with orders to:KY-PALVELU OY/KIRJAKAUPPA (Bookshop),Helsinki School of Economics,Runeberginkatu14-16, 00100 Helsinki, Finlandinstitutional, computer-assisted scheme, is conducted bythe University of Maryland, USA. Maija Tammelin ofHelsinki School of Economics gave an overview of itsconcept, the technical requirements, the implementa-tion and evaluation. The detailed study of both lecturesin the Conference Proceedings will be especiallyrewarding for all those CALL users who seek the linkto the wide world.A highlight of its own was a live 30 minute video-conference (cost: about US $2000 an hour) betweenHelsinki and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute,Backsbury, VA (it was a 4-am job for them!). First,Judith Hatula of TELECOM Finland described theadvantages of one- and two-way videoconferencing forbusiness and educational purposes, and then visualisedthis with J.W. Dickey's presentation of CREATIR, ahypermedia hardware/software system for problemsolving, strategic planning and innovation support.Looking back, the conference was an extremelysuccessful event because of its competent lecturers, itsperfect technical and administrative organisation andthe friendly atmosphere the Finnish hosts created.Robert KeiserLucerne School of Economics and BusinessAdministration. SwitzerlandInteractive Learning f91:The Multimedia WaveHeriot-Watt University, Edinburgh,13-15 September, 1991This third IL conference brought together some 300people, about half from the world of education andtraining and the other half from the multimedia indus-try. It was a forum for displaying and reporting on asplendid array of electronic wizardry, fromCommodore's CDTV to Apple's QuickTime, fromDVI and CD-I authoring to Barcoded Laserdisc and theMultimedia PC. It would have taken someone moreattuned to the hardware development to follow all thesubtleties of many of the issues raised by both emerg-ing and current technology. In general terms, it seemsclear that multimedia - or 'integrated media', as theApple people in particular appear to prefer - is theshape of things to come, with so-called 'majorannouncements' imminent on the matter of rewritableoptical discs. (I'm not sure if they meant the Pioneer12-inch and Laser-recorder announced on 16September.) It is certainly becoming increasingly and,as proved by several presentations, demonstrably easi-er (not necessarily cheaper) to combine and manipulateon a single screen a high quality of convergence oftext, graphics, sound and images (still, moving, orNo 5 November 1991 19https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344000002688Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 14:50:13, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.

Eurocall '91 Conference

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