= [Quote]
Robert Beard, a language teacher at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania, wrote in September 1998: "As a language teacher, the web
represents a plethora of new resources produced by the target culture,
new tools for delivering lessons (interactive Java and Shockwave
exercises) and testing, which are available to students any time they
have the time or interest -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also
an almost limitless publication outlet for my colleagues and I, not to
mention my institution. (...) Ultimately all course materials,
including lecture notes, exercises, moot and credit testing, grading,
and interactive exercises will be far more effective in conveying
concepts that we have not even dreamed of yet."
= CTI Centre for Modern Languages
Since its inception in 1989, the CTI (Computer in Teaching Initiative)
Centre for Modern Languages, based in the Language Institute at the
University of Hull, United Kingdom, aims to promote and encourage the
use of computers in language learning and teaching. The CTI Centre
provides information on how computer-assisted language learning (CALL)
can be effectively integrated into existing courses. It offers support
to language lecturers who are using computers in their teaching, or who
wish to use them.
June Thompson, manager of the CTI Centre, wrote in December 1998: "The
internet has the potential to increase the use of foreign languages,
and our organization certainly opposed any trend towards the dominance
of English as the language of the internet. The use of the internet has
brought an enormous new dimension to our work of supporting language
teachers in their use of technology in teaching."
How about the future? "I suspect that for some time to come, the use of
internet-related activities for languages will continue to develop
alongside other technology-related activities (e.g. use of CD-ROMs --
not all institutions have enough networked hardware). In the future I
can envisage use of internet playing a much larger part, but only if
such activities are pedagogy-driven. Our organization is closely
associated with the WELL project which devotes itself to these issues."
The WELL (Web Enhanced Language Learning) project was a project from
EUROCALL (European Association for Computer-Assisted Language
Learning). It ran from 1997 to 2000 in the United Kingdom to provide
access to high-quality web resources in 12 languages. The resources
were selected and described by subject experts, with information and
examples on how to use them for teaching and learning.
More generally, EUROCALL's goal is to promote the use of foreign
languages within Europe, to provide a European focus for all aspects of
the use of technology for language learning, and to enhance the
quality, dissemination and efficiency of CALL materials. Another
project of EUROCALL is CAPITAL (Computer-Assisted Pronunciation
Investigation Teaching and Learning), run by a group of researchers and
practitioners interested in using computers in this field.
= LINGUIST List
The LINGUIST List was founded by Anthony Rodriques Aristar in 1990 at
the University of Western Australia, with 60 subscribers, before
moving from Australia to Texas A&M University in 1991. In 1997, emails
sent to the distribution list were also available on the list's own
website, in the following sections: the profession (conferences,
linguistic associations, programs), research and research support
(papers, dissertation abstracts, projects, bibliographies, topics,
texts), publications, pedagogy, language resources (languages, language
families, dictionaries, regional information), and computer support
(fonts and software). The LINGUIST List is a component of the WWW
Virtual Library for linguistics.
Helen Dry, moderator of the LINGUIST List, wrote in August 1998: "The
LINGUIST List, which I moderate, has a policy of posting in any
language, since it's a list for linguists. However, we discourage
posting the same message in several languages, simply because of the
burden extra messages put on our editorial staff. (We are not a bounce-
back list, but a moderated one. So each message is organized into an
issue with like messages by our student editors before it is posted.)
Our experience has been that almost everyone chooses to post in
English. But we do link to a translation facility that will present our
pages in any of five languages; so a subscriber need not read LINGUIST
in English unless s/he wishes to. We also try to have at least one
student editor who is genuinely multilingual, so that readers can
correspond with us in languages other than English."
She added in July 1999: "We are beginning to collect some primary data.
For example, we have searchable databases of dissertation abstracts
relevant to linguistics, of information on graduate and undergraduate
linguistics programs, and of professional information about individual
linguists. The dissertation abstracts collection is, to my knowledge,
the only freely available electronic compilation in existence."