CALICO 99

[ Conference Reports ]

Miami University, Ohio

3-5 June 1999

Report by Graham Davies, President of EUROCALL

The newly commissioned DELTA airlines Boeing 777 that flew me from Gatwick to Cincinatti was symptomatic of what I could expect from CALICO 99. Even the economy class seats were equipped with the latest electronic gadgets: individual video screens with a selection of movies and computer games, and a telephone and modem connection. Needless to say, I resisted the temptation to surf the Internet during the flight as the cost was prohibitive.

Miami University is a typical small-town American university: elegant 19th century buildings set among trees and immaculately groomed lawns. The Inn on the campus provided excellent accommodation at a reasonable price. American academics miss no opportunity to talk about their work, and at 8.00am on the opening day of the symposium I was treated - still jet-lagged and while eating my breakfast in The Inn - to a laptop demonstration of a new authoring package incorporating speech recognition that had been developed by Kathleen Egan (US Government) and Fred Jacome (Blue Shoe Technologies). Speech recognition technology was to play a prominent role in the symposium, beginning with a presentation by Stephen LaRocca (West Point Military Academy) on Speech recognition technology and courseware development. This followed the opening plenary by Richard Tucker (Carnegie Mellon University), whose talk centred on SLA research and the importance of longitudinal research programmes.

EUROCALL members were well represented in the parallel sessions. The first EUROCALL presentation I attended was given by Els Heughebaert (University of Antwerp), who demonstrated The Interactive Textbook, a well-designed and practical package based on a standard coursebook, Eventail, which is aimed at Dutch MT learners of French. Further information can be found under 'Educational Software' at: http://hgins.uia.ac.be/didascalia/e/intro.html. In another session Wilfried Decoo (University of Antwerp) shared the platform with Jozef Colpaert (University of Antwerp), Ruth Sanders (Miami University) and Randall Jones (Brigham Young University), who formed a panel on Academic misconduct in CALL. It was evident from the four presentations that misconduct among both academic staff and students is becoming more widespread, with misrepresentation of research evidence and plagiarism being two prominent examples. Josef Colpaert demonstrated a software package, Cerberus, that is designed to detect plagiarised texts. The possibility of setting up a body to establish and oversee standards was discussed. The third EUROCALL session that I attended was given by Jean-Claude Bertin (Universit� du Havre) and entitled From didactics to technology. The presentation focused on an authoring package now known as Learning Labs that has been developed by the presenter following extensive research into students' needs. Jean-Claude Bertin took the audience step-by-step through the process of creating an English language exercise based on a commercial videoclip.

Claire Bradin (Michigan State University) and Ana Perez-Girones (Wesleyan University) introduced a topic that is familiar to Europeans: evaluation. Apparently, the concept of evaluation is less well known in the USA. The session was entitled How do we know if it worked? Evaluating a CALL initiative. Further information can be found at: http://edvista.com/claire/eval.html.

Michael Quinlan and Virginia Martin (both representatives of Transparent Language) demonstrated examples of their well-known Now! series of software packages, focusing on the possibility of using their authoring tool Aladdin for creating a wide range of materials for what we Europeans call Least Widely Used and Least Taught (LWULT) languages. Hence the title of their presentation: A practical technology solution for less common and endangered languages. Further information at: http://www.transparent.com.

Bob Godwin-Jones (Virginia Commonwealth University) gave one of the most impressive presentations of the symposium: Advanced Web technologies for language learning, demonstrating that interactive exercises for language learners can be made much more exciting if appropriate Web development tools are used. I was particularly impressed by his use of dynamic HTML, which enables Web pages to be changed on the fly, and the use of synchronised text and audio. Further information can be found at: http://www.fln.vcu.edu/gj.html.

Philomena Meechan, Reid Paxton, John Stewart (all three from the University of Michigan) gave a presentation entitled Virtual travel on the WWW, showing how the Web can be used to simulate a real-life journey from planning your itinerary and booking your ticket, to sending postcards from the places you have visited. Further information from: http://www.umich.edu/~langres/shops/flwashop/calico.html.

The presentation by William Fletcher (US Naval Academy), entitled Winnowing the Web with KWICFinder, was a knockout. This session focused on a concordancer, developed by the presenter, that rides on the back of a standard search engine, enabling the WWW to be used as a text corpus. Recalling John Sinclair's presentation at EUROCALL 96, I asked William Fletcher to search for examples of 'brook no'. Within seconds KwicFinder delivered the goods, finding a number of relevant examples.

Concordancing figured in another presentation given by Ross Bender and Sharon Bode (both from the University of Pennsylvania). The session was entitled Concordancing and ESL writing research and focused on the analysis of students' essays submitted as part of placement tests. I have my doubts about the viability of using a concordancer in this way, but it appears that the presenters have found it helpful, used in conjunction with other text analysis programs, in semi-automating a marking and grading process which is extremely laborious.

Brian Gill (University of Calgary) gave two presentations. The first was delivered on behalf of Fran�ois Mangenot (University of Grenoble), who was unable to be present at CALICO 99, and entitled Automatic writing environments. In this session he demonstrated a package known as Gammes d'�criture, which offers students of French a number of simple devices for assisting them to write well-structured essays. Further information at: http://web.fdn.fr/~epi/pedag/b86p149.htm. Brian's second session described The ALLE project: the Alberta Language Learning Environment, which is not dissimilar in some ways from the ICT4LT project in which I am involved (http://www.ict4lt.org). ALLE offers a set of activities for language teachers, aiming them to improve their ICT skills and to help them integrate CALL into their regular classroom teaching. Further information from: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~alle/99/home.html.

Finally, I attended a session given jointly by Ruth Sanders & Alton Sanders (both from Miami University) and entitled Reading strategies and the Web, which described a reading aid for students of German, enabling them to look up vocabulary and attempt a variety of exercises. When finished, this tool will be made available free of charge. A useful German-English dictionary that ties in with the package was demostrated: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/urz/netz/forms/dict.html.

As always, I was impressed by the smooth organisation of the annual CALICO symposium and the congenial atmosphere. Under the leadership of Bob Fischer (South West Texas University), assisted by Esther Callais, CALICO continues to thrive and is now working more closely with EUROCALL. I look forward to welcoming Bob and Esther to EUROCALL 99 in Besan�on.

Graham Davies

June 1999