2008 was an eventful year for the CALL community. A record number of CALL-related conferences were held during the year, including the third WorldCALL Conference held in Fukuoka, Japan, in August 2008. CALL authors have also been very active, with 58 articles from 21 countries worldwide submitted to ReCALL alone. Thirteen of these were published in Volume 20 and seven in the present issue. With an acceptance rate of approximately 35%, ReCALL continues to be one of the major CALL publications. Over the last twenty years, the field has considerably matured and getting CALL research published in reputable journals has become very competitive. Very few articles are accepted without changes, some require major rewriting and others may be directed toward a different publication or simply rejected. In order to get published, as in any other research domain, CALL researchers have to demonstrate their scholarship through a relevant, up-to-date and critical review of the literature. They have to formulate clear research questions that are then investigated through the use of robust methodologies and/or theoretical arguments that will lead to new insights and conclusions that will be relevant to the wider CALL community, far beyond the author’s own context.
Authors whose papers are not readily accepted for publication should not however feel disheartened. Journal editors and reviewers are generally committed to provide comprehensive and constructive feedback to help authors revise their articles and bring them to the standard that is expected by the wider research community. Workshops organised by journal editors or experienced CALL writers and specifically designed to help new researchers and graduate students publish their work, are becoming a regular event at major conferences and in graduate training programmes. Availing of these opportunities, as well as perhaps co-authoring a first article with a more senior researcher, will no doubt contribute to better research articles and a higher chance of getting selected for publication.
As has been the norm in ReCALL for the last twenty years, the articles published in this issue, which have all been subjected to a rigorous selection and revision process, provide new insights in a wide range of topics. The first two articles explore aspects of Computer Mediated Communication in novel ways. De los Arcos, Coleman and Hampel investigate learners’ anxiety in audiographic conferences using discursive psychology as their methodological approach, and Dippold discusses to what extent blogs can facilitate peer generated feedback. The next two articles report on new developments in data-driven learning (DDL), both in terms of its efficacy for language learning and of software design. Highlighting the need for more empirical studies supporting claims made by DDL advocates, Boulton presents the results of a controlled experiment designed to study learners’ ability to use corpus data for reference purposes. With regard to software design, Pérez-Paredes and Alcaraz-Calero report on the development of an annotation application to be used with multilingual corpora for language learning.
Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL), which was the theme of the latest ReCALL special issue (Volume 20, Part 3), is the focus of two articles, which could not be included in the latter due to space limitations. While Abdous, Camarena and Facer explore the benefits of integrating podcasts in the language curriculum for multiple instructional purposes, Comas-Quinn, Mardomingo and Valentine discuss the challenges resulting from the introduction of mobile blogging in the context of informal learning during a period of residence abroad. The intercultural theme underpinning this last article continues with Wang and Coleman’s small-scale study of Internet mediated intercultural foreign language education in China.
Reviewers for Volume 20
The editors would like to thank the following reviewers for their contribution to the preparation of Volume 20:
Susan Bull, Angela Chambers, Thierry Chanier, Jean Conacher, Wilfried Decoo, Graham Davies, Robert Debski, Nina Garrett, John Gillespie, Ana Gimeno-Sanz, Michael Goethals, Trude Heift, Dominique Hémard, Marie-Madeleine Kenning, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Marie-Noëlle Lamy, Mike Levy, Peter Liddell, Sue K Otto, Lyn Pemberton, Sobah Petersen, Mathias Schulze, Kazumi Sakai, Lesley Shield, Glenn Stockwell, Peppi Taalas, Maija Tammelin, Dieter Wolff.
