The five articles contained in this issue of ReCALL provide some interesting insights from Australia, Asia and the USA that are likely to be of interest to the global CALL community. In the first article, Caroline H Steel and Mike Levy report on major developments and changes in students’ use of technology between 2006 and 2011, both inside and outside the language classroom. The findings of a large-scale survey conducted in 2011 among language students from the University of Queensland, Australia, are benchmarked against two studies carried out in 2006 in the UK and Canada respectively. Steel's and Levy's findings point to a number of avenues for further research while cautioning us against setting up CALL research agendas that are disconnected from current practice. The second article by Paul Newhouse and Martin Cooper explores the use of digital technology to assess oral performance, with particular references to Italian studies in Western Australia. While teachers and students have reported some reservation with respect to online summative assessment of oral performance, the findings of this three-year study suggest that it is nevertheless as effective as more traditional methods and that it offers a number of interesting affordances. From Taiwan, Hsin-chou Huang investigates teachers’ and students’ perceptions, as well as students’ actual use of an EFL web-based program designed to assist the development of reading strategies. Huang's findings provide evidence that a gap exists between what teachers think and what students actually do with the program. The next article by Sun-Young Shin discusses the strengths and limitations of e-portfolios for research as well as assessment, with a particular focus on the development of learners’ interlanguage. In the last article, Junko Takaham and Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou explore factors that may influence the continuation of email exchanges beyond the required interaction tasks. Drawing on the results of two case studies, they offer some recommendations for enhancing similar online exchanges.
The editors would like to thank the following reviewers for their contribution to the preparation of Volume 25:
David Barr, Alex Boulton, Angela Chambers, Thierry Chanier, Robert Debski, Françoise Demaizière, John Gillespie, Ana Gimeno-Sanz, Michael Goethals, Nicolas Guichon, Mirjam Hauck, Trude Heift, Dominique Hémard, Phil Hubbard, Marie-Noëlle Lamy, Mike Levy, Peter Liddell, David Little, François Mangenot, Vera Lúcia Menezes, Robert O'Dowd, Sue K Otto, Mark Peterson, Kazumi Sakai, Lesley Shield, Glenn Stockwell, Peppi Taalas, Maija Tammelin, Cornelia Tschichold.
