Communicative approach or LL which primarily focuses on what the language is used for (Tomlin, 1990), and with
social and cultural contructivist views of LL, which claim that LL takes place incidentally
when learners interact and construct social practices (Block, 2003)

Pb: not much benefit has been attained from the considerable investment made in technology
(Carnevale, 2004) and claim that teachers should be faster to adopt technology
and, most importantly, to make productive use of it (Gratton, 1998). Rakes and Casey
(2002), for instance, emphasised the fact that many instructors remain uncomfortable
with the use of computers, not taking any advantage of ICTs. 

those instructors who
have adopted technology often limit their use to basic tools such as PowerPoint, web
search or posting materials online. Besides, he metioned a previous study (Zemsky &
Massy, 2004) which proved that some technological applications, namely electronic
interaction, lag far behind other internet-based applications. These findings led their
authors to conclude that the experience with e-learning had been disappointing.(p. 139)

Very recent research (Kessler, 2006, 2007) indicates
that language teachers’ main source of CALL-related knowledge happens to be
informal or self-study and that formal teacher preparation programmes seem to be
defective in providing teachers with the CALL-related skills they need for the implementation
of computer-mediated LL. 

Most language instructors confess that they are
dissatisfied with CALL training, probably owing to the outdated nature of the technology
employed in most teacher training courses (Egbert et al., 2002). From these
studies it follows that language teachers will not exploit all the opportunities offered
by technology if they keep on relying upon informal methods of preparation. Moreover,
Kessler (2006, p. 180) discovered that neither informal nor formal training had
prepared the 108 language teachers of his sample to effectively perform those
activities “related to the rather significant language instruction aspect of speaking,
suggesting that this is an area that may require more attention”. It is also argued that
this situation necessarily calls for a revision of teacher training programmes, which
must include an updated CALL component so as to adequately address today’s
technologically advanced language classroom.
(p. 140)

Teachers
were given the option of filling out the questionnaire in any of the official languages
of the COVCELL project (Basque, English, German, Icelandic, Italian and Spanish).
In order to make sure that the questionnaires in the six different languages were indeed
the same instrument, the original version was worked upon only in English and agreed
by all the COVCELL members in Italy, Iceland, Germany and Spain. Then, the very
same project members who reached that agreement translated the English version to
the pertaining national languages in each country.(p. 142)

The questionnaire consisted of eight items, three of which referred to: (1) their
frequency of computer use in class and for other purposes; (2) their experience – both
as learners and teachers – with computer use in onsite and online courses; and (3) what
they use computers for in their language teaching. The other five items elicited tutors’
opinions about issues such as: (1) which teaching methods are most effective; (2) which
learning scenarios are enhanced by computers; (3) which learning scenarios they would
like to run on computers; (4) which problems they would face in transferring these
learning scenarios online; and (5) which of the functionalities offered by computer
learning management systems they would like to use in their language teaching.

teachers were asked to report on how often they used computers on the basis of
a five-point Likert scale whose extreme poles were labelled “never” (one point) and
“on a daily basis” (five points)

A total of 166 language teachers (95 females and 71 males) filled in the survey in
any of the official languages of the COVCELL project – English (67), Icelandic (30),
Spanish (28), Basque (23), German (11) and Italian (7). As for their age, Table 1
displays the sample distribution according to this variable.
When it came to the distribution of countries, the majority of teachers (124) were
working in a country associated with the COVCELL project (57 teachers in Spain, 47
teachers in Iceland, 10 teachers in Italy and 10 teachers in Germany) whereas the
remainder informants (42) were doing so in other places (Australia, Brazil, China,
Greece, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden,
Turkey, USA and UK). As far as the languages they were teaching, English (94) was
the most common second language, followed by Basque (20), Spanish (14), German
(14) and French (9) at a large distance. Other second languages (13) were Chinese,
Danish, Arabic, Icelandic, Finnish, Japanese, Russian, Indonesian and Yoruba. Additionally,
most instructors (136) were teaching in communities where the taught
language had a foreign language status whereas the rest of them (30) did so in naturalistic
environments. As for the institutions in which informants were teaching, most
respondents were doing so in places aimed at adult learners (95) or secondary education
students (60), whereas very few teachers were working with young children (3).

internet-based realtime
technology (e.g. text chat, audio chat, video chat)

web-based bulletin board discussions 

asynchronous online discussions

online assessment

exposure to video files

“discussion boards”, “chats”, “creation of audio files”, “creation of
Weblogs”, “creation of Web site”, “participation in Weblogs”, “creation of video
files”, “video conferencing”).

Open Source
MOODLE Learning Management System (e.g. chat, whiteboard, audio-video
conferencing, audio recording for evaluation, etc.) for language study and teaching.

(Moodle version 1.0 released in August 2002)

interactive functionalities (forum, wiki), especially synchronous
ones (text chat, interactive whiteboard, audio chat, video chat),