When we decided to put this issue together, we called for contributions from CALL researchers and practitioners who were ‘‥concerned with the teaching of grammar in the post-communicative world…’. We were aware of the contentious nature of such a description – it suggests that the communicative approach is not, perhaps, a complete answer to the question of how to teach languages. Amongst the correspondence we entered into, subsequently, were some exchanges with colleagues who believed we were advocating a retrogressive step. It is only comparatively recently, they pointed out, that language learners have been freed from the shackles of piece-meal learning, drilling, correction and self-monitoring, and allowed to focus on ‘the challenge of communication’

The paper reviews selected Web sites for French grammar, from the student' point of view. The investigation looks at the content of sites and potential for learning.The conclusion is that the Web for French is both underused and chaotic but there is evidence that, with imagination, it could become a useful resource.

Ontologies have been successfully applied as a semantic enabler of communication between both users and applications in fragmented, heterogeneous multinational business environments. In this paper we discuss the underlying principles, their current implementation status, and most importantly, their applicability to problems in the building information modeling domain. We introduce the development of an ontology for the building and construction sector based on the industry foundation classes. We discuss several approaches of lifting modeling information that is based on the express family of languages for data modeling onto a logically rigid and semantically enhanced ontological level encoded in the W3C Ontology Web Language. We exemplify the added value of such formal notation of building models by providing several examples where generic query and reasoning algorithms can be applied to problems that otherwise have to be manually hard-wired into applications for processing building information. Furthermore, we show how the underlying resource description framework and the set of technologies evolving around it can be tailored to the need of distributed collaborative work in the building and construction industry.

Le projet SAFRAN a pour objectif le développement d'une interface dédiée à I'enseignement du français assisté par ordinateur, interface dans laquelle sont intégrés progressivement des outils de traitement automatique des langues naturelles. Ces outils, dans le cadre du projet SAFRAN, sont I'analyseur syntaxique et le synthétiseur vocal FIPSvox, le dictionnaire électronique conceptuel FR-Tool et le conjugueur FLEX, lls permettent I'accès à des ressources linguistiques riches et variées, favorisent I'expérimentation et enfin, offrent un support au diagnostic. Notre article fait le compte-rendu de deux années d'activités scientifiques pour lesquelles nos efforts ont porté sur le développement d'un module sur I'enseignement de la phonétique du français qui intègre les outils de TALN mentionnŕs supra.

Computer conferencing is a mode of communication in which participants send text messages between each others' computers which are all linked to a host computer via telephone lines. It is different from email in that it uses software that allows genuine group interaction. It is used for administrative purposes, for information exchange, for informal group interaction, and for distance education in which it can be combined with other media, e.g. face-to-face, satellite broadcasting, videoconferencing, ordinary correspondence, telephone contact, etc. The great benefit of computer conferencing for distance education is that it can be accessed at any time that is convenient to participants, since it need not be used for synchronous conferencing and the relevant files remain open to users for 24 hours of every day. It thus brings learners into frequent contact with each other as well as with their tutors and obviates, to a large extent, the need for cumbersome distance materials.

In ReCALL 9 (2), in the article on page 8 the name of Paul Baker at the University of Lancaster was mis-spelled. Apologies for this.

In the same issue, in the CALICO 97 report on page 64, Matthew Fox's affiliation was given as University of Southampton, whereas Matthew is at Southampton Institute.