This paper demonstrates how, via email exchange, a learner's German improved over a period of almost six months. The circumstances leading to the experience reported in this paper were purely accidental. The activity described below worked well with a learner of German at intermediate level; however, it could be carried out with any language at any level. Because email is essentially text-based, albeit conversational, the paper focuses on written German.

Montevidisco is an interactive videodisc application intended for intermediate Spanish students. It combines language enrichment with elements of role-playing games as the student plays the role of someone visiting a hypothetical city in Mexico, interacting with native Spanish speakers in native situations via videodisc. The concept originated at Brigham Young University in the early eighties, with the video filming done at that time. More recently, the BYU Humanities Research Center has adapted the original material to run on standard microcomputer platforms.

There are three implementations of Montevidisco in various stages of development. The first is a side-by-side version that uses a HyperCard stack on a Macintosh to control a separate videodisc player and monitor. The second version uses a video overlay configuration with ToolBook and Windows on an IBM platform. Both of these versions are 'finished' to the extent that they are being used in intermediate Spanish classes at BYU and elsewhere. General marketing arrangements are expected to be finalized this summer. The most recent implementation uses QuickTime on a Macintosh to display digitized video directly from the computer's hard disk.

This paper begins with an explanation of the general features of Montevidisco that are common to all three implementations. It outlines some of the design considerations faced and explains how the choice of metaphor influenced those decisions. Some questions that have been raised during the testing and review process are also addressed. The paper then categorizes the significant differences between the three implementations and discusses the technological and pedagogical reasons for them. It concludes with a status report on the QuickTime version and gives an assessment of this new digital video technology in an instructional environment.

This article will demonstrate the methodology behind the way in which two quite different tools were used to complement each other. By using a variety of authentic source materials, and carefully integrating this material into a second year French course, the authors believe they have provided a rich source of material which other universities might well be able to exploit. The article will explain the advantages and disadvantages of some aspects of each of the tools, talk about the difficulty of overcoming common problems such as giving good feedback, adequately exploiting authentic material, and finish by presenting the results of their work on evaluating this material with students. Based on a case study in the Centre for Applied Language Studies at the University of Dundee, the article looks at the problems involved in producing CALL material using two separate authoring packages. It explores the exploitation of authentic material in a multimedia environment, looks at the advantages and disadvantages of the tools used by providing a comparative evaluation, and discusses the complex problems faced by teachers in developing CALL and integrating it into their courses.

Dans le domaine de l'apprentissage, les attitudes et les représentations des apprenants jouent un rôle fondamental. La recherche exposée dans cet article met en évidence des différences sensibles de profil d'apprentissage chez des étudiants linguistes et non-linguistes. Elle montre également que les représentations de I'apprentissage des langues et celles des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication (TIC) chez ces deux populations sont bel et bien des représentations sociales, qui montrent un remarquable recouvrement entre les deux domaines étudiés. Enfin, une étude longitudinale d'un échantillon de la population étudiée montre que les profils d'apprentissage et les représentations sont susceptibles d'évolution. La question reste posée de I'influence de I'environment multimédia d'apprentissage de la langue sur cette évolution constatée.