This issue marks the end of a period in ReCALL’s history, with a new look due in the first issue of 2019. We’re particularly pleased to finish here with a strong showing of seven research articles, each bringing important insights from researchers around the world. The first two papers survey existing research into different aspects of CALL to date. Meta-analysis counters some of the shortfalls of the traditional narrative synthesis by providing a statistical way to combine quantitative results from independent studies, and thus gain a more accurate overview of the findings in a given field. However, a rigorous coding study by Huifen Lin, Tsuiping Chen and Hsien-Chin Liou shows tremendous variation in the transparency of reporting practices among 15 meta-analyses in CALL. This leads to a number of specific recommendations for meta-analysts, a more general implication being that readers should exert great discretion in interpreting the results. In their narrative synthesis, Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi and Perihan Savaş offer an overview of the state of the art in telecollaboration for language and intercultural learning. As they say, telecollaboration opens up possibilities for genuine communication in the target language, unimaginable in foreign language contexts only a few years ago. Their study pays particular attention to evolving trends in both research and technology, as well as the learners’ perspective and general outcomes, leading to a number of critical recommendations for the future.
The next two papers examine common uses of technology. The widespread introduction of smartphones clearly has tremendous potential in mobile assisted language learning (MALL), as shown by many experimental studies to date. However, it is also important to see how learners actually use their phones “in the wild” when left to their own devices, which is what Chun Lai and Dongping Zheng attempt in their survey-based study. Exploratory factor analysis showed that the students were found to use their phones mostly to personalise their language learning through access to a variety of resources, and less for authenticity and social connection in using the target language outside the classroom. Ju Seong Lee, Yuji Nakamura and Randall Sadler examine how learners react to the use of videoconference-embedded classrooms for English as an international language. The students, as expected, overwhelmingly rated the course favourably, but the researchers more importantly use grounded theory as a way to analyse the data collected to identify specific factors underlying these representations.
The final three papers are all interested in how meaning is created in different ways. The use of maps to help make sense of and retain complex arguments first made its way into language learning using pen and paper. In the paper by Maryam Eftekhari and Elaheh Sotoudehnama, the objective is to see whether computerised uses provide added value. The results show the software group significantly outperforming the pen-and-paper group for comprehension, immediate recall, and delayed retention, results which held across both more and less advanced levels of language proficiency. Substantial research interest has focused on the processes involved in negotiating meaning and constructing knowledge, continued here by Olcay Sert and Ufuk Balaman. Their small-scale, in-depth analysis sets out to investigate what happens during meaningful online interaction. Specifically, they were interested in how learners renegotiated existing rules for the task at hand and co-constructed new ones, policing each other and, ultimately, themselves over time. Discussion lists often feature as a course component; here, Fatemeh Nami, S. Susan Marandi and Elaheh Sotoudehnama provide an asynchronous form to examine the types of interaction between five in-service teachers with differing levels of experience and technology awareness. Detailed analysis of over 1,000 posts confirms existing taxonomies for suggestions (the most frequent type), questions, answers, delivery, and other. The researchers go further with a qualitative approach for finer-grained vision, looking at how the participants discuss different topics, such as technology, and the functional moves between them.
