With this issue, ReCALL has 30 full years of publications under its belt, with hundreds of articles contributing to the dynamics of CALL research since 1989. It has become one of the highest-profile journals in the field, this year ranking 13th in linguistics with an impact factor of 2.206 (Clarivate Analytics figures for 2017). While such metrics have their uses, they also have their limits, especially in fields such as human and social sciences with relatively low figures: what counts is the quality of submissions and publications in providing first-class research in the field, and by any measure ReCALL features ahead of the pack alongside the other majors such as Computer Assisted Language Learning and Language Learning & Technology, and the CALICO Journal.
To mark the event, in collaboration with CUP, we have given the papers a makeover including a number of new features: colour in the online versions evoking the journal cover, increased visibility of key items such as the abstract, tables and figures, and other elements designed to facilitation navigation, from new headers and footers to ‘cite this article’ to author bionotes and ORCiD identifiers, along with a now compulsory ethical statement and optional additional information. We hope all of this will contribute to aesthetics, ethics and ease of use.
Additionally, in order to increase dissemination of scholarship, ReCALL has embraced CUP’s CoreShare initiative: anybody with access to the online journal can share a URL to a specific paper among a wider population. This feature currently works from 2016, but there are plans to expand back to 1997. In a similar vein, authors are now invited to submit a one-page non-technical summary for publication on the OASIS website (https://oasis-database.org/). This initiative brings together numerous journals in CALL, applied linguistics and language studies more generally, and is designed to increase visibility within the research field and impact among a broader audience. Authors who do not propose a summary may find their work being synthesised by others on the website!
We welcome three new members to the Editorial Board: Sake Jager (University of Groningen, and vice-president of EUROCALL); Ana Frankenberg-Garcia (University of Surrey, who also has our first gold open-access paper in this issue) and Pascual Pérez-Paredes (University of Cambridge, and co-editor of a special issue in 2014); all three have contributed numerous reviews over the years, for which our grateful thanks.
The editors would also like to thank the following reviewers of submissions to ReCALL for their contribution from October 2017 to September 2018 inclusive:
Zsuzsanna Abrams, Müge Adnan, Ufuk Balaman, Oliver Ballance, Elena Barcena, Françoise Blin, Paul Booth, Jack Burston, Catherine G. Caws, Rubén Chacón-Beltrán, Anne Chateau, Hao-Jan Chen, Mei-Hua Chen, Xaio-Bin Chen, Chin-Wen Chien, Tatiana Codreanu, Catia Cucchiarini, Alejandro Curado Fuentes, Niall Curry, Melinda Dooly, Vera Dugartsyrenova, Anna Dziemianko, Fiona Farr, Luciana Forti, Jonás Fouz-González, Ana Frankenberg-Garcia, Joe Geluso, John Gillespie, Ana Gimeno, Marta González-Lloret, Sean Grant, Gregory Hadley, Regine Hampel, Sumi Han, Phil Hubbard, Ana Ibañez, Jesús Izquierdo, Juhyun Jang, Kristi Jauregi, Stephen Jeaco, Ann Jones, Jacob Karras, Janine Knight, Jeff Kuhn, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Gosia Kurek, Meryl Kusyk, Shu-Li Lai, Keith Lay, Tracy Lee, Mike Levy, Liang Li, Pekka Lintunen, Shannon McCrocklin, Julia Miller, Katia Monteiro, Maribel Montero Perez, Charles Mueller, Hilary Nesi, Kristi Newgarden, Luisa Panichi, Pascual Pérez-Paredes, Annelies Raes, Jon Reinhardt, Ornaith Rodgers, Christine Rodrigues, Fernando Rosell-Aguilar, H. Müge Satar, Mathias Schulze, Oranna Speicher, Ursula Stickler, Glenn Stockwell, Pia Sundqvist, Marta Tecedor, Svetlana Titova, Sacip Toker, Ruth Trinder, Cornelia Tschichold, Anna Turula, Nina Vyatkina, Shona Whyte, Ariel Wu, Eric Young
We open the issue with a specially commissioned commentary paper by Françoise Blin who provides a personal insight to the evolution of ReCALL and the field of CALL more generally, from her perspective not just as past editor of the journal but also as long-term member of EUROCALL and past president. The regular papers begin with two studies looking at lexicographic resources. The first, by Anna Dziemianko, looks at that most ubiquitous of tools, the dictionary, addressing an issue that many suspect but that has received little research attention: whether advertisements in the free online versions interfere with use. The study compares two versions of a major English learners’ dictionary and concludes that advertisements do indeed slow down the consultation procedure and impact negatively on decoding, encoding and retention, with surprisingly large effects in some cases. This is followed by an article from Ana Frankenberg-Garcia, Robert Lew, Jonathan C. Roberts, Geraint Paul Rees and Nirwan Sharma. Their paper outlines ColloCaid, a collocation tool designed for novice writers in EAP (English for Academic Purposes). Drawing on a number of large corpora-based resources, the objective is for a user-friendly tool that provides what is needed at the appropriate moment and without undue distractions. Once fully trialled, the tool will be freely available on line.
Writing is also at the centre of the study by Shannon Sauro and Björn Sundmark, who look at collaborative fanfiction of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit by Swedish learners with high levels of proficiency in English, and compare the results against a corpus of ‘authentic’ fanfiction on line. Reflective papers and interviews show that the technology can facilitate or hinder the process and produce varying outcomes, but that overall the activity is successful as a learning technique for writing. Another type of storytelling is the focus of the paper by Mei-Ya Liang, in which Taiwanese undergraduates use avatars in Second Life as the basis of stories which they present unscripted using PowerPoint. These were then written up and recorded using video software and voiceover, incorporating feedback from other students. The analysis compares differences in story-telling style in the different modes, such as speed and ‘dysfluencies’. Arif Bakla uses his own animated cartoons to tell stories to help with punctuation. The mixed-methods quasi-experimental study found both groups improving with animated or static images, though it gave a moderate but significant advantage to the target group in both the immediate and delayed post-tests; feedback also highlighted greater motivation for the animated materials. We round off with a synthesis of 31 studies evaluating the use of multiplayer online games in second or foreign language learning by Nasser Jabbari and Zohreh R. Eslami. They find that in line with much current CALL research, the majority are qualitative, generally with an emic focus on the players’ experiences and perceptions. While it is clear that such games do provide substantial opportunities for improving communicative competence, few studies have addressed skills development, and the main effect on proficiency seems to be in terms of vocabulary development.
