The use of a blog as a pedagogical aid for the learning of foreign languages is gaining support among teachers' communities (Soubrie´, 2006;Tome´, 2007) as it can help students develop online interactions and authentic productions. The current study is analysing the use of such a multimedia setting in a group of Master's students in France, studying English as a Foreign Language, who had to keep a blog in groups of three or four, dealing with a specific topic of their interest. The introduction of such a tool was meant to motivate learners to practise written expression with an added value: the authenticity of the posted message, aimed not only at the teacher and the learning community but also made visible to the outside world.The aim of this article is to measure the pedagogical added value of such a blog for the development of written expression more specifically, and to see the potential to transform a real activity which is well-known to the younger learners' community 1 into a learning activity for the learning of English. The aims are in agreement with the principles of the Common European Framework of References for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001), which establishes specific goals for language learners with the implementation of ICT: task-based learning, authentic interactions or collaborative learning (Wenger, 1998).Three main aspects have been considered in this article: (i) a description of the way the interactions take place on the blog; (ii) an analysis of the motivating factors for such a publication online; (iii) reflection on the role of the tutor and on the place for feedback. A quantitative analysis of the interactions shows that the project is quite successful in terms of participation, as there are more posts on average than required in the pedagogical contract. Yet there are some disparities, concerning the level of activity from one blog to another and among the participants, that can be related to the role they undertake within the blog (do they prefer to post messages or comments, who are these for and why are they posted?) and to their level of motivation. Qualitatively, the project is also positively perceived: although the blog is not considered as a ''real-life'' one (the activity is perceived as a pedagogical one), the interactions are meaningful because they make sense for the learners who are fully engaged in the writing process and in the interactions. Finally, the place for feedback needs to be discussed, as the corrections online, although described as necessary, are also very often perceived as inhibiting and appear to be a critical element of the project.

In this article we consider how the roles of learner and teacher are configured in a teletandem exchange between two students working in a university language centre with no external tutor present. Teletandem is a multilateral exchange (

This research aims at understanding the cognitive processes at work, and strategies used by, students of English as a foreign language (EFL) when confronted with a complex task in a multimedia system. More precisely, we propose to study how second language learners use the aids provided by the multimedia setting to take notes while processing a video document. A sample of 16 university students (6 undergraduates, 9 graduates and a native speaker) were asked to write down keywords and key arguments understood from a 2-minute BBC report on an electronic notebook inserted in Virtual Cabinet, a learning environment hitherto unknown to them. They had 12 minutes to take notes online and produce a summary of the report, and they could manipulate the input and use an online dictionary at will. Observation of the different strategies used by the subjects was made possible by screen data capture software that logged all the learners’ actions during the whole experiment. This exploratory study will focus on describing this complex task – cognitively demanding because it combines different operations and requires using aids appropriately and in a timely manner to carry out the task successfully. It provides information on the way the students use the multimedia environment to perform the task (taking notes online) and the use they make of aids such as an online dictionary and the rewind and pause buttons. This study concludes that video control functionality is a useful aid because it provides learners with an individualised means to process the input at their own pace. On the contrary, providing a dictionary during the comprehension phase has proved to lead to inefficient strategies and seems therefore to be disqualified as an aid for the comprehension phase of the task in a timed context

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The impact and implications of British and American pronunciation models in South America's largest country