¿Qué es EUROCALL? Informes anuales

EUROCALL: Informe anual 1998-99

EUROCALL Annual Report 1998/99

 

Headquarters and secretariat
EUROCALL continued to operate from the Language Institute at the University of Hull, through the small team working at the CTI Centre for Modern Languages, consisting of June Thompson, Jenny Parsons, Fred Riley and Kylie Baxter. Sadly, Kylie moved to another post at the end of 1998, but we were fortunate to secure Julie Venner in her place to act as EUROCALL membership secretary.

Executive Committee
Members of the Executive Committee for the period in question are listed below. Members of the Committee attend two meetings a year, normally at the expense of their own institution but with assistance from EUROCALL if they have no other source of funding. In between meetings, discussion is carried out through a closed e-mail discussion list. Committee members also serve on the Academic Advisory Panel of EUROCALL's journal, ReCALL, and on the scientific committee for EUROCALL conferences. EUROCALL does not pay any fees for the services of its committee members.

Ms Francoise Blin
School of Applied Languages (SALIS)
Dublin City University

Mrs Nicole Chenik
UFR Informatique de Gestion
Université Paris IX Dauphine

Dr Thierry Chanier
Laboratoire d'Informatique de Besançon
Université de Franche-Comté

Prof Graham Chesters (Treasurer)
Institute for Learning
University of Hull

Prof Graham Davies (President)
Thames Valley University

Dr Philippe Delcloque
School of Management
University of Abertay Dundee

Dr Ana Gimeno
Departamento de Idiomas
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia

Prof. Dr. Michael Goethals
Department of Linguistics & Teacher Training, Faculty of Arts
K.U. Leuven

Mrs Lis Kornum (Vice-President)
Christianshavns Gymnasium
Copenhagen

M. Joseph Rézeau
Département d'anglais
Université de Rennes 2

Prof Dr Bernd Rüschoff
Universität Gesamthochschule Essen

Mrs June Thompson (Secretary)
CTI Centre for Modern Languages
University of Hull

Membership
Total membership of EUROCALL increased over the year from 334 to 442. For the first time, following the introduction of recruitment of members via the annual conference, the UK has been overtaken by Belgium as the country with the highest number of individual members! The table below gives a breakdown of the countries represented. EUROCALL continues to operate a reciprocal arrangement with affiliated associations such as CALICO, so that members of these associations are entitled to certain EUROCALL benefits and vice-versa.

EUROCALL Members by country at 31 July 1999

COUNTRY CORPORATE INDIVIDUAL TOTAL
Australia
1
1
2
Austria
0
4
4
Belgium
10
67
77
Brazil
0
1
1
Canada
3
7
10
Chile
1
0
1
Denmark
1
8
9
Finland
5
8
13
France
8
10
18
Germany
6
32
38
Greece
0
7
7
Ireland
12
10
22
Israel
1
6
7
Italy
5
5
10
Japan
0
13
13
Luxembourg
0
1
1
Malaysia
0
1
1
Netherlands
8
21
29
New Zealand
1
1
2
Norway
2
2
4
Peru
1
0
1
Portugal
2
4
6
Slovenia
0
1
1
South Africa
0
1
1
Spain
2
9
11
Sweden
6
5
11
Switzerland
5
5
10
Turkey
1
1
2
United Kingdom
55
63
118
USA
1
11
12
TOTAL
137
305
442

 

Publications and information
During this year, members received their two issues of ReCALL as usual, but in addition a Web-only issue was published in association with the WELL project and made available at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/eurocall/recall/r_online.htm. Members were also able to access a wide range of relevant resources via the EUROCALL website, including the Online Software Database at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/resources/searchdb.htm and Internet Resources for Language Teachers and Learners at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/langsite.htm and the ReCALL Newsletters at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/pubs/newslet.htm. as well as Software Reviews, a CALL Bibliography and a regularly updated Calendar of Events, all available at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/.

Enquiry service, visitors and discussion list
Over the year, the Hull team dealt with 198 enquiries from EUROCALL members and received 14 visitors who spent time, usually relating to their research, examining software and publications in the dedicated CALL libraries held at Hull.

Approximately 200 members were registered as users of the discussion list. Much of the material posted to the list related to the provision of information, but there were a few interesting threads concerning, for example, the retention of diacritics in e-mail messages. Overall, the discussion list has worked successfully, with very few instances of poor 'netiquette'.

Regional representatives
During this year, we started to identify EUROCALL members who were prepared to act as contacts in their own particular regions, to stimulate relevant activity locally and to promote membership of EUROCALL. Françoise Blin agreed to act as Co-ordinator for the first year. A discussion list was established for these representatives and documentation was prepared to assist them in carrying out the various duties, such as designing local websites. The representatives will meet annually at the conference to share ideas, and the Co-ordinator of the representatives will be co-opted onto the EUROCALL Executive Committee.

Conference
A highly successful annual conference was held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, organised by Michael Goethals. The quality of presentations was generally thought to be high, and a selection of these was published in ReCALL volume 11 number 1, May 1999.

Research
Following an initiative by the organiser of EUROCALL 97 in Dublin, where issues relating to the standing of CALL-related research were debated at a special conference session, a decision was taken at the AGM in Leuven to organise a special Research Symposium. This took place at the University of Essen on 1st May 1999, jointly sponsored by EUROCALL and the University of Essen. Invited participants included representatives of CALICO and IALL, and the main outcome of the Symposium was a Joint Policy Statement designed to : (i) establish a clearer understanding for departments, institutions, professional associations and decision-making bodies of the range of activities represented in the field, and (ii) provide an organised and consistent perspective on the rubrics under which these activities should be evaluated. This document is now available to EUROCALL members at http://www.hull.ac.uk/cti/eurocall/research_policy.htm

Special Interest Groups
Despite expressions of interest by various groups, the only SIG that really became established during the year was CAPITAL (later renamed InSTIL), relating to the integration of speech technologies. Full information may be found at the website http://dbs.tay.ac.uk/instil/

János Kohn
It was with deep sadness that we learned of the death of János Kohn in March 1999. János was a highly respected academic, a former member of the EUROCALL Executive Committee and organiser of the memorable and successful EUROCALL 96 conference in Szombathely, Hungary. The Year 2000 conference in Dundee will be dedicated to his memory and EUROCALL will be establishing a special scholarship to commemorate his name.

Finance
Income of £20,000 in membership fees and £8,000 in profits from the last two conferences meant that there was a surplus of £8,413 over the year. This was carried forward to bring the total held in reserve to £27,723. The result of this was that the goal of holding at least one year's operating costs in reserve had been achieved, so that EUROCALL could plan for modest additional expenditure in the coming year.