This article discusses an experiment in sending regular Short Message Service (SMS) messages to support language learning, and vocabulary learning in particular, at beginners' level in Italian at an Australian university. The approach we took built on the initiatives of Thornton and Houser (2005) and Dias (2002b), and was informed by the results of an earlier trial we had conducted with students at high-intermediate level (Levy & Kennedy, 2005). In testing the possibilities for using mobile phones for language learning purposes, we were especially interested in investigating the acceptability of a ‘push’ mode of operation, in which the scheduling of messages is determined by the teachers. While the students appreciated the experience overall, and found the message content often useful or enjoyable, there was a wide range of views on the frequency of messages acceptable. We are therefore planning the further integration of messaging into the course around a flexible arrangement involving options for high or low frequency of pushed messages, as well as messages available on request – in ‘pull’ mode.

This paper describes the experience of integrating a class blog into an advanced Italian course, in order to provide an out-of-class forum for language practice and for sharing course-related ideas and information. It also reports on an evaluation of the blog"s effectiveness, drawing on an analysis of the students" blog contributions and their responses to questionnaires. We argue that blogs can play a significant role in promoting learners" interaction and nurturing a sense of class community. For this to happen, however, requires careful attention to two key aspects: the way in which the use of the blog is integrated into the course content and structure; and the teachers" role in moderating and facilitating blog interaction.

While there is widespread agreement on the expected benefits of hands-on access to corpora for language learners, reports abound of the difficulties involved in realising those benefits in practice. A particular focus of discussion is the challenge of transferring the skills of the corpus linguist to learners, so that they can explore this type of monolingual and unmediated resource effectively in a 'learner-as-researcher' or 'learner-as-detective' role. In this paper we present a positive experience of an apprenticeship in corpus use, which we attribute to a training approach that seeks to exploit the unmediated nature of corpora rather than treating it as a problem for learners. Our approach is not aimed at equipping learners with skills that will allow them to derive rules or explanations from the systematic analysis of corpus data. Instead we aim to inculcate in our students a propensity for open-ended searches, and an observe-and-borrow-chunks mentality, oriented to copying models from a corpus to enrich and enhance their written production in particular. We see the training process not only as supporting their development as effective corpus users but also, in encouraging their curiosity about the language patterns to be found and their authentication of the use they make of those patterns, as likely to be beneficial to their ongoing development as strategic independent language learners more generally.

A team of university Italian teachers at an Australian university has been able to obtain enduring benefits from CALL, through projects that last, and indeed grow and develop over time. The projects have focused on supporting students in effective use of out-of-class time once they reach an intermediate level of proficiency. This paper analyses the team's 15 years of CALL experience by first examining the opportunities and constraints of the changing technological context-with rapid developments in both the types of tools available and the students' relationships to them-and then seeking to identify aspects of the team members' role as agents in that context that have allowed the projects to be successful despite the challenges. While we acknowledge that a certain level of skills, ability to work as a team and institutional support have been essential, we stress that the key to the success lies in three key principles that shape the team's approach, namely: tailoring, integration and an iterative development process. Recommendations follow on strategies and techniques that we believe will assist in the sustainability of CALL over the long term in a university setting.

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