Editorial | Scripta Manent, 3(1), 1

Information and communications technologies (ICT) have been used in foreign language classrooms for a couple of decades now with the aim of enhancing foreign language learning outcomes. They can help students develop their reading, writing and listening skills, vocabulary and grammar, create environments where students can engage in computer mediated communication and collaborate with their peers across the globe.

Besides creating new opportunities for learners of foreign languages, ICT have also created new challenges for teachers. Keeping up with the latest developments in ICT, evaluating and selecting online resources suitable for our foreign language learners, introducing new online learning environments while considering methodological issues, designing materials and planning assessment may be both an impediment and opportunity.

ICT have been especially valuable to teachers and learners of languages for specific purposes. Since the majority of professional contexts where LSP learning takes place are poorly covered by published teaching and learning materials, LSP teachers tend to see ICT as essential to their everyday teaching practice. Research has focused on issues such as ways of using ICT for teaching/learning foreign languages, impacts of ICT on learning outcomes, perceptions and attitudes of teachers and students, learner autonomy, online communities and virtual learning environments, to mention just a few. Some of the research findings have found their way into teaching practices, others have not.

This issue of Scripta Manent includes three articles that aim to bridge that gap. Krajka aims to assist LSP teachers in selecting those online lexical resources that LSP students can benefit most from. Since research shows that teaching students how to use these resources efficiently is an important step towards encouraging their autonomy in language learning, he also suggests ways in which teachers can help their students develop strategies for the exploitation of these resources.

Curado Fuentes sets out to determine the impacts of two different approaches to increasing students’ specialised vocabulary to student levels of satisfaction, their lexical awareness and actual lexical acquisition. Both approaches rely on the same corpus data: the first exploits the possibilities wordlists and electronic glossaries provide while the second uses concordances instead of glossaries and provides students greater autonomy. The results of the comparison raise important methodological issues that need to be addressed by teachers while using these approaches.

Information and communications technologies can also lend a helping hand to researchers trying to gain a deeper understanding of language learning processes in LSP that might be otherwise hidden. Thus Kozlova asked her students of English for Social and Political Sciences to use chat facilities while solving language problems. This allowed her to study students’ communication in detail and gain important insights into the relationships between comprehension and production as well as the use of internal and external support in text production. LSP teachers will be able to use these findings while planning the language learning processes in their LSP classrooms.

Our Reviews Editor, Mojca Jarc, brings us a review of two military dictionaries. Šetinc reviews two recently published Slovene-German military dictionaries: Militarwörterbuch Slowenisch-Deutsch (Wehrrecht und Innerer Dienst) / Vojaški slovar, Slovensko-Nemški (Vojaško pravo in Notranja služba) and Militarwörterbuch Slowenisch-Deutsch (Infanterie) / Vojaški slovar, Slovensko- Nemški (Pehota), which are the result of cooperation between the School of Foreign Languages of the Slovenian Armed Forces and the Sprachinstitut des Bundesheeres of the Landesverteidigungsakademie from Vienna.

And a final note. This issue of Scripta Manent also brings a slightly different look and feel to the journal’s website. We hope that the changes we introduced will improve the journal’s user-friendliness and its visibility to LSP teachers across the world.