Morphology consists of inflection and word formation. In foreign language teaching it occurs mainly in the form of inflectional paradigms. While this is certainly an important part of mastering a foreign language, an adequate use of morphology, both inflection and word formation, can facilitate the acquisition of foreign language vocabulary. By applying word formation rules as a way to structure their knowledge, advanced learners can multiply their active vocabulary. A practical problem in using inflectional classes and word formation processes in vocabulary teaching is that the information required to devise exercises is not readily available. In a dictionary, it is not possible to get an overview of word formation relationships or classes of words belonging to the same inflectional class. The nature of word formation processes even makes it impossible in principle to fully cover them in a printed dictionary without creating a lot of redundancy. An electronic dictionary does not automatically solve the problems involved, unless it is structured appropriately. In the Word Manager (WM) project morphological relationships have been taken as a starting point in the design of the lexicon. As a consequence, the lexicon is structured in terms of word formation and inflection rules, in such a way that complete and flexible access to the morphological processes and classes of a language is guaranteed. The full flexibility of WM lexicons requires that the entire system be installed locally. For a dedicated operational component, however, no such installation is necessary. It can be installed as an independently running program or be made available through the Internet. Two such applications (which are freely available) and their possible uses for teaching purposes are described.

This paper presents a proposed initial implementation for the DISSEMINATE concept and architecture first presented in 1998 at WorldCALL. Via an explanation of the explosion of the acronym, the article summarises the key points made in the initial article published by Swets and Zeitlinger in a volume edited by Chambers and Davies (Delcloque, 2001) where the project was described as the “implementation in the digital domain of the ring-binder philosophy”. It explains the slight changes and refinements brought to the general approach since its inception, presents briefly the results of a survey designed to examine authoring requirements and authors’ attitudes to authoring tools, summarises evidence of partially similar approaches taken by other developments and outlines the possible paths to the implementation of the project. It discusses some early proposals relating to the Macro Infrastructure and presents a Micro Module example. The article concludes with an explanation of the proposed provisional distribution structure, including commercial considerations, which, in the authors’ view, cannot be separated from the theoretical and practical questions which the concept poses. The conclusion also suggests that the principles of DISSEMINATE, whether or not resulting in a product, could nevertheless influence present and future digital learning authors.

EUROCALL continued to operate from the Language Institute at the University of Hull. The former CTI Centre for Modern Languages became part of a much larger Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, in turn part of the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) funded by the UK Higher Education funding bodies. The team at Hull is responsible for aspects of the Centre’s activities relating to communication and information technologies (C&IT), and consists of June Thompson, Fred Riley and Julie Venner who serves as EUROCALL membership secretary. We were pleased to be joined in May 2000 by Janet Bartle who is the Academic Co-ordinator, C&IT for the Subject Centre.

The International Conference Eurocall 2001 was held from 29 August to 1 September 2001 at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. The conference attracted more than 350 participants from all over the world.