Good advice Robin. I think CALL is a great idea especially. We know that Computer Assisted Language Learning could be a great leap forward, but right now it seems to lack a clear path or a definitive message as to how and why it can be beneficial. In fact there are some great programs out there - Rosetta Stone for one, but there are so many new ones popping up that sooner or later there will be a need for more qualified teachers and/or administrators to discern which of those are worthwhile. And of course the question remains as to how often such programs should be utilized and whether or not they can replace the teacher.
Before coming to China I used a few of them - I'm most familiar with Rosetta Stone, and found them to be quite effective when incorporated into intensive English classes with immigrants. I think that they were most useful when used as a tool to increase vocabulary, eand espcially so with beginning students who had prior computer experience.

At any rate, more research as to the overall effectiveness of such programs is definitely needed and so of all the worthy topics you mentioned, I would personally put that on the top of the list.

I find your reference to the fact that Chinese students tend to leave their dictionaries unused an interesting point. I often have university students here in China asking me the important question of how they can increase their vocabulary. It's a valid question, and the research regarding vocabulary acquisition, past and current, is exhaustive.

My rudimentary forays into finding a satisfactory answer to the question has led me to delivering a few lectures based on my findings; however, I can't pretend to be an expert. I am relatively satisfied though with the belief that we too often expect the dictionary to be the where all and end all of vocabulary acquisition. In fact in many cases I've had to mandate that dictionary use, and that includes the damn electronic dictionaries that students fork out so much dough for, are not allowed in my classroom unless I request it.

In so many ways my foundational beliefs regarding second language learning are based on Krashen's approach. Simply stated, in the context of adding vocabulary, if we think of how we ourselves learned vocabulary then we must come to the conclusion that few of us relied heavily on a dictionary.

Well, I must go cook dinner and lest I babble on I better close and hope for some additional discussion here in the forum on not just the topic of vocabulary acquisition, but also how to make it a permanent part of the lexicon.