Abstracts archive

This presentation demonstrates the potential of using autoethnographic accounts of individual scholars’ life-long process of language shift. We intend to show how this method enables researchers to identify the critical incidents in an individual’s experience and to reveal the interpretive compl...

Based on my doctoral research project investigating translanguaging practices in the primary school, this paper focusses on how a Portuguese-speaking newcomer to the trilingual education system in Luxembourg orchestrates both multilingual and multimodal resources to navigate curricular demands and c...

Visual representations of publication trajectories tend to use hypothetical examples. However, representing the actual trajectories of manuscripts helps reveal the complexity of assessing and revising manuscripts. This presentation shares how graphical representations of manuscript text histories we...

This study looks at the acquisition of caused motion expressions by Uyghur-Chinese early successive bilinguals. Two specific issues it aims to address are 1) the relative role of universal cognitive factors versus language-specific properties in children’s language development and whether and to w...

This paper presents validity arguments for the automated assessment of English academic proficiency by discussing the case of a fully computerized and automatically scored test of academic English. Evidence of the validity of construct definition will be presented, drawing from research on second la...

In this presentation, we present preliminary results from a longitudinal study exploring the use of epistemic constructions in L2 Norwegian. By combining perspectives from Dynamic Systems Theory and sociocultural approaches to language, the study focuses on variability in individual learner trajecto...

In this presentation, my aim is to reflect on the use of social networking sites to build and/or reinforce power niches and autonomous zones by the language used by certain groups. Collateral issues will be approached, such as the impermeability of power niches to discourses in opposition.

The effects of cross-modal input when learning non-native sounds is explored in a study with 5-year-old L1 Catalan/Spanish children tested on their perception (AX task) abilities with respect of the /æ-?/ vowel contrast (eg. 'cat' - 'cut'). Results show that while audiovisual tactile input was not ...

Second language (L2) vocabulary is an important area of L2 learning. Nonetheless, the field knows little about vocabulary instruction in relation to materials. This study explores how materials shape vocabulary instruction in university-level, advanced L2 Spanish culture courses by analyzing sixteen...

Healthcare access is limited for Mexican Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker men. Low English proficiency and education level contribute to power differentials limiting health literacy and agency. Language policy considering the concept of vulgaridad (common language) equalize power dynamics between pro...

Effective Deaf education requires teachers to be critical of their use of various communication modes in teaching. This study reports how an experienced teacher at a Deaf school in Japan self-reflected upon her teaching practices through the use of a classroom observation scheme BOLT (Bilingual Orie...

Language teachers report having limited direct contact with research findings despite generally having positive perceptions of research. We will discuss how OASIS summaries can be used to facilitate interaction between research and pedagogy, by providing examples of and suggestions for their use.

This study employs a corpus-driven approach to examine language use in commercial Chinese textbooks, the primary source of language exposure and use for LCTL learners, as an effort to identify core content domains for Chinese assessment in US universities.

The purpose of our study was to determine if Chinese learners of Spanish used dimensions of valence and arousal and the distribution of grammatical categories of Spanish vocabulary similarly or close to native speakers of Spanish in oral narratives. To achieve this, we elicited oral emotional narrat...

This study investigated the relationship between narrative fiction exposure and moral orientation in 8-16 year-olds. Eudaimonic narrative fiction exposure was related to eudaimonic moral orientations. Information on the type of narrative exposure is thus relevant in understanding how narratives can ...

Variation of noun plurals in German in Austria is investigated on the basis of adult and child language production data in different settings, with a focus on individual preferences. Results will be discussed from a psycholinguistic as well as from a sociolinguistic perspective.

The study focuses on a Virtual Exchange project arranged between a Japanese and a Finnish university. Using multimodal discourse analysis, the aim is to explore how the participating students used visual images to present their identities in their self-introductory Facebook posts.

This communication reports a study examining pre service teachers' beliefs (N=75) regarding interaction in multilingual classrooms. Trainees produced two visual narratives plus a written explanatory text. Early results show a perception of multilingualism often based on stereotypes, as well as a lim...

Listening comprehension is a difficult and time-consuming language skill to develop, but little is known about what factors contribute to learners’ varied performance in listening. This study explores the relationship between four factors (i.e., vocabulary size, oral proficiency, metacognitive awa...

Walking and talking, an ethnographic method building on participant observation and interviewing, was used to explore Gaelic-English bilinguals’ language practices – and their perspectives on these practices – en route. This method provides opportunities to consider changes over place and time...

In a pseudo-longitudinal study that aims to understand the development of complexity in L2 writing, we demonstrate the utility of an approach to studying complexity using information-theoretic measures based on Kolmogorov complexity and complexity contours that track the progression of complexity wi...

This paper explores the influence of a blended professional development program for LCTL language instructors in higher education, and long-term influence of the PD program on participants’ understanding of the accompanying proficiency guidelines and implementation/application of what they learned...

This paper presents a study in which primary, secondary and tertiary CLIL teachers, teacher educators and researchers used video observation and joint reflection to explore and develop classroom interactional practices for integrating content and language. Implications for the content and processes ...

This talk first reviews validation frameworks that can guide SLA research. Then, three issues are discussed: how to proceed with validating theory-derived research instruments, how to validate instruments for various uses, and how to plan validation into SLA research designs. The presentation ends w...

This talk deals with Olympism and its mythification through instituted values and a sought-after ideal, as set out in charters and other official texts. Our research is based on behaviors and rules to be observed in order to guarantee peace in the world and harmony among people. A comparison with am...

We investigate the construction of an "authentic instructor" in digital fitness. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a relocation of instructorhood into the virtual sphere: this implies a transition in professional identity, where authenticity needs a re-definition, otherwise instructors cannot feel su...

This paper explores the potentially self-empowering ways in which young people can use the language portrait to visualise and validate their linguistic repertoire by erasing languages from its visual representation in the language portrait silhouette. These erasures are conceptualised as visual sile...

Language maps help to elicit teachers’ and children’s multilingual journeys in order to acknowledge and make visible their complex language trajectories. Language maps, introduced in a teacher training programme, provided the teachers with a unique multimodal creative tool to uncover their own a...

This study examines VOT in L3 English in German-dominant HSs of Italian with differing amounts of HL use. We find that transfer from the dominant language persists and, unlike global foreign accent in the same population, no role was found for individual differences in amounts of HL use.

Walking with stories is an experiment that evokes and provokes by juxtaposing researcher wonderings with language teachers’ accounts of emotionally charged events from their work with newcomers. This non-representational technique examines material and affective relations, and intimates the becomi...