Abstracts archive

This study investigates the occurence of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety in beginning and intermediate-level Arabic FL classrooms and the effect of a semester-long extensive reading program on learners’ attitudes towards reading in Arabic and their reported FLRA levels.

Dutch children in Bilingual Primary Schools are taught in English at least nine hours a week. But how does their Dutch and English language and language awareness development compare to that of their monolingual peers? Are there advantages or disadvantages, and for whom? This study aims to answer th...

This collaborative project draws on both research and praxis when investigating novice language teachers' beliefs about assessment in English as a foreign language over a period of two years. The findings from survey and focus group data collected over 2.5 years, indicate a number of firm preconce...

Departing from the historical context of partitioning home language and society language in Denmark, and through a study of children’s and youths’ mediating roles in everyday language practices within homes and in relation to Danish society, the present paper illustrates a nuanced picture of shi...

Our presentation focuses on EAL doctoral candidates completing an English language goal in their first year of doctoral studies. Our interest is in their writing development experiences and engagement with academic activities in the early stages of their doctorate.

The history of English language teaching and learning in Italy is to a large extent still uncharted territory. This contribution aims to further our knowledge of how English was taught in Italy at the turn of 20th century by surveying English language teaching materials produced by women authors in ...

Word of the year initiatives can increase society-at-large’s awareness of Applied Linguistics. In this presentation, we discuss empirically based measures to raise the value that twinning word of the year initiatives and Applied Linguistics can add to both theory and practice of folk linguistics.

Self-report questionnaire results suggests that primary school generalist teacher students in Sweden experience similar levels of foreign language anxiety as do their future learners. This presentation problematizes the educational challenges of preparing these student teachers to build a positive c...

A break of grammar rules or language development? This speech deals with the attribution of nouns in light verb constructions in the german press. Forms of the attribution and their possible influences on the reception of the text are described on the basis of the 50 articles from Frankfurter Allgem...

While online corrective feedback is proven to help English learners construct their academic knowledge and critical thinking skills, the study of its effectiveness, particularly in online writing and editing collaboration is largely absent. This paper analyzes EAP students’ perception of online pe...

Is the eye-tracking research methodology useful to investigate phraseological units? In this study, we analyze three studies that have employed eye tracking methodology in the context of phraseological processing in order to demonstrate that the eye-tracking paradigm can be a crucial research tool i...

This research study reveals foreign language (FL) teachers’ voices on factors affecting their teaching profession. Under the conceptual framework of Rosenholtz’s (1991) theory of teacher workplace commitment, the researchers found that the teachers themselves, the nature of students, teacher eva...

Family language practices are changing especially due to the digitalization of communication. By adopting digital ethnography we therefore take a close look at the mediated bilingual family and their language practices, and discuss how apps and platforms shape roles and identities, and even redefine...

In this presentation, I analyze the interdependence between the financial literacy of society-at-large and (un)ethical behavior in financial communication. The analysis draws on data from 25 years of ethnographic field research and from transdisciplinary research projects with the stakeholders in fi...

This study investigates adult migrants participating in only a part of Integration Training and these participants' Finnish language proficiency at the end of the training. Also, participants' interviews about learning Finnish are analysed. The training, that contains mostly language studies, is cri...

This presentation looks at second-language fluency from an interactional perspective, where fluency in conversation is co-constructed by both participants. Using a multi-modal case study of two learners in several contexts, it was found that interactive alignment, particularly with rhythm in speech,...

This research examined the affective canon in the context of media discourses about institutional language policies in Germany. The canon, i.e., the accepted emotional response in the mainstream, normalizes feelings of exclusion or fear when others speak foreign languages, illegitimating claims of e...

This presentation compares secondary school French curricula in England and Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia) over time. It analyses differences and similarities regarding approaches to communicative competence, vocabulary, grammar, texts and topics and the alignment to the CEFR. Implications for tea...

This study examined the impact of a form-focused intervention during repetitive tasks on students’ oral fluency development over 13 weeks. Forty-eight Japanese university students were divided into three groups based on the degree to which they received an intervention focused on formulaic languag...

My talk will cover the representation and framing of disability, prenatal diagnosis, inclusion and exclusion in the political discourse in Germany. I will do a corpus linguistic research using the example of a debate in the German Federal Parliament concerning the Praenatest and the reactions in the...

This paper presents research conducted in super-diverse (Vertovec, 2007) Australian classrooms. Teachers and students were engaged as researchers of students’ language and literacy practices as part of regular classroom practice. Placing cultural and linguistic flexibility at the centre of teachin...

To what extent are universities failing to conform to specific professional-communication and human-resource “best practices” during the faculty-recruitment cycle? As this case study suggests: much too often.

The sociolinguistic paper reports on Arabic speakers' perceptions of the future of their language in the context of the ever-growing importance of English. The paper questions whether and how effective a plurilingual education would help change perceptions and anxieties about their languages by offe...

Instagram for Language Learners: A multimodal approach to using a social media app for L2 acquisition. The methods proposed can readily be used both in formal pedagogical environments and outside of the classroom.

Research shows that recognition of first languages in adult L2 literacy classrooms plays an important role e.g., in empowering the learners and preserving their linguistic identity. In this presentation, I will suggest that the current Finnish curricula for adult immigrants’ literacy training leav...

This presentation serves as an introduction to the symposium and focuses on our forthcoming publication that includes interdisciplinary approaches to fluency in L2 learning and use. We discuss the main findings of our publication, including current gaps in research and pedagogical implications.

Traditions in Foreign Language Teaching [FLT] may be similar or differ. Therefore we need to compare languages policies, teaching programs and textbooks in different countries. In our communication we will first compare FLT in France and in the Netherlands and then how French and Dutch are taught as...

This paper will focus on the evolution of English as a foreign language (EFL) programs in France from the mid-20th century up to the present day. Our purpose is to trace this evolution both upstream and downstream, that is, in theories of reference and in secondary school textbooks.

 This presentation reports on the implementation of CLIL for German applied linguistics courses – a context which is typically English dominated. As part of their assignments students were asked to write reading journals in the target language. The study illustrates how they develop their (ac...

Studies of pragmatics reflect researchers’ views. This presentation provides a brief review on pragmatics studies in the fields of interlanguage and ELF, especially in Japanese contexts, comparing researchers’ interpretations of learners/users’ pragmatic behaviours. Based on pragmatics studies...